People are trying magic mushrooms for depression – and accidentally meeting God
As psychedelics re-enter mainstream, with psilocybin legalized for recreation in Colorado, and for therapeutic use in Oregon, millions of Americans are trying them for the first time, and some are walking away – quite by surprise – true believers.
In stumbling upon the connection between mushrooms and the sacred, Brinkerhoff and Worwood are discovering a path well-worn by indigenous peoples. Yet compared to the recent hype psychedelics have received for potentially treating everything from depression to addiction, their extraordinary spiritual potency has been less emphasized, despite the fact that the very name — psychedelics — means “soul revealing.” The alternative term that some prefer — entheogens — puts an even finer point on it: “God within.” That’s been by design. Modern-day psychedelic advocates, haunted by ghosts of the counterculture past like Timothy Leary, who exhorted America’s youth to “drop out” and start their own religion, have mostly stuck to the secular path of medicalization, reasoning that veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder would be safer poster children — this time around — than the born-again. Now, this idea that psychedelics are medical tools with spiritual properties, rather than spiritual tools with medical properties, is beginning to fray… the medicalization movement is faltering. Maybe that’s because psychedelics have been spiritual tools all along…
Original Article (Rolling Stone):
People are trying magic mushrooms for depression – and accidentally meeting God
Artwork Fair Use: jakelee
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