Stoicism and… psychedelics?

[image: chemical structure of Beatrice, a lesser known psychedelic drug, Wikimedia Commons]

Psychedelics are back, baby! There has been a flurry of, largely positive, articles about the use of psychedelics — be it therapeutic, recreational, or as an aid to discover “deeper” realities. Anthropologist and historian of science Nicolas Langlitz has recently discussed the problem with new research on the effects of psychedelics: it is hard to test their effects using standard methods in pharmacological science.

You see, the established approach in this sort of research is a protocol known as the placebo-controlled trial, in which some subjects are exposed to the test drug while others get a placebo. The underlying assumption is that whatever differences manifest themselves between the experiences and reactions of the two groups is due to the drug. That assumption in turn relies on a deeper, and more problematic one: that the same psychological and cultural factors are at work both when the drug is experienced and when the placebo is given.

The problem, as Langlitz explains in detail, is that such underlying assumption has been shown to be false. We have known since the 19th century that, for instance, the ingestion of peyote, which contains the active substance mescaline, has dramatically different effects depending on the psycho-cultural background of the subjects. Native Americans experience what they describe as contact with a “higher” reality that results in a form of religious enthusiasm, while many Westerners have horrible visions and end up in a gloomy depression.

While this obstacle isn’t impossible to overcome, it isn’t clear how researchers might be able to set up experiments that include psycho-cultural controls, a proposition that — even if feasible — would definitely be cumbersome and expensive to implement. The result is that we really don’t know as much about the effects of psychedelics as some currently enthusiastic supporters would lead us to believe. Moreover, even if the use of such drugs were to be approved, as Langlitz drily puts it, “being guided through your trip by a psychedelic veteran might not be the same as receiving the drug from your born-again oncologist in the Bible Belt.”

I will add one more skeptical note to Langlitz’s article: the very fact that people’s experiences with psychedelics depend so markedly on their psychological conditions and cultural background…