Mysticizing medicine: incorporating nondualism into the training of psychedelic guides

ABSTRACT

Today, practitioners of contemporary psychedelic medicine are faced with a unique challenge: supporting clients in integrating transpersonal and mystical experiences within a paradigm based on a materialistic, reductionist, and dualistic understanding of reality. Operating on assumptions of pathology and problem-solving, the Western medical model often lacks the theoretical basis to make sense of and integrate the full potentiality of psychedelic medicine. Nondualism can offer an alternative guide to engaging with and transmuting the beliefs and traumas that lie at the root of paradigms based on assumptions of separation. These frames can be deeply resourcing for both psychedelic guide and client. This article explores the challenges and limitations of the modern Western paradigm, as well as possibilities for how nondualism could be incorporated into future training of psychedelic guides.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychedelics
• psychedelic-assisted therapy
• somatics
• trauma
• transpersonal psychology
• mysticism
• nondualism
• psychedelic therapy

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their support in the editing of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The use of ‘psychedelic medicine’ as opposed to ‘psychedelic therapy’ here is deliberate. ‘Psychedelic therapy’ occurs within the framework of allopathic medicine. ‘Psychedelic medicine’ is used to imply an alternative, holistic framework that includes not only conventional medical approaches, but also is broad enough to be inclusive of indigenous approaches to working with psychedelic substances.

2 There are many words which are used to describe the person who holds space and facilitates a psychedelic experience: guide, therapist, sitter. The use of ‘guide’ is a deliberate attempt to distinguish the unique role of psychedelic space-holding as different from that of traditional psychotherapist.

3 Drugs being, of course, a misnomer given that the ‘War on Drugs’ has historically been ‘part of the system of social control targeting low-income black and Latinez communities’ (Rosino and Hughey 2018, 849).

4 Breakthrough therapy designation is an expedited drug development pathway in the FDA. To be eligible, the drug or substance in question must be intended for a serious and/or life-threatening condition, and show significant advantage in its applications over the other existing drugs available for treatment.

5 This is to say nothing of the many lineages of indigenous practices which have existed for thousands of years, surviving the forces of colonialism and capitalism while hidden from mainstream view.

6 This is not to imply that indigenous and First Nations settings may not suffer from similar challenges.

7 There are of course, exceptions to any generalization. For some people a pathologizing diagnosis can be a trauma, for others a liberating validation of their experience.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Valeria McCarroll

Valeria McCarroll, PhD, LMFT is a teacher of somatic psychology in the Integral and Transpersonal Psychology Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Embodied Wisdom Advisor for the Synthesis Institute. A licensed marriage and family therapist, she stewards a body of offerings called Somadelics^SM. Somadelics^SM is a contemporary path of embodied psychedelic mysticism and visionary guide to the transformation of trauma.