Society
A PILL AS A POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS PREACHER
Research on an emerging mental health treatment leads scientists to speculate that it might cause a recipient to see religion and politics through a new pair of eyes.
Today in our society, we mostly come across instances in which we observe the unwelcome influence of religion on medicine. That is, some religious beliefs cause patients to sidestep essential medical care and even life-saving treatments as a demonstration of allegiance to their faith while apprising them of the fact that their lives are in the hands of God and people, as physicians, are not God. However, the relationship between the two ( medicine and religion) is, in reality, a tit-for-tat, meaning that meanwhile religion impacts medicine negatively, medicine too does not hold itself back from wreaking vengeance!
One example in the spectrum of medicine that illuminates this reciprocal relationship is an emerging mental health treatment that uses the psychedelic compound psilocybin. Psilocybin is a hallucinogenic substance found in certain types of mushrooms, called ‘magic mushrooms’ (remember the one Alice eats to alter her size at will in Alice in Wonderland?). These mushrooms grow in regions of Europe, South America, Mexico and the United States and are also known by several other names, including golden tops, liberty caps, philosopher’s stones, etc. Although these various names to a mushroom may sound somewhat outlandish and make you initially wonder why are they called so, the answer takes shape once you get to know it in depth.
Currently, psilocybin is classified as a Schedule I drug. Now one might pronounce these words amid his peers to sound cool, but what does it mean? It indicates that it is a highly illicit drug with no approved medical use and having a high potential for abuse. In order to ingest it, magic mushrooms are eaten fresh, cooked or brewed into a tea, or occasionally the dried version of it is also smoked with cannabis or tobacco in a mixture. Its effects usually begin to take place within 30 minutes of a dose and can typically last for approximately 4–6 hours, presenting the recipient with visual and auditory hallucinations, changes in consciousness, headaches, vomiting, increased body temperature and so on.
However, the most threatening effect of it lies in the fact that clinically relevant doses of psilocybin can infuse overwhelming mystical experiences, more commonly linked with prolonged periods of prayer, fasting or meditation, into a recipient for a long term. This can in turn give rise to other long-lasting changes in the recipient, such as enhanced prosociality and aesthetic appreciation plus vigorous shifts in personality, values and attitudes to life. This factor especially poses a major hindrance to the doctors underpinning the use of the new psychotherapy aided by psilocybin because although this psychotherapy may be remarkably efficacious in curing a vast variety of psychopathologies, it can potentially play havoc with patients’ religious and political beliefs.
The perception that psilocybin, like other hallucinogenic drugs, can induce mystical experiences is not something novel. This was previously looked upon by a Harvard researcher Walter Pahnke in a famous study known as ‘Good Friday Experiment’. The site of the experiment was the Marsh Chapel on the campus of Boston University and involved a group of 20 graduate degree divinity student volunteers. After receiving a dosage of either psilocybin or niacin (a form of Vitamin B), the subjects were asked to attend a Good Friday service while being under the influence. They were then inquired about their time at the service. It revealed that the psilocybin-exposed group was more likely to undergo a mystical experience and reported a stronger impact of the Good Friday service on their life, career path and their interpretation of faith. After a 25-year follow-up, it also transpired that the experience influenced them long into the future, so much that one of them, namely Huston Smith, went on to pen several books on the topic of comparative religion! Similarly, another study for treatment-resistant depression using psilocybin reported having detected decreased authoritarian political views in patients as well as promotions in liberal values. Thereby, considering these findings, it must be unsurprising if in the aftermath of being administered a dose of psilocybin, an atheist suddenly finds God, or one proceeds to vote for his least preferred political party in the next election!
“With psilocybin these profound mystical experiences are quite common. It seemed like a no-brainer that they might be of interest, if not valuable, to clergy,” says Dr William Richards, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University.[1]
On the other hand, the advocates of psilocybin in the new psychotherapy claim that whilst its aforementioned effect on religion and politics may exist very much in real life, it is likely to be not so profound. They argue that psilocybin might play a role in altering a recipient’s political beliefs, but there is precisely no current evidence in sight that corroborates that recipients actually swap loyalties between political affiliations (or parties). Moreover, the same is the case in the scope of religion: the results of the experiments are not compelling enough to suggest any prominent changes in religious affiliations. For example, the results of a related study in Johns Hopkins University are not representative of the general population, as only those who reported encountering God or a similar phenomenon in their lives were incorporated into the study.
Phew! In short, according to the latest evidence, the use of psilocybin in a psychotherapy does not exhibit any meaningful changes to the political or religious domain of a patient. However, it may only be a matter of time before more studies delve into the matter to bear an entirely alternate reality — i.e, a pill as a political and religious preacher.
[1] “Religious Leaders Get High on Magic Mushrooms Ingredient — for Science,” the Guardian, July 8, 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/08/religious-leaders-get-high-on-magic-mushrooms-ingredient-for-science.
Credits:
- Fig.2 provided by Wikimedia Commons, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
