STOP! Read no further if you’re an integrationists (someone who seeks to combine the Bible with secular psychological theories), an All-Truth-is-God’s-Truth person, or you think the Holy Spirit leads by current trends in society. Also to be warned are those under the care of a counselor of any stripe be that Biblical, psychological, or psychiatric. If you’re any of these, you’ll be offended. Save yourself the heart or headache. I have no bona fides that testify to my authority on this subject. The one thing I know for sure is that I’m afraid of this new, new class of drugs and the new ones first proscribed in the 90s’. The SSRIs. The old-school antidepressant which basically tranquilled, not so much. It was well-understood how they worked and what they did. These new, new and new ones, they are approved by side effects. What became Prozac was first investigated as an antihistamine, and what became Viagra was first used to treat hypertension and angina.
Still here? Then give the 1967 song “White Rabbit” a listen to get you in the right frame of mind.
Alice Still Lives Here
The new frontier is the hallucinogens. The author of How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence is all in as are government officials (See March 11, 2024 blog), with churchmen soon to follow.
Alice Has Some New Little Pills
This is to be expected. You can tell from the advertisement for psychotropic drugs treating depression that they don’t work. Now they advertising other psychotropic drugs to take in addition to the ones you’re taking now, and gone are those commercials showing a sad face becoming happy by a pill changing brain chemistry. They’re not so sure about this anymore.
It’s true what the book above notes. The psychedelics were the boogeyman for my high school years when the war on drugs was first declared: These drugs made you stare at the sun till blinded (An event that was first made up and then mimicked by users says Michael Pollan (How to Change Your Mind, 329). We were told these drugs could alter our chromosomes (Ibid., 410). Pollan in this 2018 book tells us it’s virtually impossible to die of an overdose of these drugs, and they are not addictive (Front Matter). His proof is animal studies where animals trying them once will not seek a second dose (Ibid.).
So on the logic of what’s sauce for the goose has got to be for people too, Pollan advocates them for the treatment of depression, addiction, anxiety, trauma, PTSD, and more. Beginning in 1956, 20 years after founding AA, the founder of AA had several sessions with this “new” class of drugs. He recommended that AA endorse it for alcoholics. Other board members overruled him (152). (Can you picture “White Rabbit” as the closing hymn right after saying the Serenity Prayer?) What Bill W. couldn’t make happen is coming on strong among the Usual Suspects. Colorado approved two of these drugs for therapeutic use following, of course, Oregon in 2020 (“No, you’re not hallucinating”, WORLD, Dec. 3, 2022, 18).
What’s In A Name
It’s called the “Good Friday Experiment.” It’s Timothy Leary’s 1962 study at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel of the psilocybin producing mushroom. But I’m hearing or seeing too much in a such a name right? The Mazatec Indians who have used them before Christianity reached them called them “The flesh of the gods.” Again, no biggie, right? Trying to distance the psychedelics from the drug counter culture, in 1979 they coined entheogen which comes from two Greek words and means “full of the god”. Wikipedia says the roots of this word are also that of enthusiasm. What confessional Lutheran does not hear the buzzing of bees? The original term psychedelic was coined in 1956 and often stated as meaning ‘mind manifesting’ says the book How to Change Your Mind. But we know the Greek psychē is soul or self.
As One Soul-Curer (Seelsorge) to Another
These chemicals that affect or is it effect or perhaps infect the brain are noted by almost all who study them to dissolve the self. If that’s the incurvatus in se this could be good. But if it’s the soul that is being undone, watch out. Critics of Leary’s experiments said all those mind altering drugs did is prove that people naturally have an inflated view of self. Look up how heroine got its name. It’s from ‘hero’ because it makes you feel that way. I’ve noticed that depression in myself and others is always accompanied by a rising concern with self, and not repented of, devolves into arrogance and blaming God.
As Sure as the Future Needed Counselor Troi So Do We
The U.S.S. Enterprise, the starship not the air craft carrier, got a long for decades without a fulltime ship’s counselor who could read emotions and thoughts. The Next Generation could not. Psychologists in particular will tell you that everyone needs to speak with a therapist, counselor, psychologist on a regular basis. Witness therapist.com and Online-Therapy.com. Mental health needs to be monitored just like physical health. That they’re doing it under a name that begins with ‘soul’ shouldn’t bother you. And that they’re dealing with the ‘soul’ or ‘self’ if you prefer by giving the body chemicals is logical too. We’ve done it for 50 years to modify, improve behavior, thoughts, life. The next step from the 20th century psychotropics first used on imprisoned Russian Christians who according to materialistic Communists were crazy, is the “god drugs.” It’s debated by those who study the psychedelics whether Ecstasy is one of them. The atheist radio doctor, Dean Edell, said decades ago, that feuding martial couples given Ecstasy (A.K.A MDMA, Molly) instantly grow warm and loving. (Having dealt with feuding couples and been one myself for over 40 years, this is weighty ‘proof’, right?) Better living through chemistry is not merely a discarded slogan of 1930’s Dupont. It’s received truth.
This is Nothing New
Anatomy of Melancholy already in the 17th century wrestled with giving the body chemicals to improve the mind. “I conclude therefore, of this and all other medicines as Thucydides of the plague at Athens, no remedy could be prescribed for it, …there is no catholic medicine to be had: that which helps one, is pernicious to another” (II, 248).
In his opening note to the reader, Richard Burton sees a spiritual and physical side to melancholy saying that both approaches are needed: “A divine [clergyman] in this compound mixed malady can do little alone, a physician in some kinds of melancholy much less, both make an absolute cure” (37).
But after 1,132 pages, his conclusion focuses more on the individual rather than the ones treating him on either the physical or spiritual side: “Only take this for a corollary and conclusion, as thou tenderest thine own welfare in this and all other melancholy, thy good health of body and mind, observe this short precept, give not way to solitariness and idleness. ‘Be not solitary, be not idle.’ Sperate Miseri, Cavete Felices. ‘Hope, ye unhappy ones; ye happy ones fear’” (III, 432).
This last sage advice might not change your mind, but you won’t lose your soul to it either.
