The Well-Rounded Life

Psychedelic therapy is remarkable, and tempting. More and more studies indicate that substances like LSD or psilocybin can play a helpful role in the treatment of anxiety, depression, or alcoholism — even when more conventional substances come up short.

Many of the patients in these studies report having had a mystical experience as their ordinary sense of time, space, and self fell away. They feel, moreover, that they’ve learned something during their trip, leaving the lab with new or altered beliefs and the sense that they now have a better grasp on the world.

These studies draw a correlation between such mystical experiences and psychological benefits. People who felt that they caught a glimpse of reality as it really is ended up being less anxious, less depressed.

So the beliefs stemming from psychedelic experiences seem to be helpful, but are they true or meaningful? Is there any reason to believe that stimulating our serotonin 2A receptors leads us to a worldview that’s closer to reality? And what if the answer is no? What if psychedelics do not just produce visual hallucinations, but also metaphysical ones, and give us an unwarranted sense of confidence in a misrepresentation of the world? And what would that say about the ethical status of psychedelic therapy, given that most of us don’t want to be deceived?

In this episode, I talk to Chris Letheby. He teaches philosophy at The University of Western Australia and has written a book about the philosophy of psychedelics.