The psychedelic renaissance is at risk of missing the bigger picture
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) founding constitution defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Leaving psychedelics in the hands of the biomedical industry and state-regulated facilities can undermine their potential by excluding more diverse “sets and settings” (a term describing how psychological, social, and cultural factors all profoundly shape the kinds of trips one might experience) while leaving inequalities across race, culture, and class unaddressed.
Psychedelics can help shift attention toward reconfiguring the baseline of ordinary, non-impaired experience in ways that enrich what we call “normal.” “The problem with the current biomedical vision is that it’s very much based on an individualistic understanding of mental health and human flourishing,” said Claudia Schwarz-Plaschg, a social scientist and visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh’s Usher Institute who spent three years studying attitudes toward psychedelics in the US. “Medical interventions are geared towards making the individual fit better into society through therapeutic and substance-based interventions, but other approaches are more open towards a broader vision of how mental health issues and societal structures are producing each other,” she said.
Original Article (Vox):
The psychedelic renaissance is at risk of missing the bigger picture
Artwork Fair Use: Graham Hogg
