Psychedelics in times of pandemic outbreaks
Authors:
Maja Kohek, Genís Oña, and José Carlos Bouso.
Book:
RESET: Reflexiones antropológicas ante la pandemia de COVID-19
Year:
2020
About the study
Pandemics have a tremendous impact on global society. The threat to health, death of loved ones, and confinement measures can produce psychological distress, with anxiety, depression, hopelessness, confusion, anger, grief, and posttraumatic stress disorder.
On Sep 28, 2020, Maja Kohek and others published “Psychedelics in times of pandemic outbreaks,” a chapter of the book RESET: Reflexiones antropológicas ante la pandemia de COVID-19, where the authors propose considering the potential of psychedelics to help people deal with some of the challenges that we are facing in pandemic times.
Psychedelics can be used as psychological protectors to help people deal with highly stressful events and make them feel more connected with nature and other people. They have been used traditionally in communal ceremonies to enhance community bonds, to better adapt to the ecological environment, and as a tool of resistance for preserving physical territory.
Finally, the study concludes that establishing a healthy relationship with the ecological environment is possible through the use of ancient plants and rituals.
Excerpt
“For traditional societies, the individual, the community, the ecological environment, and the physical territory are all the same thing and coexist with the spiritual world, which individuals enter by ritually taking psychoactive plants. To preserve their cultures and their spiritual worldviews implies the preservation of the territory in which they live. Thus, if pandemics are related to the degradation of ecosystems, the traditional worldview where individual, community, ecology, and territory coexist and are manifested in the spiritual world can offer us important lessons. The deep ecological knowledge of traditional cultures is one of the most interesting fields of collaboration between indigenous people and scientists.”
Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash.
Categories:
Studies & papers
, Psychedelics
Tags:
ayahuasca
, scientific research
, study
, psychedelics
, pandemic
, hallucinogens
, book chapter