Psychedelics & Hallucinogens
Psychedelics and hallucinogens have been used throughout history by a diversity of cultures to experience a feeling of the divine. This can make them an effective tool for cultures that want to convert individuals through experiences rather than logic—it is also what makes them dangerous from the perspective of a cultivar like ours.
A major hazard of psychedelics and hallucinogens is that they create an illusion of expanded consciousness while typically guiding people down well-trodden paths. We liken pharmacologically-driven religious epiphanies to amusement park haunted house rail rides: The experience is “real” and nothing like daily life, but people who undergo it are mostly exposed to the same sorts of things.
Just as haunted house riders may experience varying levels of fear and notice different features, people on pharmacologically induced mystical journeys experience varying aspects and levels of the fairly-limited set of features depending on dosage, priming, and personal physiology.[[59]](#_ftn59) The experience is not guided by some higher truth, but by “rails”—grooves worn into mental pathways through shortcuts evolution made when programming how the human brain processes feelings of love, self, connectedness, meaning, and the divine.
Some fascinating studies explore this phenomenon. One published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology includes responses from 2,561 adults about their single most memorable encounter with a being (or beings) after smoking or vaporizing DMT (the stuff in ayahuasca).[[60]](#_ftn60) These encounters share a remarkable number of commonalities.
When we started writing this book, we assumed that psychedelics and hallucinogens offered a trade-off between increased creativity and a number of negative effects. When we actually dove into the data, it became clear things were much more nuanced. As this study[[61]](#_ftn61) shows, while people on cannabis are more jovial and believe they are more creative, they are measurably not more creative. As this study[[62]](#_ftn62) shows, psilocybin (the active compound in most psychedelic mushrooms) actually decreases task-based creativity while increasing spontaneous creativity (i.e., psilocybin appears to make people less creative at anything specific they put their minds to).
Even the feeling of being closer to others produced by some drugs appears to be, at least in part, illusory. For example, a 2021 study demonstrated that while MDMA appears to increase feelings of “closeness to others” and euphoria, it fails to boost actual prosocial behavior (specifically: task-based empathy, trust, or cooperative behavior).[[63]](#_ftn63) In addition, while hallucinogens like cannabis reduce short-term feelings of depression and anxiety, they appear to significantly increase these sensations over the long run[[64]](#_ftn64)(and it should go without saying cannabis has negative effects on working memory).[[65]](#_ftn65)
Why do cults so often rely on mind-altering substances in their recruiting processes? Not only can they effectively fake feelings of being “better” in various ways (by making people feel more connected and creative) but they also make people incredibly gullible, more forgiving of betrayal, and less likely to run from psychological and physical abuse. In one study, people on hallucinogens were more likely to trust partners in a collaboration game (and more quickly recover when trust was broken)[[66]](#_ftn66) and in another they lowered experiential avoidance (a person’s drive to escape situations that induce anxiety, pain, and other unpleasant mental states).[[67]](#_ftn67)
While the evidence was compelling enough to change our minds on this subject (that these types of drugs increase creativity), it was not unilateral (as is almost always the case in science). For example, this study[[68]](#_ftn68) shows an increase in creativity resulting from Ayahuasca consumption. Some research also suggests that hallucinogens produce greater neuroplasticity, which might be useful in some very specific circumstances.[[69]](#_ftn69)
Meta-studies on the topic seem largely inconclusive, with one astutely pointing out that “feelings of creativity may be an inconsistent result of a more general effect of these drugs, such as alterations in availability of mental representations or changes in Bayesian inference.”[[70]](#_ftn70) Some recent meta-analyses indicate that the belief that psychedelics boost creativity was at one point bolstered by a series of poorly designed studies conducted in the 1970s that are still often cited in pop-science books covering this topic.
One thing that is clear across pretty much all studies is that psychedelics and hallucinogens will at least make you feel as if you are more creative. This is not to say pharmaceuticals like these have no use. For example, MDMA has shown to be useful in the treatment of PTSD[[71]](#_ftn71)and psychedelics have shown themselves to be effective against depression[[72]](#_ftn72)(possibly by reintroducing more flexibility to the way people think).[[73]](#_ftn73)
So no, you probably didn’t gain a deeper understanding of the oneness of all things by taking psychedelics. Certain types of psychedelics just intrinsically cause feelings of the divine while permanently eroding your sense of individuality while others cause you to imagine small benevolent beings behind the fabric of reality. This is not to say psychedelics are never useful; feeling a sense of oneness could provide an individual with perspective, enabling them to consider new metaphysical possibilities.
It may be helpful to contextualize the usefulness of psychedelics as being akin to showing a CGI video of Earth orbiting the sun to someone who has trouble envisioning it. Neither psychedelics/hallucinogens nor CGI depictions provide evidence in and of themselves, nor are they depictions of what is really happening, but they can help people sort through difficult-to-grasp concepts. If a person has trouble conceptualizing how small their place in the universe might be or how connected people are, psychedelics can be useful.
One critical thing to remember as a culture is that the feeling of profundity does not correlate with the substance of profundity and can be generated by simplistic and easy-to-replicate trigger mechanisms. While psychedelics and hallucinogens are probably the “easiest” of these things to create, there are dozens of others from group dancing with loud music to rituals based around repeating a chain of words. This tactic of chanting words to lower a person’s mental inhibitions and trick them into feelings of profundity has been independently evolved by dozens of cultivars and is even specifically warned against in the Bible: “When ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking” (Matthew 6:7, KJV).
Adopting these ecstatic states as a cultivar (whether they are reached by drugs, dancing, or chanting) has both upsides and downsides. When a person is in one of these states, they become very susceptible to someone else wanting to imprint an idea deep into their subconscious (allowing high fidelity cultural transference and fast conversions). In the absence of someone attempting to implant ideas in them a person in this state will often deepen beliefs society or a subculture they affiliate with has implanted in them. In short, if you want to quickly convert a lot of stupid people or have higher intergenerational cultural fidelity (with little room for updating the culture) then these states can be of extremely high utility—if on the other hand, you want a culture that disproportionately targets smart highly lucid people and evolves quickly then stay away from them. (Perhaps this tradeoff could be mitigated by creating a culture that has a “smart” ruling class that uses such experiences on an underclass to make them more obedient and to more efficiently harvest resources from them.)
Speaking of the effect of rituals on the human mind …