Ecstasies, Elves, and the Color of Time: On the ‘Realness’ of Psychedelic Effects
Have you talked to your mom about doing mushrooms? Once the subject of widespread moral panic, psilocybin, LSD, and similar substances now have a place in polite society. In some circles, using ketamine is as normal as drinking wine, and it’s becoming okay to discuss such experiences with just about anybody.
This sea change didn’t happen overnight, of course. It took decades of activism, research, and high-profile spokesmanship from figures like Michael Pollan, whose bestselling book How To Change Your Mind brought contemporary psychedelic science to living rooms across the globe. After decades of misunderstanding, all sorts of people are reckoning with a formerly taboo truth: psychedelics can improve our lives, often dramatically.
While psychedelic science and activism are visible on the world stage, a related movement remains obscure. The “psychedelic humanities” refers to a loosely-affiliated group of scholars whose research falls beyond the domain of science and medicine. Many pursue topics related to medical practice, but some focus exclusively on literature, anthropology, religion, and philosophy, among other “soft” areas of study.
In this Olio, we’ll bridge perspectives from the psychedelic humanities to explore the “realness” of psychedelic experience. First, we’ll discuss how different fields of science and philosophy delineate “real” or valid experiences from “false” or illusory ones.
Second, we ask why this distinction matters in the context of institutionalized psychedelic therapy. If we know that psychedelics yield lasting positive change, who cares if their temporary effects can be interpreted as fictional? In an age where plenty of “real” outcomes — like cosmetic enhancements and mood relief — are achieved by artificial means, is it pointless, old-fashioned, or even anti-intellectual to ponder issues of truth and artifice? Are there any valid stakes here, and if so, what are they?
These questions lead us to a third, more radical proposition. In Western and above-ground settings, even “soft” psychedelic research tends to assume that these drugs’ more dramatic effects are all in our heads. But what happens if we consider the opposite — that the hallucinations, entities, and divine visions associated with high-dose trips are more than the results of neurochemistry?
While it may stray from dominant paths to knowledge, this line of thinking rewards sincere attention. In pursuing it, we might be better-positioned to reconsider simpler issues: is there any sense in which psychedelic phenomena are “real?” What do we gain by taking this possibility seriously?
Our professor for the evening:
Emma Stamm has been writing and teaching on technology, philosophy, art, and politics for over a decade. She holds a PhD in Cultural and Social Thought from Virginia Tech, where she combined research in critical theory and continental philosophy with the empirical study of AI and psychology.
She has held full-time professorships in the Department of Philosophy at Villanova University and the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at SUNY Farmingdale and adjunct professorships at NYU and Virginia Tech.
In her free time, she writes fiction and music for piano. Her website is o-culus.com and her social media home is elftheory.substack.com