McPsychedelics
The psychedelic renaissance isn’t new. It’s been going on since the early 1990’s.
However, the phase of the psychedelic renaissance we’re now in is relatively new, and exceptionally weird. The latest phase of the renaissance, I like to call McPsychedelics.
Similar to McMindfulness, McPsychedelics is the use of psychedelics, with intention or unwittingly, for self-serving and ego-enhancing purposes that run counter to the teachings of the plants and fungi, counter to the wisdom that nature imparts.
McPsychedelics manifests as social-media posts selling you the missing key to your spiritual liberation or optimal health, posted by neoshamans or self-styled healers who have barely danced with ayahuasca, or have lost themselves to it. It’s aggressive marketing and misguided branding slinging peace and happiness on the other side of a microdosing regimen or a few ketamine sprays. It’s the overpriced retreats targeting “paradigm shifting visionaries” and “conscious business entrepreneurs” so these few enlightened and self-selected visionary entrepreneurs can optimize their ability to sell you junk you and the planet don’t need any more of.
McPsychedelics also manifests as Compass Pathways filing a patent for hand holding, sound systems, a soft couch and other ancient universal and basic components of a psychedelic healing session. At its nadir, McPsychedelics is a therapist telling a client it’s okay to touch them unwillingly as part of the therapeutic process, or thought leaders using psychedelics to reinforce dangerous and violent ideologies that jeopardize public peace and human lives.
McPsychedelics is and will be many things.
Become an “awakened leader” with plant medicine so you can hustle better and grind harder and sell people more stuff.
Since the '90s, scientific researchers have harboured a fascination with psychedelics, yet the recent surge of interest from entrepreneurs and corporations has yanked back the curtains on a singularly bizarre spectacle, a tragicomedy spotlighting an egocentric, outcome-obsessed, and hyper-materialistic culture.
People can’t agree on how to legalize them, companies are trying to patent standard therapeutic methods, frauds are passing themselves as shamans, healers or guides while taking advantage of vulnerable populations seeking relief. Further, therapists and guides are being accused sexually abusing their clients while companies are banning groups of journalist from their events because of ideological differences.
Clearly, psychedelics are shining light on our shadows.
Psychedelics don’t exist in a vacuum, they exist in this current set and setting, which encompasses today’s global social, cultural, political and ideological landscape. As these substances meet a technologically giant industrial society with the collective emotional and spiritual intelligence of children bent on infinite economic growth, material consumption, celebrity idolization, and so much other weirdness, they are inevitably also being used to get more of what’s most wanted: money and power.
McPsychedelics sees a demand for and thus supplies the health, happiness, connection, meaning and transcendence people crave. The promise is, psychedelics will make you and your life better. Naturally, entrepreneurs and companies are taking advantage of the demand by targeting people in search of a healthier and happier life. Selling empty promises built on inflated market hype and get-fixed-quick schemes, with rules and regulations set by the developing needs of a psychedelic-medical-pharmaceutical industry, McPsychedelics is set to transform culture and society.
As industry and policy seizes psychedelics, McPsychedelics grows in power and reach. Rules and regulations are set according to pharmaceutical companies that want to serve a psychedelic Happy Meal consisting of a patented psychedelic pill that must be taken regularly at the cost of a monthly subscription and an app that tracks progress towards the promise land of health and happiness. Accordingly, the psychedelic Happy Meal will fix all your life and health problems without the tedious life-changing transformative journey into the depths of soul, a journey which is mostly uncomfortable, painful and scary, yet ridiculously rewarding. Who needs to face the ugly dark anguish when you can just pop this psychedelic-derived Prozac 2.0? And who needs a communal ceremony honouring nature, the planet, the cosmos and the spiritual dimension of existence when you can just take this new pill or vaporize DMT with a therapist and experience God without ever looking into the systemic issues which underly your personal issues? I certainly don’t need any of that.
Our set and setting includes the world of allopathic biomedicine. You aren’t anxious and depressed because you work two jobs, can’t pay rent and spend more than half of your days indoors staring at a computer screen or sitting in traffic. No, you’re anxious and depressed because your brain isn’t working properly. The chemicals are imbalanced for some mysterious medical reason. So, instead of addressing the real problem, take these new psychedelic drugs which have no psychedelic effects (thank God, imagine having to face your demons and work through them?) and get back to your soul-crushing, posture-ruining and life-shortening job.
While a medical establishment which cannot see outside the walls of the ontological and epistemological traditions within which it is built, and a pharmaceutical industry that is focused first and foremost on shareholder profits take charge of the renaissance, people will have choices about how and with whom they turn on and tune in, and maybe eventually, drop out. Rules and regulations which favour McPsychedelics will be set, but psychedelics will continue to be used in a variety of ways as their mainstreaming ushers in an era of self-discovery and transformation.
Hopefully, McPsychedelics acts only as a trojan horse to the more wise use of psychedelics. Hopefully, people get to venture further than their Prozac 2.0 and corporate psychedelic therapy to rediscover the sacredness of nature and the interconnectedness of all life while feeling more connected to the Earth and cosmos, and maybe God too.
If you enjoyed reading this article, please consider supporting us by following us on Instagram. If you need guidance or support with your psychedelic use, book a support call with a member of our team.