Researchers are giving religious leaders psychedelic drugs in the interest of science

[rug]

WRITTEN BY
Shelby Hartman
January 06, 2017

Despite the fact that psychedelic drugs have been used for millennia as medicine in ritualistic ceremonies, there remain many questions in the scientific community about the relationship between their spiritual qualities and healing potential. Researchers at Johns Hopkins and New York Universities are giving psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, to ordained ministers in the hopes that they can help provide some answers.

So far, they have enrolled thirteen religious leaders including an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, a Zen Buddhist roshi, an Episcopalian, a Greek Orthodox priest, and a Reform Christian for their FDA-approved clinical trial. (They’re also seeking Catholic priests, Imams, and Hindu priests to join the study.)

The researchers, who are dividing the psilocybin sessions between their two universities, plan to see if these ministers can use their spiritual practice and the vocabulary of religious study to provide insight into those sacred psychedelic moments that so often seem to transcend words. They’re also hoping to gain insight into the broader benefits of mystical experiences—and it turns out, there may not be much of a difference between ones that are drug-induced and those that arise organically.

Using a survey widely administered by religious scholars, the researchers have found consistent overlap between mystical experiences that occur naturally and those that are caused by psilocybin. “All we’re doing is finding conditions that increase the likelihood of these mystical experiences, and we still don’t know their ultimate cause,” says Roland Griffiths, a principal investigator across multiple Johns Hopkins psilocybin trials.

https://qz.com/879285/psilocybin-drug-trials-psychedelics-such-as-acid-lsd-might-not-only-make-us-more-spiritual-and-religious-they-make-us-healthier-too/

[Cartoonist]

1. Have them give me a call

I was a born again Atheist in my acid days. Even my Catholic upbringing couldn't make me see God while tripping.

[struggle4progress]

2. My single experience with psilocybin mushrooms, over forty years ago,

was a protracted hallucination in which I felt myself slowly evolving from some type of segmented worm into a fish, then into a land animal, and then finally into a simian

It was an intellectually-interesting somatic experience, and at the time I regarded it as a serendipitous exploration of vestiges of ancient neural structures: nowadays I suspect it could have been largely psychological in origin

It left me with a strong emotional commitment to the theory of evolution (though the experience itself has no scientific merit) but it was not anything I would classify as "a mystical experience"

I have had experiences which seemed to me "mystical" but they never had "supernatural" or "other worldly" components: rather, they have always been instants of unintoxicated absorption in the natural world, such as a moment when I reached the high point on a desert mountain trail and felt myself completely dissolved in the vista

I do not intellectually "believe" in the "supernatural" because I have no idea how I could live an un-deranged life in a world full of "supernatural" phenomena. But do I have "supernatural" experiences from time to time. The most recent was four or five years ago at the funeral of a man I did not know well but liked very much. I imagined telling him how much I would miss him and how sorry I was not to have had the chance to say goodbye. Then, for an instant, I actually saw him at the funeral service, standing between his wife and one of his children. He turned, smiled, and waved at me, a gesture I had never seen him make. When I looked again, he was gone. I have no difficulty constructing a rational "explanation" for this experience, based on a self-defensive psychological reaction to my grief: the experience provided emotional relief

I've never felt any need to decide whether or not he was "really there" at his funeral. For me, there are simply many different (and inconsistent!) ways I can experience my world and understand it

I haven't used recreational drugs for decades, but I do think I learned something from those experiences -- though often the lessons might have been learned better and more safely without chemical assistance. I've found my occasional "mystical" experiences valuable for leading me away from my normal self-absorption. My rare "supernatural" experiences always give me an opportunity to reflect on the very real limits to my perception. And when I want to escape for a while from space and time, I find abstract mathematics useful

Hallucination, emotion, perception, supernaturalism, mystical self-dissolution, logic --- none of this is my "religion"

[rug]

3. I never used any. I was, and am, not confident I would return.