‘Psychedelic Renaissance’ Entirely About Corporate Greed
consortiumnews.com
There’s a lot of money to be made selling cures for the psychological wounds inflicted by the very system which enables that sale, writes Caitlin Johnstone. By Caitlin Johnstone CaitlinJohnstone.com Listen to a reading of this article. “Money has begun flowing into companies intending to m

I firmly believe a lot of current mental health issues are worsened by living under capitalism, as do others. Some of the most obvious examples to me are:

  • Anxiety about being able to afford food and housing, having a stable job, not having emergency medical events, etc.
  • Depression from not having free time due to being overworked, or from not being able to afford entertainment and distraction, etc.

One potential remedy to mental health issues has been developing in the form of psychedelic therapy. Besides the issues related to restricting access by making the treatment prohibitively expensive (both the drug and the administering physician) that are seemingly unavoidable in profit-driven healthcare systems, I think there’s a massive danger in using psychedelics to effectively pacify people.

Psychedelics can be used maliciously, in that they can be used to help people accept their life as it is–this sounds fine, until you realize that it can be used to make people accept being exploited and being effectively destitute. I think the problem here is that the medical institutions (and probably most patients) are going to have the goal of: being less depressed, less anxious, etc. If psychedelics were actually used to “wake people up to their reality”, they’d probably become more depressed, more anxious, etc–counter to the stated goals. I think one of the first steps towards wanting to change the existing system is seeing the flaws in the existing system and how one is negatively affected by it.

Then, if psychedelics are (going to be) used to pacify people suffering under capitalism, is their widespread adoption not a bad thing? If people are willfully blinding themselves to their suffering, is any hint of revolutionary spirit being extinguished?

I don’t think these issues are unique to psychedelics, either. If existing depression treatments numb you to all emotion, good and bad, they can make existing while being exploited more bearable.

  • 133arc585OP
    11·
    2 years ago

    psychedelics show people a different perspective of the world and of their lives and encourage them to make positive changes

    Yes, I just worry that people are going to be nudged towards what, for a lack of better term, I’m calling “palliative” treatment of mental health issues: exercise, time in nature, etc. These are positive changes that will cause improvement in people’s lives, but without doing anything to address the underlying cause. The end result, then, is that people are just more complacent in the system that was/is causing them the suffering in the first place.

    But you do make a good point about the 60s counterculture movement, and so I can remain hopeful that maybe it will cause positive change.