The Basics

What are psychedelics?

Psychedelics are a class of drug whose primary action is to trigger psychedelic experiences via serotonin receptor agonism, causing thought and visual/auditory changes, and altered state of consciousness. The have been used by humans for thousands of years in nearly every culture on earth. Major psychedelic drugs include mescaline, LSD, psilocybin, DMT, Cannabis. Studies show that psychedelics are physiologically safe and do not lead to addiction. Studies conducted using psilocybin, marijuana in a psychotheraputic setting reveal that psychedelic drugs may assist everything treating alcohol and nicotine addiction to depression.

Differing with other psychoactive drugs, such as stimulants and opioids, psychedelics tend to qualitatively alter ordinary conscious experience. Whereas stimulants cause energized feelings and opioids produce a relaxed euphoric state, the psychedelic experience is often compared to non-ordinary forms of consciousness such as trance, meditation, yoga, religious ecstasy, dreaming and even near-death experiences.

A Short History

Today, while the renaissance of psychedelic studies in the 21st century is largely focused on the assorted medical or therapeutic possibilities for these plants and substances, it behooves us not to overlook the broader non-medical potential they may have for learning and cognition.

The notion that some psychoactive plants can help humans learn important things about the cosmos and their place in it is a belief held by many different cultures. At the roots of modern Western culture, for example, the Indo-Aryan Vedic scriptures make abundant reference to the spiritual or mystical importance of a plant or fungus known as soma. Likewise, the ancient Greek mystery religion of Eleusis culminated in the ritual consumption of kykeon, surmised to be some kind of psychoactive preparation that could reliably induce mystical states of consciousness and a kind of learning that was celebrated among all classes of Athenian society. Even within the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Semitic origin myth recounted in the book of Genesis allegorically suggests an instance of entheogenic learning, whereby eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge inspired human self-consciousness and divine awakenings. In the Americas, there have been more enduring examples of entheogenic educational practices, some of which managed to survive into the modern era despite repression by Euroamerican colonial religious and government authorities.Claims of mind expansion, cognitive enhancement, and creative insights among modern psychedelic researchers and enthusiasts further support the concept of entheogenic education. Perhaps most famously, Timothy Leary advocated the benefits of LSD and other psychedelics for mind-expansion and the democratization of mystical experience. However, cognitive, creative, and spiritual development were significant themes in the academic work of many early psychedelic researchers and aficionados in the 1950s and 1960s. More recently, others—including scientists, artists, musicians and business leaders—have likewise attributed some of their most important intellectual and creative insights to their uses of entheogens or psychedelics.