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Tripping on Science: The Psychedelic Community Contests Terms

Despite their common, and mostly fringe area of concern, the psychedelic
subculture — whose kaleidoscopic reflection includes Johns Hopkins
scientists, transpersonal psychologists, dozens of independent
(non-affiliated) researchers, writers, visionary artists, and the users
themselves — is often at odds with itself. Above board researchers take
pride in their work, adhering to the strict peer review process that all
science is subject to. But to some, the work of psychedelics is the work of
the spirit, of the non-rational, of connecting ourselves to something that
may well not be testable or empirically verifiable. There are also clashes
of personality, of ideologies, and of intention. Sometimes it’s simply a
disagreement over words, what they mean, and how they should be used.

At the heart of a contest of terms within a very small subculture is another
more essential divergence, one that reflects a wider cultural conflict
between science and spirituality.

One of the most remarkable developments in the past ten years is the
trending toward acceptance in the scientific community of research involving
psychedelic drugs after an almost forty year period of disregard. But like
other recent fields of research, such as work done with stem cells, DNA, and
even evolutionary biology, researchers find themselves up against ideas of
spirituality.

The word psychedelic was coined in an attempt to more appropriately
categorize those drugs capable of turning off what Aldous Huxley referred to
as a filter in our brain, allowing a more undiluted experience of reality to
flow in. In response to a frustration that Aldous Huxley and his friend
Humphry Osmond had with words like “hallucinogen,” Osmond came up with*
psychedelic*. In a 1957 article for the journal Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences Osmond wrote, “I have tried to find an appropriate name
for the agents under discussion: a name that will include the concepts of
enriching the mind and enlarging the vision…. My choice, because it is
clear, euphonious, and uncontaminated by other associations, is psychedelic,
mind manifesting”

Once psychedelic drugs lost their academic foothold after Timothy Leary and
Richard Albert were fired from Harvard in 1963 and the drugs themselves
became illegal, psychedelic research faded into the invisible margins. But
the high-minded work continued. Psychologists and others realized that if
these substances were ever to again have any legitimacy they had to first
undo the damage wrought by that often pesky foe to truth, language. The word
psychedelic, meant to refer to those drugs that had the potential to
illuminate and transform human consciousness, was now becoming a word to
toss around and attach to anything that was characterized by those once
ineffable qualities, far out, groovy, trippy.

By the late 1960s the term psychedelic had become so far removed from
Osmond’s intended meaning that it made sense to come up with something new.
And more importantly, it was becoming clear that these substances were
special, not just because of their ability to mobilize a counterculture
(which a wide-spread consumption of LSD did remarkably well) but because of
their capacity to deliver a profound and peak spiritual experience. A new
term, it was thought, must reflect this.

In 1979, for the *Journal of Psychedelic Studies*, Carl Ruck and a group of
researchers including the ethnobotanist Jonathan Ott and the mycologist
Gordon Wasson formulated the term “entheogen.” Taken from an obscure greek
word *entheos* “the god within” entheogen was typically used to describe an
ecstasis or divine madness when the god Dionysus had come calling. The
authors designated entheogen as a word that is “appropriate for describing
states of shamanic and ecstatic possession induced by ingestion of
mind-altering drugs.” Entheogen’s usage was cemented when it became the
preferred term by the C <http://csp.org/index.html>ouncil on Spiritual
Practices (CSP), the group that initiated and supported the psilocybin and
mystical experience study at Johns Hopkins. CSP’s convenor, Robert Jesse,
explained by phone that CSP uses the word entheogen because it connotes the
more profound, insight-giving uses of the psychoactive substances to which
it refers.

But many find “entheogen” to be problematic. Ethnopharmacologist Dennis
McKenna, brother to the late psychedelic and speculative philosopher
Terrence McKenna and a respected researcher in his own right, believes these
drugs are capable of much more than inducing a mystical hierophany. The word
entheogen privileges that experience over all others, but even more
importantly, a true spiritual experience with these substances is a rare
thing indeed. Why use a term that contains a built-in promise that cannot
always be realized?

In an email McKenna explains, “Only under certain, highly controlled
circumstances do they manifest ‘god within,’ whatever that means.” For the
whole range of substances and the even greater range of their effects,
McKenna prefers psychedelic: “I like ‘psychedelic’ even with all its
cultural baggage because it reliably describes what they do: they ‘manifest’
the mind.”

Rick Doblin, founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studie (MAPS), concurs. “I never use the term “entheogen.”  I feel it is
positively biased to imply drugs that catalyze positive experiences of the
divine, and is similar to hallucinogen that is negatively biased to imply
drugs that catalyze fundamentally false and delusionary experiences.”

This disagreement over what word best expresses the possibilities of
psychoactive substances such as psilocybin, mescaline, and DMT reveals how
even a culture as small as those engaged in research of this kind can be
split on what part of human potential should be developed. Psychedelic
science is, the argument suggests, either a science of the mind or a science
of the spirit.

To this muddle enter John Halpern, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard’s
McLean hospital, and one of the leading above-ground researchers in
psychedelic drugs. Halpern, whose studies include the long-term effects of
peyote on Native Americans, has this year started a company that hopes to
market a drug to those who suffer from cluster headaches, a debilitating
illness. Many sufferers have found relief with LSD. Halpern is developing a
drug that uses the non-psychoative derivative of LSD known as BOL-148. In
what many consider a surprising move, he’s named his company Entheogen,
Corp.

So why use a term for science that is loaded with spiritual meaning? By
phone Halpern explained to me why he believes the word fits the intent of
his company so well. People who have cluster headaches often personify their
affliction as a demon or devil, and when the headache ceases, will talk in
terms of having “killed the beast.” For Halpern, he is in fact offering a
spiritual experience to these people, and moreover, it is through chemistry
related to LSD. Halpern sees his company as offering medicine in the
shamanic sense, a usage thus akin to the deeper meaning of entheogen; like
psychedelic, entheogen has been co-opted from the work of serious
researchers into an underground with no clear purpose or message.

It’s true that the psychedelic counterculture from the outside can often
appear to be a hodgepodge of beliefs, identities and intentions, but that
doesn’t mean they don’t hold some things to be universally sacred, if not
essential. The author Erik Davis, well known for his mostly temperate and
objective writings on psychedelic culture, finds it creepy that a drug
company would try to absorb a word that essentially reflects the highest
potential of the human spirit. “Maybe that’s the game we are playing now,
but it tastes bad to me,” he laments. “The term already has a meaning for a
fairly circumscribed world that has a very ambivalent relationship with
corporate America and the law, and so it seems profoundly inappropriate.
It’s rude to appropriate its most symbolic tokens.”

In the underground the emphasis is often more on the spiritual than the
scientific; this is largely due to what might be the actual value of
psychedelics in the first place: the experience. While science-based
research might be looking for how these substances can be used to treat
headaches, the energy behind it all—the users—don’t often care much about
what is measurable or quantifiable. All you need to know about the value of
psychedelics is your own experience, they believe. And because so much
traditional use of these substances is bound up in religion, the current
counterculture is seeking to make sense of its own trips by attaching this
kind of spiritual significance.

So while psychedelic research can contain work that seeks to unlock both
spiritual and psychological doors, a drug company might not be the best
advocate for bridging what Steven Jay Gould calls non-overlapping
magesteria, science and religion.

Jesse at CSP also believes that Ruck and his colleagues explicitly intended
the term to designate particular psychoactive plants and chemicals. CSP has
given much thought to the specialized terminology of its field, and Jesse
says he is “baffled” by the use of “entheogen” in connection with
non-psychoactive substances. Expressing concern about dilution of the word’s
meaning, Jesse asks, “If the company is implying that its non-psychoactive
cluster headache drug is an entheogen, why not also apply the label to
aspirin or to penicillin?”

While acknowledging that spirituality must play out in ordinary
consciousness, Jesse thinks “entheogen” should be reserved for use in
connection with non-ordinary, heighted states of consciousness of spiritual
import.

As for Halpern’s claim that Entheogen Corp. is, at its heart, shamanic,
Jesse replies, “We can appreciate the framing of the healing arts as
spiritual practice.” And yet, he is skeptical: “I’m very unconvinced
that the non-psychoactive cluster headache drug in question belongs in
the category ‘entheogen.’ Furthermore, one mark of authenticity of a
spiritual undertaking is that it is not organized for profit.  Time will
tell.”

So maybe legitimacy is also an idea that can have multiple meanings. For
some, the ability to do FDA approved-research is enough. For yet others, the
only real legitimacy is the freedom to alter our own consciousness in
whatever way we choose. For Halpern, true legitimacy will come when these
substances have proven their commercial and medical viability. Which is why
Rick Doblin sees no conflict at all: “[Halpern] appropriated the term
‘entheogen’ for his company to indicate his aspirations rather than the
actual initial research direction of the company. The name is about
marketing, not science, but since it’s for-profit, I expect marketing and
don’t object.”

Halpern hopes commercial use could help bring both exposure of entheogens
and their use to greater cultural acceptance. He insists he sees his work as
coming from a moral imperative, and recognizes the power of both the drugs
and the terminology that surrounds them. “I want to live up to using the
term entheogen,” he says.

The word entheogen was not a result of slang or colloquial use. Its
designation was a decidedly “scientific” endeavor; an attempt to describe
those substances traditionally belonging to native peoples but whose power
could help activate certain potentialities for even 21st century Westerners.
More significantly the methods for evaluating their capacity should also be
sound and rigorous while respecting the inherent “spiritual” nature of these
drugs.  But is such a thing possible in the realm of scientific, and by
extension, mainstream culture? By conflating the spiritual with the
pharmaceutical in the marketplace, Halpern’s company is attempting something
that even the fabulously media-savvy Timothy Leary could never have dreamt
of, making the loaded connotation of psychedelics synonymous with normal,
capitalist-driven, American culture.

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