Would Widespread Psychedelic Use Help Solve the Climate Crisis?
It is common to associate psychedelics with environmentalism. In the popular imagination, psychedelic users might be viewed as tree-hugging hippies and Gaia worshippers. But beyond these stereotypes, there is also research to support the links between psychedelic use and connection to nature, which has led some to argue that psychedelics could help us solve the climate crisis. Psychedelics can catalyse people’s awareness of the Earth as an interconnected system and thereby increase their concern for the environment. This, in turn, could encourage the kind of activism voting choices, political action, and pro-environmental behaviour that is necessary to steer us away from the very worst climate scenarios.
On the other hand, in psychedelic culture, and perhaps even within the field of psychedelic science, it may be taken as a given that psychedelics naturally raise the ecological consciousness of people. While this effect may be commonplace, it is not universal. Moreover, this assumption ignores another commonplace way of conceptualising psychedelics — as ‘non-specific amplifiers’. They can amplify all sorts of attitudes. They don’t necessarily foster pro-environmental attitudes.
I would like to delve into the research on psychedelics and environmental concerns, which should include a discussion of the factors that influence the link between the two. As we will see, while the quality of the psychedelic experience can enhance pro-environmental attitudes, other factors influence whether this effect takes place.
Psychedelic Use Can Enhance Connection to Nature
If you’ve had personal experiences with psychedelics, or even just read accounts of their most intense effects, it’s not hard to imagine why losing your sense of self and merging with the wider environment would lead to concern for the environment. This effect — known as ego dissolution, ego death, or the unitive experience — can enhance what is known as nature relatedness, or how closely you connect to — or identify with — the natural world. Following a mystical experience featuring a profound sense of interconnection, you can be left with the conviction that you are inseparable from nature.
Researchers have found that psychedelics can enhance nature relatedness, which echoes previous studies on the ability of psychedelics to increase connectedness in general, not just in relation to the natural world. One researcher who’s focused on these links is Dr Sam Gandy. In a Medium post published in 2019, he suggested we can think of psychedelics as biophilia-enhancing agents; in other words, they can increase our fondness for nature. This view was supported by a 2023 study that Gandy was involved with. This survey found the following:
Participants who described a pre-existing relationship with nature reported that psychedelics acted to re-establish and bolster their connection to nature. Those reporting no previously established connection to nature described psychedelics as helping them bond with the natural world. Underlying both of these were reports of transpersonal experiences, of which ‘interconnectedness’ was most frequently linked to shifts in attitudes and behaviours. Participants were also asked to reflect on previous psychedelic experiences that took place in nature and reported a range of benefits of the natural setting.
Another way in which psychedelics could help increase nature connectedness is by enhancing animism, or the perception of nature being replete with non-human persons. Indigenous psychedelic-using cultures tend to be highly animistic, and many psychedelic users get drawn to this worldview, consciously or unconsciously, after psychedelic sessions. Adopting an attitude of respect, reverence, and reciprocity towards nature is seen as essential to the animistic ethic, so if psychedelic use encourages this ethic, then it may help reverse environmental problems like habitat destruction and promote a harmonious relationship with the natural world.
Research shows that anthropomorphising nature (through the concept of ‘Mother Nature’) enhances connectedness to nature and pro-environmental behaviour. If animism involves this personification of nature, or attribution of human-like traits to it, then this could help explain the propensity of animists to respect the natural world. However, some scholars critique this analysis: describing animism as simply the tendency to anthropomorphise nature can be viewed as reductive and condescending. After all, attributing human-like characteristics to natural entities may be seen as a cognitive mistake — a form of fantasy, perhaps even a childish one. Nevertheless, I have argued elsewhere that describing animism as partly arising from evolved cognitive tendencies need not lead to an attitude of dismissiveness.
Are Psychedelics Inherently Biophilia-Enhancing Agents?
Despite promising results like those above, we can still question whether psychedelics are inherently biophilia-enhancing agents. In his book Deeper Learning with Psychedelics, David J. Blacker — Professor of Philosophy of Education and Legal Studies at the University of Delaware — writes:
I argue that psychedelics are, in [Stan] Grof’s phrase, “non-specific amplifiers” — that is, they are essentially protean and elusive of any determinate telos or fixity of purpose, though their intimate directive power can fool one into thinking otherwise. In contrast to what seems to be a prevailing hippie folk wisdom, psychedelics are not inherently environmentalist or Gaia-oriented, loving and politically progressive, oppositional or counter-cultural, spiritually healing or emotionally beneficent. They may certainly be those things on specific occasions for certain individuals (and I have personally experienced those manifestations). But they may also not be.
In a previous article, however, I noted it is not clear that psychedelics always act as non-specific amplifiers of the psyche. For example, they can convert atheists away from atheism and towards belief in God or a Higher Power; they can alter people’s metaphysical beliefs, shifting them from physicalism towards non-physicalist beliefs; and they might also lead to the abandonment of a wide range of other beliefs and attitudes. All of this is to say that psychedelics don’t necessarily just strengthen or amplify one’s pre-existing worldview. There may be common or specific amplifying effects attributable to psychedelics. Whether one is an atheist or not, it is commonplace for psychedelics to manifest a sense of the ‘other’, an entity that may be considered God, a goddess, an angel, a demon, a plant spirit, an animal spirit, or some other kind of (seemingly) transcendent being.
Nonetheless, even if we cannot equate psychedelics as being non-specific amplifiers, they still have non-specific amplifying effects in many circumstances. This can include the context of our attitudes towards the environment.
Psychedelics Don’t Automatically Make People Environmentally Conscious
Psychedelic uses, and psychedelic users, are diverse. While ‘psychedelic culture’ can be characterised by environmentally conscious attitudes, many people who use psychedelics don’t seem to adjust their environmental attitudes and behaviours following their experiences. This can be for multiple reasons.
Firstly, not all psychedelic experiences feature ego dissolution, unity, and ecological themes. Secondly, even when experiences have these features, this doesn’t mean lasting changes to environmental attitudes will result. This can require integration of the experience into one’s worldview. Thirdly, people may report mystical experiences with psychedelics, but the way they incorporate these experiences into their worldview doesn’t translate into environmental concern (consider the fact that Jordan Peterson has had several high-dose psilocybin experiences, and yet he promotes climate change denial).
Fourthly, the setting in which the psychedelic experience seems to influence the manifestation, or degree, of connectedness to nature. When taking psychedelics in a natural setting, it’s easy to see how this — alongside ego-dissolving effects — can lead to greater feelings of connectedness to the natural world, both during and after the experience. Yet people take psychedelics in a variety of settings, including ones where natural features are minimal or absent. Understandably, these settings will be less likely to encourage nature relatedness.
David Dupuis, a social anthropologist, has challenged the notion that widespread psychedelic use will change the world, as has the writer Erica Avey. “Plenty of people take psychedelics and return to old patterns of behavior,” writers Avey. Dupuis stresses that “we must recognize what makes them [psychedelics] unique among the vast family of psychotropic drugs: their significant sensitivity to extrapharmacological factors.” These extrapharmacolgical factors include ‘set’ (one’s current mindset, beliefs, attitudes, and worldview) and ‘setting’ (the environment and culture in which the experience takes place, as well as who one trips with). Dupuis adds:
[W]e should not expect broader psychedelic use to automatically make people more environmentally conscious. As I have observed during ethnographic investigations in the Peruvian Amazon over the past ten years, the regular use of ayahuasca in no way prevents some indigenous shaman-entrepreneurs from exploiting the natural territories that they occupy in order to benefit their economic activities. The development of shamanic tourism involved the encouragement of overtourism in the Amazon region, and the activities of reception centers for international clients have often led to the destruction or overexploitation of natural habitats. And while the “shamanic tourists” claim to have developed a different relationship to nature thanks to participating in psychedelic rites, my observations tell a different story. In the long run, their participation only has a very weak impact on their consumption habits or the modes of production in which they are engaged, which sometimes directly, and always indirectly, contribute to the destruction of natural resources. For example, many of them continue to fly regularly in order to participate in the psychedelic rituals provided by the shamanic centers of the Peruvian Amazon. These observations show that while psychedelics can give rise to experiences of feeling more connected to nature, these experiences seem to be more likely to affect peoples’ self-reported connection to nature rather than leading to substantial pro-environmental behavior change.
Many psychonauts, no matter how profound their experiences, still don’t make major changes to their lifestyle in ways that benefit the environment. These behavioural or lifestyle changes might include recycling, opting for greener modes of travel, living car-free, reducing waste, buying eco-friendly products, adopting a vegan diet, having fewer children, volunteering for environmental projects, and donating to environmental charities.
On the other hand — and this is contrary to Dupuis’ observation that psychedelics don’t promote eco-friendly lifestyle choices — we know that psychedelic use predicts pro-environmental behaviour via increases in nature relatedness. Indeed, several studies have found that nature relatedness predicts pro-environmental behaviour. Moreover, one study found an association between psychedelic-induced mystical experiences and pro-environmental behaviour (although it relied on self-reports). This effect could be a general tendency, even if it is not universal. Therefore, it may be rational to view psychedelic use as playing an effective role in our attempts to save the planet. (As we will see below, however, bias in studies on nature relatedness makes the picture more complicated.)
Whether psychedelics promote environmentalism via enhanced animism is not so clear. As Tiddy Smith writes in his entry on animism for the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP):
Much of the appeal of this view appears to hinge on the popular belief that many indigenous societies lived in harmony with nature and that this harmony is a direct result of their understanding of the outside world as an extension of their own society and culture. Against this ecological “noble savage” view, some scholars have charged that this romanticized picture of the animist is unrealistic, as there seems to be at best a tenuous causal connection between traditional animist belief systems and enhanced conservation practices (Tiedje 2008, 97). Any link between animism and environmentalism will also hinge importantly on precisely which natural phenomena are understood to be persons, and whether such persons require much or any respect at all. A tradition that views a fire as a subject and a grassland as a mere object is unlikely to be concerned when the former consumes the latter.
We Should Be Careful About Generalising Results From Psychedelic Studies
Dupuis defends the Grofian view of psychedelics, which other writers have applied to the interaction between psychedelic use and political worldviews. He writes:
Rather than being powerful tools for social transformation, psychedelics thus appear as non-specific — and relatively neutral — amplifiers of existing cultural factors. These observations suggest that the effects of psychedelics on nature-relatedness can be interpreted as a reflection of the prior values of study participants (often Euro-American college students). In this perspective, the alleged impact of psychedelics on our relation to nature may be the product of a selection bias, evoking the well-known systemic bias in conducting psychology studies with participants from “WEIRD” (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) societies. Euro-American college students, who make up the bulk of the participants in these studies, are indeed known to have a pro-environmental bias when it comes to self-reported opinions. Far from being a universal panacea capable of “healing the world”, psychedelics might reflect or amplify the dominant values of the individuals that use them.
Thus, it would be simplistic and misguided to say that psychedelics have a fixed purpose or effect (e.g. environmentalism), and so it would be idealistic to imagine that their widespread use would solve the climate crisis. Nonetheless, the influence of set and setting can help us harness the potential of psychedelics to promote pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. If people use psychedelics with a pre-existing concern about the climate crisis and sustainability, then this could help strengthen the kinds of attitudes that are necessary for substantial change.
Originally published at https://www.samwoolfe.com on October 21, 2024.
