Our growing disconnect from nature is contributing to human unhappiness and destruction of nature. Could psychedelic experiences help us to reverse this vicious cycle? There are many, many people for whom psychedelic states lead to environmental epiphanies, and momentum is growing in the psychedelic community to turn such epiphanies into real-world societal change. In Part 1 of this article, I presented the current scientific knowledge around this potential, and explored the mechanisms through which such ecodelic properties can be unlocked. But facing a challenge so monumental as climate change and the breaking of all our planetary boundaries, does it really matter what I do as an individual? And what if it did – how would we apply ecodelics in practice?
Individual action matters
Through my work at the IEA, the necessity of behavioral changes became very clear: just like the IPCC’s latest Assessment Report, the data showed that without them avoiding dangerous tipping points in the earth system will be impossible – technology alone is not enough. So we urged governments to make the right behaviors accessible and affordable: building train lines, banning short-haul flights, or making sure that prices reflect the impact on earth. However, this top-down approach, while it must be part of the picture, never seemed to address the root for me – the lack of solidarity, community, and long-term thinking in our cultural psyche.
Climate change and the loss of our planetary support systems and biodiversity are complex, planetary-scale threats that call for planetary-scale solutions; on all levels: political, economic, social, and moral. They are collective action problems. But calling for collective action without addressing individual motivation is absurd. I argue that the individual level must be a part of facing any systemic predicament. The ‘they up there’-argument is a subtle form of denial that overlooks the fundamental interconnectedness and feedback mechanisms within societies. Our challenge is personal as much as it is civilizational; it was able to grow to civilizational dimensions precisely because we consistently refuse the personal – not out of malice, but out of fear. As a recent study published in Philosophical Psychology concludes: any problem of collective action must include changes at the individual level. Yes, we need policy change – but we cannot passively wait around for it. Psychedelic experiences can make us recognize our power to catalyze each other and the institutions we are a part of.
Redefining responsibility
If we count our emissions for a small reduction in greenhouse gases, we are bound to become disheartened. Rather, we must count them to exercise our own capacity to move in a different direction and be the change we want. Because the impact that really matters is how we affect the system – the people – around us. It’s about what kind of lifestyle we model to friends and family, what signals we send to the market, what kind of job we choose, what processes we do or do not make ourselves complicit with, what kind of conversations we dare to have. It’s about whether we care, whether we hope, and what kind of vision we radiate – all this matters to a degree impossible to quantify. Every little action we take has a ripple effect beyond our ordinary comprehension. This is where psychedelics come in.
They allow us to not only believe in but feel our crucial role in the web of events by revealing a perfect paradox: we can experience ourselves as incredibly small and unimportant – suddenly no longer the sole center of the universe – and for that very reason, we discover the freedom to move into our full integrity. Zooming out to scales of time and space much beyond ourselves, we can recognize the perfect path-dependency and lawfulness of all events, and thereby learn to let go of our tiring and futile attempts to reject or control the course of the world. In a wonderful irony, this sense of trust and surrender liberates us to focus our energy on the only way we truly make a difference: by taking ownership of our immediate decisions and actions. By the very act of letting go, we can reclaim our agency. The psychedelic experience can imprint on our minds that in a system as wickedly stuck as ours, the best place to start is always right where we are.
This newfound sense of responsibility is not based on fear, guilt, or ideological conviction, but simply on love – the most powerful motivating force. Both doom and possibility become self-fulfilling prophecies, and the choice is on us. As Christiana Figueres, the “woman behind the Paris Agreement” says: “Impossible is not a fact, it’s an attitude.” Stepping up for change in this state of mind does not originate from anxious self-preservation or angry righteousness but from a life-affirming goodwill and the joy of solidarity, and it is this stepping up that is the most effective in alleviating fear and hopelessness. Real healing must involve action, and psychedelics can provide the impetus. Because whether we’ll succeed or not becomes less important than who we want to be in the process. According to Nature Climate Change we are sitting on an enormous latent climate movement, and “a change in one factor can unlock potent, self-reinforcing feedback cycles, triggering social-tipping dynamics”.. I believe that one factor is whether we feel care, connection, and agency. As eco-philosopher Kathleen de Moore said: “People often ask me, What can one person do? The answer is, Stop being one person.”
Ecodelics in practice
Western science is only beginning to understand the true transformative potential of psychedelics, and many questions remain unanswered. However, science doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel: existing but threatened traditions use psychoactive plants to cultivate a relationship with the natural world, not as “environmental action”, but as a way of life. There is much to learn from them, for example in terms of acknowledging the role of group settings and long-term integration.
While the psychedelic community begins to acknowledge the potential for psychedelics to treat ecological anxiety and grief, the idea that they could support tangible societal change is still mocked as magical thinking in some circles. I argue that both processes are two sides of the same coin. I am not advocating for everyone to take psychedelics. Neither should we direct people into taking them “for nature”. An important principle for ethical psychedelic sitting or guiding is to not disrupt or influence the individual’s very own process of meaning-making. This principle must be protected under all circumstances, even under that of climate disaster. However, psychedelics unfold their true potential when they are used with intent. We take psychedelics to process grief, gain insight, harness creativity, or even just enjoy sensual stimulation.
Our task now is to find practical ways to leverage this powerful tool with the intention of healing the rift between us and our planet. An example of this is the “journey protocols” that PSYCA is designing. They are tools to use psychedelic trips intentionally; to heal from ecological anxiety or grief, to foster a lost connection with the natural world, to access a stronger commitment for day-to-day behavior change, or to uncover creative ideas and new solutions for the climate crisis. Another example is their “climate action guide”, which helps people, once they try psychedelics, to get involved in environmental projects. Other organizations go even further: in Mexico, a psychedelic treatment center is offering politicians free ibogaine treatments to become “better public servants”, and for their insight to “ripple outward to all the lives they impact”.
I advocate for positioning nature-connectedness as a valid and urgent reason for a psychedelic session: it will be vital to treat the rising mental health threats of ecological anxiety and grief, and it could be supportive in catalyzing societal change. Access should be democratized and made accessible not only to those with a clinical diagnosis but all of us. I as a “healthy normal” was in truth not that healthy at all. As founder of ACER Integration Rosalind Watts points out: “it is no sign of health to be well adapted to a sick society”. This is not a political stance; nature-relatedness is a basic psychological human need. Our relationship with nature has been turned into a question of political orientation for centuries when it has always been an existential one. There is no personal health without planetary health and no planetary health without personal health.
True healing
However, when debating psychedelics for moral enhancement it is important to emphasize that psychedelics are not inherently a solution for reducing harm. If we want psychedelics to have any impact on our environmental conduct, we must first understand the core of the problem, and ensure that the psychedelic experience is removed from that same toxic framework. Our environmental crisis is primarily a moral issue based on extreme social inequality, and psychedelics are readily palatable, if contextualized accordingly, to preserve this, as a recent case study exemplifies. Increased social and environmental solidarity is a potential outcome, not an inherent feature of the psychedelic experience. It is the set, setting, and intention within which it unfolds that enables its eco-delic qualities, and to those not interested in this affordance, psychedelics can – and will – remain something else. I do argue, however, that in times of ecological collapse, psychedelic care can and should take a stance. In exploring which combination of drug, set, and setting delivers the most holistic healing, it cannot follow the same principles that got us into this mess.
Our interconnectivity, our being “all one”, is one dimension of reality, and experiencing it can be life-changing. But if this experience is worn like a badge of honour, it comes at the expense of the other fundamental truth: the subjective joy, pain, and autonomous value of other living beings, human and non-human. As more and more people jet-set around the globe to join the race for the most mind-blowing psychedelic experience, many cause more harm to the environment than they alleviate. Holistic healing, it turns out, happens as soon as we finally transcend our purely selfish motivations of ease, grandeur or self-optimization. Our understanding of nature-relatedness must evolve: it is not about hugging more trees; it is about coming back to our true nature – which is kind and selfless. This is done by moving through our pain. If a culture that encourages distraction and narcissism is the only container for the psychedelic experience, even nature-relatedness and interconnectivity itself may not lead to those behaviors that are in service of the wider world. But if we support a psychedelic culture – including preparation and integration – that emphasizes an orientation towards the whole as a fundamental part of healing, there is every chance that they can. Opening to pain and practicing selfless compassion is, I believe, essential to turn psychedelics into ecodelics.
ACER Integration is a good example of how insights from psychedelic states can be nurtured and extended into ordinary life through an ongoing community that emphasizes care. Psychedelics are an opening, a window of opportunity for diving into the long, slow, and deep process of reconnection that many of us so desperately need.
As Alnoor Ladha explains, what will be key is to move from the wellness-centered goals of self-improvement, self-realization, and self-expression so prevalent in the West towards an approach to psychedelics more motivated by curiosity about our true nature and how we can be of service. We have to learn how to trip selflessly.
Acknowledgements
The author expresses a special thank you to Georgia Kareola and Jasmine Virdi for their contribution.
