We live in a hedonistic age in which pleasures — including of the most intense kind — are readily available. Yet, despite the supposed good times, we are increasingly anxious and depressed, to the point that addiction and suicide are considered symptoms of a profound mental health crisis.
What to do? How about some regular doses of LSD?
Three bioethicist/researchers write in Practical Ethics that not only are psychedelics a potential psychiatric medication — already being investigated scientifically — but should be considered “intrinsically valuable” as a means of living an “interesting life.”
How? First, the experiences — what were once called “trips” — are profoundly aesthetic. From “Are Psychedelic Experiences Intrinsically Valuable?“:
Individuals typically enjoy, savor, or are moved by, the perceptions of objects or stimuli with aesthetic qualities, which may often occur during a psychedelic experience. [Aldous] Huxley, again, writes of being “completely absorbed in looking, so thunderstruck by what I actually saw [during a psychedelic experience], that I could not be aware of anything else.” Another clinical trial participant described his perceptions of a park as being “so green, a type of green I’d never experienced before. Being among the trees was incredible, like experiencing them for the first time, so vibrant, so alive.” Such aesthetic experiences, we suggest, can be valuable in their own right, irrespective of therapeutic consequences.
Groovy, man!
Also, it’s not the destination but the journey!
Consider the example of a person who has trekked to the top of Mount Everest, whilst another has simply taken a helicopter. Both enjoy the beautiful view and crisp air at the top, but it may seem that the person who took the helicopter has missed something crucial about the process of summiting Mount Everest, which may be valuable in its own right.
No. Taking a drug is more like riding in the helicopter than climbing the mountain, as whatever experience is had comes from the drug, not character, personal effort, planning, or resilience.
In the end, psychedelics should be available so we can enjoy interesting experiences:
Finally, we might consider whether a life richly imbued with a diversity of interesting experiences — of which the experienced changes to consciousness associated with some psychedelics is a striking example — could be valuable in a way that would not be reflected in an otherwise similar life with a relative lack of such experiences. . . .
This would be consistent with the view of Besser and Oishi, who argue that a psychologically rich life is one kind of good life. They describe their concept as “a life characterized by complexity, in which people experience a variety of interesting things, and feel and appreciate a variety of deep emotions via firsthand experiences or vicarious experiences.”
Characteristic psychedelic experiences, we suggest, with their range of felt emotions and often quite interesting content (which may be positive or negative) help to contribute to a psychologically rich life. If we agree with Besser and Oishi that psychological richness can be valued per se, this would provide an additional reason for valuing certain psychedelic experiences.
The dangers of taking such drugs aside, this essay reflects the reductionism of our time. What many people are really craving isn’t “interesting” experiences but meaning. Those institutions that once provided profound purpose — faith, family, patriotism, community — are being leeched of their robustness by popular culture, the degradation of education, and the collapse of civic and family life.
Altered states will never be a substitute. They aren’t real. Indeed, given the power of psychedelics to alter the mind, I suspect their regular use by large segments of the population would make their lives much worse, no matter how “interesting” a particular experience.
Finally, since the authors brought him up, we should heed Huxley’s warning in Brave New World. A society without meaning and purpose is dystopian by definition and, in the end, life becomes pointless. Soma may mask the pain. It doesn’t eliminate it. Eventually despair will gnaw into conscious awareness.