In the vernacular of the ceremonial and earth honoring animistic traditions, the word “Medicine” is used to describe anything that fosters and inspires true well-being and does no harm. “Medicine” is used for the plants, as well as the teachings, the wisdom of culture, the blessings of energetic transmission from elders, healers, and friends. The word “medicine,” has like so many other words, become co-opted and distorted through a vast campaign of counter-mimicry which has created great profit for a few and great suffering for the many.
Counter-mimicry is something to be aware of, as it is a powerful force within these times and our world. Counter-mimicry is a tool of psychological manipulation which uses an original symbol (word, idea, historical person, meme, role, ect.) to represent the opposite of its original meaning. This is a very old and very well developed tool for psychological manipulation and the sculpting of paradigms. This tool was highlighted by the ancient Gnostics in the recovered Nag Hammadi Texts as an inherent aspect of Archonic consciousness. Within the “empire” of ideas many of us take this counter image to be Reality and unconsciously perpetuate illusory beliefs as Reality. Truth and Medicine must exist in the same place. Sacred space is not possible without both.
A true medicine awakens the universal intelligence within to bring greater harmony, coherence, and beauty to the whole. Anything less than this is a distortion. For me, this is the critical line that delineates “medicine” and “drug.” It is a high bar. I am a firm believer that everything has its time and place. There is a time when the best thing we can do for ourselves is take a drug. It will alleviate the pain, the intense symptoms, and help in some way to shift our inner setting, so that we can find a good way forward. Drugs however do not help the universal intelligence of the Body to awaken and begin to reorganize into a greater harmony and health. Drugs do not go to the root of the illness, imbalance, or dis-ease. There are very few human-designed medicines, but countless human-designed drugs. The overwhelming majority of true medicines come directly from Gaia herself.
In my own journey, it has been through the power of the whole plants, full spectrum plant extracts and ceremonial traditions based on hundreds of generations of applied use, that I have healed my whole being. I am an advocate for plants. When we work with the master teacher plants or any medicinal plant in a form that maintains its full-spectrum integrity, our bodies respond in beautiful ways. We have not evolved to be able to process high amounts of super concentrated pharmaceutical substances. For those seeking long term holistic healing I feel that almost everyone can benefit from a very slow, deliberate and informed process of weaning off of pharmaceutical remedies and finding whole plant and full spectrum extracts as alternatives.
Psychedelics- A drug or a medicine? Drugs are a human invention born out of the scientific reductionist paradigm. Are all drugs bad? Absolutely not. There is a place for everything and everything has its place. What’s important to understand when I speak of “Medicine” is that I don’t mean “drug.”
There is an ever growing abundance of scientific literature and research on the merits of the psychedelic isolated molecules and designer molecules. What is critical to know about this whole category of human created psychedelics is that while the research is incredibly promising, there are also some very large drawbacks to pharmaceutical substances. Until this past year, the only way that psychedelics could be studied in a research environment is with an isolated synthesized molecule. I have only heard to date of one government approved research project with a full spectrum psilocybin mushroom with the ATMA Journey Center in Calgary, AB.
Until ATMA the only way research had been approved by governments from around the world was to require that molecules be stripped out of the rich plant matrices from which they come, then isolated into individual alkaloids, and once isolated synthesized into “designer molecules” so that they can each be studied. This is also what happens with vitamins and even some standardized extract supplements. The chemists look for the one molecule that they think has the medicinal benefit, and leave all the rest behind. This is one of the greatest expressions of the western scientific reductionist paradigm, and one that has been the foundation for most allopathic practice over the last 100 years.
What is missed in this approach is that plants have evolved for over 500 million years and every alkaloid within each plant works with all the other alkaloids for a synergy. The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. If you’re a pharmaceutical company you want to be able to create profit. Each designer molecule is a synthetic pharmaceutical substance that can be potentially patented. There have even been corporations that have attempted to patent traditional medicines from all over the world, so that only they could use and sell them. In 1996 the International Plant Medicine Corporation tried to patent Ayahuasca. This was the first time Ayahuasca was brought to court in the United States. This case debated the practices of large pharmaceutical companies’ actions in the rainforest and world wide, in regard to genetic property rights. Many companies employ tactics of using the indigenous wisdom of aboriginal people to locate medicinal plants, then patent it, and synthesize the plants’ active constituents. All without compensating the people for their knowledge or engaging in a dialogue about the ethics of such a practice. Although this has been done throughout the history of the world by colonizers and corporations, governments of the new world such as Brazil and Ecuador, ethnobotanists and concerned citizens, and indigenous people themselves are fighting this. This process of profiteering is also known as bio-piracy. To learn more about this please download my master thesis “Entheogenic Soul Evolutions- The Use of Ayahuasca and Huachuma by Westerners” on my website www.visionaryhearts.com
It’s important to understand that the root of all psychedelic and empathogenic designer molecules is the same- isolation, standardization, synthesization, patenting, and profit. Do these designer molecules have great potential and can be incredibly helpful YES. Do they meet my definition of true Medicine, RARELY. This is because while they have radical benefits, they also have important challenges to be aware of. Some of these challenges are unique to each molecule and to potential contamination within chemical creation and/or underground sourcing. This has become an extreme and overwhelming problem with the fentanyl crisis. We have lost too many beautiful young people because they consumed contaminated street drugs- over a handful in our community alone in the last few years. (In British Columbia where I live the overdose from opioids is the greatest public health crisis, and only became inflamed and more dangerous with the lockdowns of the last 3 years.) Some of the psychedelic drugs being used, like ketamine, 3MMC, and even MDMA are highly addictive. Due to the highly concentrated nature of designer molecules, it can be far too easy to take way too much. That can create toxicity, internal organ damage, and possibly cause one to experience deep trauma.
Another dangerous practice with the designer molecules is what is called “stacking”. This is taking a number of different molecules together. This is very common within the underground psychedelic therapy field and party scene. While there are some tried and true rave scene combos (my favorite used to be the “hippie flip” MDMA mixed with a low dose of psilocybin mushrooms) a huge amount of what is happening within the underground scene is radically experimental. I am a firm believer in personal experimentation as the foundation of learning. However, personal experimentation is a whole different ball game than giving a client an experimental combo that has no safety profile. Never give the power of your personal discernment over to any one else. Do the research for yourself to make sure that what you are taking is in the category of medicine. Every plant and every drug has contraindications for specific individuals and you must do the research for yourself. You know your body better than anyone else can. Only you can choose the Medicine to support your Life.
(To learn more about the pharmaceutical history of LSD, mescaline, and MDMA check out the new docu series based Micheal Pollan’s book “How to Change Your Mind.”)