Spirit 369

Oct 27, 2022

Can psychedelics make you a better person?

Back in the 1960s, many people thought psychedelics would save the world. Professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (now called Ram Dass) of Harvard University had a graph on their office wall, showing how long they thought it would take the entire human race to take LSD and become enlightened. 

Psychedelics, it was believed, would save humanity - particularly Western civilization - from its spiritual emptiness, its ignorance of the inner life, its ego-grasping, and its relentless consumerism, conflict and environmental devastation.Terrence McKenna declared, in the 1990s: 'suppression of shamanic gnosis, with its reliance and insistence on ecstatic dissolution of the ego, has robbed us of life's meaning and made us enemies of the planet, of ourselves, and of our grandchildren. We are killing the planet in order to keep intact the wrong-headed assumptions of the ego-dominator cultural style'. 

All of these could arguably be presented as moral improvements - depending on your moral philosophy. You could argue that if a change in one's personality is caused by a chemical interacting with your subconscious, that's not really a moral improvement, because it's beyond your conscious will or choice (one could say the same of God's grace). But with both types of mystical experience, they are usually not enough on their own.Still, no study, as far as I'm aware, has tried to ascertain if psychedelics can help make someone a better person. It's difficult to define and measure such a broad, holistic concept.

To conclude, I don't think we can say that psychedelics make you a better person. Better according to what philosophy? But they can be a tool that helps you reach your cultural goals. If your goal is to become a powerful sorcerer, they can help you. If you want to become a cult leader and serial killer, like Charles Manson, they can help you. If your goal is to unlock toxic emotional patterns to discover the 'real you', they can help you. If your goal is to become a better Buddhist meditator or a kinder person,they can help you. The occasional use of psychedelics can, I think, help us on the path of light and love, by teaching us concentration, self-acceptance, compassion, courage, self-awareness, humility, surrender, awe and love. But there is nothing essential in psychedelics that necessarily leads to these things. And for God's sake, research your shaman before you place your soul in their hands.