Purely medicinal
This week, leading researchers and doctors from around the world have gathered in San Jose, California, for the largest science conference on psychedelic drugs since the hallucinogens' heyday during the counterculture of the 1960s. Unlike Timothy Leary, the Harvard academic-turned-drug-guru, they will not be talking about 'Turn on, tune in, drop out', mind expansion or cosmic religious consciousness, at least not so blatantly.
Instead, they have mainly confined discussions to the medical uses of psychedelics in the treatment of addiction, depression and other mental and mood problems. To avoid abuse, researchers have developed rigorous safety protocols and safeguards for patients and experimental subjects. They have secured greater latitude from government regulators in some countries to experiment with such drugs involving human subjects.
This is long overdue. Such beneficial medical uses have long been known. For example, it is well known that ibogaine - taken from the iboga shrub native to Central and West Africa - can treat heroin and alcohol addiction, at least with some people. Psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms, is now a hot topic of research in the treatment of depression and obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Better scientific understanding and research of the psychedelic experience might have helped relieve the pain and suffering of a generation of patients. But, instead, regulatory overkill made such discussions and research effectively taboo for almost half a century. It's hard to imagine today but, until 1970, most hallucinogens such as LSD (a synthetic drug) and other, plant-derived drugs were unregulated in most countries. That year, in response to widespread abuse, the US banned most of them as dangerous drugs, and most jurisdictions around the world followed its lead.
This severe global regulatory regime effectively collapsed all distinctions among illegal drugs, making all of them bad and undesirable. Their differences concern only the experts. As far as governments are concerned, the public needs to know only that they are all bad and must be avoided. This has sometimes resulted in inhumane medical treatment. For example, it has been scientifically established that marijuana helps ease the suffering of many cancer patients, especially those on chemotherapy. Yet it is rarely or never available to such patients around the world, including in Hong Kong. It may also be argued that, by branding all illegal drugs bad, it has led to the spread of the most addictive and health-destroying drugs - such as heroin and cocaine around the world and ketamine in Hong Kong - and the globalisation of organised crime and narcotic terrorism. Hallucinogens are thereby marginalised and forgotten by regulators (for their possible medical benefits) and drug gangs (because of low profit margins).
No doubt, for many of the researchers present in San Jose this week, the biggest elephant in the room is the subject of altered consciousness. When you start talking about using psychedelic drugs to treat depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, you start talking about moods and different states of consciousness. That is precisely why drugs such as psilocybin work with some patients: they report out-of-body experiences and stop being focused on their own ego and problems. Many say they feel a oneness with the world and the people in it. When the effects wear off, many experience greater empathy with people afterwards, especially those close to them.
Some recent writers have started treating the issue of drug spirituality seriously. Among these are Israeli cognitive psychologist Benny Shanon, whose Antipodes of the Mind recounted his experiments with ayahuasca - an Amazonian plant whose active ingredient is harmine - and Daniel Pinchbeck's 2002 Breaking Open the Head, about his experience with iboga and other mind-altering plants. As always, the difficult question is how to explore the medical and the spiritual in a responsible way without promoting drug abuse.