Shrooms and Plato

How Plato helps in the debate over hallucinogens in medicine. By Mark Vernon

The popularity of Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind was the most tangible evidence yet that a psychedelic renaissance is under way – until, that is, the success of his book was trumped by that of a Netflix docu-series based on it, released earlier this year.

Enthusiasm abounds for the benefits of LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and the like. But if excitement about the drugs is to convert into widely available treatments for the bleak agonies of mental ill-health, more will be required than promising studies and compelling testimonies. Crucial, too, will be the insights of philosophy.

Michael Pollan himself explained why this is so when he spoke to Tom Hodgkinson as a guest at our weekly online gathering A Drink with the Idler. He talked about past waves of interest in psychedelics, prompting serious scientific interest that ran from the 1950s to the 1970s.

But, he continued, if the new round of trials are not to crash on the rocks of political wariness and bureaucratic impasse, a culture receptive to the experiences psychedelics unleash will need to flourish as well.

Right now, the language of neuroscience and psychological distress offers proxies for talking about expanded consciousness and spiritual release. Instead of cosmic unity, scientists will explain that there is a system in the brain called the default mode network, akin to the ego, which psychedelics disrupt. Instead of conversing with demons and gods, embodying hopes and fears, researchers will deploy remarks about psychedelics flooding the hemispheres with serotonin or oxytocin.

Fair enough. The mainstream media is often unthinkingly scientistic. Journalists will treat an unlikely proposition as true only if it has an impressive statistic behind it. The grant-making bodies that fund the work need to be persuaded that their investment will make a measurable difference and probably deliver a significant return.

But Pollan’s point is that psychedelics exceed the constraints of such materialism. They don’t just offer novel treatments, but challenge the philosophy that assumes the natural world is a complex mechanism and human beings are biological robots.

The political caution and moral panic is not straightforwardly mistaken. Psychedelics might contribute to the breakdown of the assumptions that a secular society holds dear. They disrupt. That’s baked into their appeal and potential. The question is whether the way they disturb what is hardwired in the troubled mind, or manifest in the body politic, can be beneficially and constructively channelled.

Directing the power of entheogens – psychoactive substances that induce a mystical or spiritual experience – matters. Researchers will stress that the setting and your mental perspective are crucial to their impact: the attitude you take when imbibing a psychoactive drug, as well as the context within which you take it, fundamentally influence the ensuing effects.

Moreover, some people have bad trips. The dark side of the mind can be set free, as well as the peaceful, perceptive and ecstatic. Look at the details of the trials. There you find evidence that, for a certain percentage of subjects, all will not go well.

Cheerleading does not help here. It creates the suspicion of cover-up. Treating psychedelics as panaceas breeds reactive concern rather than thoughtful carefulness. But this brings us back to the question of philosophy. And I think Plato is one enlightened thinker who can help.

Consider his best-known analogy, the myth of the cave. Plato illustrates the state of the trapped human mind as being like a bound prisoner, chained at the back of a deep cave. No natural light penetrates the inky blackness, though shadows dance on the dark walls, cast by the flickering flames of a fire. It burns on a parapet behind the prisoner. Most of the people in chains assume that the lambent light is reality. The silhouettes in the gloom keep moving and are entertaining and distracting. Moreover, the inmates have never seen anything else.

Then, on occasion, one of them is freed. The experience of release is frightening. The unfettered realise that their “reality” is actually shadows cast by the fire. That is alarming. They also feel the fire and it hurts their eyes. Most of the liberated, therefore, turn back to what they know, Plato reports. The familiar shadows bring comfort. The bonds promise security.

But suppose, Plato continues, that one of the freed is dragged around the fire and towards the mouth of the cave. They do not want to go. They protest every step of the way and not without reason. The journey is steep. The descent is rough. They stumble and are taunted by strange sights and alarming visions.

The pain brings anger, which increases when they are forced out of the cave. But then, unexpectedly, the mood starts to change. What appear first as glinting reflections and wavering images, reveal themselves to be rivers and trees, mountains and people. They are lovely. As lovely are the stars and the moon that shine in the vast night sky overhead. The brilliance of the celestial bodies is surpassed in the morning by the extraordinarily beautiful light of the rising sun, whose effulgence and love falls everywhere and fills everything.

You take the point. To absorb what release from the cave brings, requires far more than merely having an experience. It demands the endurance of discomfort and anxiety. It necessitates a tricky transformation of mind. It entails a guide who knows the truth. Only then might the mouth of the cave, like the doors of perception, be traversed so that life in all its fullness can be absorbed.

The psychedelic renaissance is asking us not just about mental ill-health. It is raising an ontologically fundamental issue. Are we, collectively, willing to take the risks required for a conversion of perception? Are we ready for the birth pangs that awakening requires?

The studies will keep coming, as will the peak experiences and stories of healing. But do we really want to leave the refuge of the cave? Are we frightened by the unknown and unable to surrender to the abundance and freedom?

This piece is from the November/December issue of the Idler, out now.

Our November/December issue is available in bookshops as well as Waitrose, WHSmiths, Booth’s and Easons.