Psychedelic Science, Contemplative Practices, and Indigenous and Other Traditional Knowledge Systems: Towards Integrative Community-Based Approaches in Global Health

ABSTRACT

As individuals and communities around the world confront mounting physical, psychological, and social threats, three complimentary mind-body-spirit pathways toward health, wellbeing, and human flourishing remain underappreciated within conventional practice among the biomedical, public health, and policy communities. This paper reviews literature on psychedelic science, contemplative practices, and Indigenous and other traditional knowledge systems to make the case that combining them in integrative models of care delivered through community-based approaches backed by strong and accountable health systems could prove transformative for global health. Both contemplative practices and certain psychedelic substances reliably induce self-transcendent experiences that can generate positive effects on health, well-being, and prosocial behavior, and combining them appears to have synergistic effects. Traditional knowledge systems can be rich sources of ethnobotanical expertise and repertoires of time-tested practices. A decolonized agenda for psychedelic research and practice involves engaging with the stewards of such traditional knowledges in collaborative ways to codevelop evidence-based models of integrative care accessible to the members of these very same communities. Going forward, health systems could consider Indigenous and other traditional healers or spiritual guides as stakeholders in the design, implementation, and evaluation of community-based approaches for safely scaling up access to effective psychedelic treatments.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychedelic science
• contemplative practices
• traditional knowledge systems
• Indigenous
• self-transcendent experiences
• community-based
• global public health
• health systems

Disclosure statement

The views, opinions, and content of this publication for coauthors CAPT Sean J. Belouin and Ann Cohen Berger, do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of the US Public Health Service, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. Jack Henningfield is an employee of Pinney Associates, Inc. which provides scientific and regulatory consulting support for new drug applications (NDAs) and risk management programs for a broad range of CNS active substances and drug products including psychedelic substances, new chemical entities, and alternative formulations and routes of delivery, as well as dietary ingredient notifications, cannabinoid assessment, and noncombustible tobacco/nicotine products for FDA regulation. Jack Henningfield received no external financial support for writing this article and no external commercial interests had any input. In the past 3 years Brian T. Anderson has received consulting fees from Journey Colab. David Yaden reports receiving support through the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research (CPCR) provided by Tim Ferriss, Matt Mullenweg, Blake Mycoskie, Craig Nerenberg, and The Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation. Roland R. Griffiths is a member of the Board of Directors of the Heffter Research Institute from which he has received personal fees from the outside the submitted work. His efforts for this review were supported by his appointment as The Oliver Lee McCabe, III, Ph.D. Professor in the Neuropsychopharmacology of Consciousness and by The Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research funded by grants from the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation and from Tim Ferriss, Matt Mullenweg, Blake Mycoskie, and Craig Nerenberg. No other disclosures were reported. All views, opinions, and content of this publications are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers.

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.