Choosing your cognitive fate

Many people wonder about the difference between meditation (and other contemplative practices) and psychedelics. Are these drugs a form of cheating, or are they the one, indispensable vehicle for authentic awakening? They are neither. Many people don’t realize that all psychoactive drugs modulate the existing neurochemistry of the brain—either by mimicking specific neurotransmitters or by causing the neurotransmitters themselves to be more active. There is nothing that one can experience on a drug that is not, at some level, an expression of the brain’s potential. Hence, whatever one has experienced after ingesting a drug like LSD is likely to have been experienced, by someone, somewhere, without it.

However, it cannot be denied that psychedelics are a uniquely potent means of altering consciousness. If a person learns to meditate, pray, chant, do yoga, etc., there is no guarantee that anything will happen. Depending on his aptitude, interest, etc., boredom could be the only reward for his efforts. If, however, a person ingests 100 micrograms of LSD, what will happen next will depend on a variety of factors, but there is absolutely no question that something will happen. And boredom is simply not in the cards. Within the hour, the significance of his existence will bear down upon our hero like an avalanche. As Terence McKenna never tired of pointing out, this guarantee of profound effect, for better or worse, is what separates psychedelics from every other method of spiritual inquiry. It is, however, a difference that brings with it certain liabilities.

It seems poor sportsmanship to nitpick an essay that seems so well-intentioned, other than to simply notice that it took Harris one zillion words to basically come to the conclusion, "Your Mileage May Vary." Meanwhile, though, I'm a lot more interested in the thinking passed along via Brendan Kiley writing for the SLOG, who hips us to an exploratory FAQ about what a post-prohibition world might look like, penned in 2010 by Mark Haden of Vancouver Coastal Health.

Haden stares right down the barrel of supposing a world in which currently illegal drugs are regulated by government, and imagines the consequences and benefits. In a world where we allow alcohol and tobacco to damage so many largely because these drugs are otherwise fun; in a world where - as Slashdot passed on - so many antipsychotics are being prescribed in America that we must presume mass psychosis in the population; in a world where hypocritical fear-mongering about meth addiction peacefully coexists with mass Adderall prescription among our kids ("PLEASE WON'T YOU THINK OF THE CHILDREN??") - given alla that, Haden's 8-page doc is refreshingly concise and eye-opening.

Haden may not be saying much that's entirely brand new to harm reduction proponents - but he adds one more very eloquent voice to the topic and his Q&A format is really nice for helping frame the debate and capture a lot of nuance about the subject that actually does seem easily overlooked. Samples:

Q: Are you suggesting that dangerous drugs be sold openly in stores?
A: No, this is not about selling crack at the local corner stores or selling kilos of heroin in the malls. This is about finding ways to regulate and control distribution of drugs in a way the puts the criminals out of business. We can regulate who buys drugs, when and where and how they use them. The drugs can be packaged with no branding (and lots of warning labels). There may be exceptions to the commercial availability of currently illegal drugs as we could, in a research paradigm, find out what would happen if we allowed weak oral solutions of some drugs to be commercially available. We know that coca tea has been available in South America for centuries with no associated health or social harms. We could ask the research question “can a crack dependant user be persuaded to reduce their harmful use by substituting a less harmful product?”. Our drug policies need to be founded in evidence and not driven by fear.

Q: Would drug use go up in the new system?
A: We need to distinguish use from abuse. Those who are “at risk” to abuse substances due to mental health/physical health/ housing/trauma and other issues, already abuse alcohol and or other drugs. If we were able to take the profit which is generated from sales of currently illegal drugs and return most or all of this to treatment/housing/health and social programs which meet the physical and social needs of the most “at risk” individuals we could predict that abuse would go down. In the new system we could also engage abusers in the health system by specifying location of use at places like a safe injection site (or smoking rooms) which are staffed by health professionals and therefore encourage them to consider healthier options.

I'm not at all convinced it's remotely fair to compare Harris's philosophical musings with Haden's brass tacks theorizing - but as long as I'm in the midst of doing it (I read the pieces nearly back to back by coincidence), I have to confess that Harris alienated me early on in his essay by joining the long list of those who feel the need to qualify their defense of psychedelics by making sure we understand he thinks other drugs - hard drugs - are entirely indefensible. For a long time that attitude has struck me as too myopic to be credible. Humans have a long list of appetites we try to satisfy, not all of them spiritual or philosophical; and our culture isn't currently structured to support the idea that a person can even attain a healthy relationship with drugs we aren't prescribed, including drugs which might soothe us without provoking spiritual awakening, or drugs which might aid us psychologically without tipping us into metaphysics. Most importantly, assuming as many of us do that alcohol is much more of a problem than not in the grand scheme, psychedelic culture does itself no favors by presuming that humans will get along nicely without some form of chemical escapism, which some psychedelics clearly do not easily offer - but other psychedelics may very well.

Haden is asking us to consider all drug experience as something society should liberate, and regulate, and ultimately allow, even in some highly metered fashion if that's the way that makes the most sense. Cognitive liberty isn't about drawing lines in the sand - declaring by fiat which drugs are positive and which are negative. It's about making the ever-unfolding data freely available, and letting free thinkers choose their cognitive fate. As a health professional, Haden is undoubtedly not pursuing his vision from so grandiose a perspective ("What do we want? COGNITIVE LIBERTY! When do we want it? IN TIME FOR BURNING MAN!"). But the potential benefits of opening those doors are many, and some no doubt relate quite exactly to our pursuit for meaning inside drug experience.