India: can we Decriminalize Psychedelics?
Yes, and here’s how!
Disclaimer: I do not promote the use of illegal substances. This article is for education purpose.
I want you to read this article carefully, not for me but for the future of India. Yes, the future of India! Because right now our government is considering public views to reform its criminal laws related to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985
What is the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985?
In simple words, the act prohibits public to indulge in any sort of operation with narcotics and psychotropic substances. The act regulates many harmful and addictive substances like cocaine and heroin. But unfortunately, it also bans many plant medicines which have been used by our ancestors for spiritual purposes, like cannabis and psychedelics. Currently, possession of such substances could lead to criminal conviction of up to 20 years of prison and a monetary fine of up to 2 Lakh rupees.
It makes no sense because psychedelics and cannabis are less harmful with a lot of therapeutic potentials. In contrast, legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco are hazardous and have a high rate of abuse. The graph below is from research conducted in UK, which concluded that the drug classification in UK (which is similar to India) is not based simply on considerations of harm.
According to this research:
- Most harmful drugs to individuals are: 1) crack cocaine, 2) methamphetamine
- Most harmful drugs to others are: 1) alcohol, 2) heroin, 3) crack cocaine
The graph above doesn’t show therapeutic and spiritual significance scores of these drugs; otherwise, magic mushrooms would have been the highest! Sadly, only a handful of people are aware of its magical nature.
Now you may be questioning about legality of alcohol, and illegality of psychedelics. Though I know the reasons, I would encourage you to work on the future and not dwell on the past.
What do I want?
I want you all to submit your views regarding the open consultation on NDPS Act, 1985, so that the criminal laws related to psychedelics can be reformed. This article will list down the reasons why you should do fill the form.
Form link: https://criminallawreforms.in/open-consultation/
(link is also provided at the end of this post)
NOTE: THE DEADLINE TO FILL THE FORM IS — 16 NOVEMBER 2020
Why should you care?
Because this is your chance to step outside from just complaining about our country, to actually making it better — a chance to transform the misery and ignorance in our country.
Psychedelic ______ ?
Well, if you automatically added the label “drugs”, then it would be difficult for you to understand this post. The first step to learning something new is to let go of your previous baggage. This being said, it would be much better if you drop all the labels the society has conditioned in your brain about drugs. Let’s start fresh!
Consciousness
At some point in your life you might have had this question, “who am I? And how am I experiencing this world?”. It is so mind-blowing that we all are experiencing this world, but we fail to experience the experiencer itself. That seat of awareness in you is the consciousness in its true form. As put by Aristotle — “the thought thinking itself!”
States of consciousness
We all cycle through three states of consciousness — wakefulness, dreaming and dreamless sleep. Why just these three? Well, I don’t know, but this is the default settings given to us.
Some people go the extra mile by overriding these settings using psychoactive substances to alter their experience of this reality — experiencing altered states of consciousness. Then other people are totally against the use of such substances because they consider it to be wrong. Irrespective of the category, what people miss is a basic question — “Why it is right or wrong?”. Instead, they walk on a path carved by their circumstances. Here, I want you to take a third-person perspective and ask these questions to yourself:
- Why do you think that drinking alcohol is not bad? — Because most of your friends do it?
- Why do you think psychedelics are dangerous? — Because they are illegal?
- Why do you think any psychoactive substance is bad? — Because they are harmful? — But why are they harmful?
- Why do you think psychedelics are safer than alcohol? — Because you have experienced a psychedelic journey?
Few days ago, I did a survey to know about the perception of drugs in our society. You know most of the people who have had an experience with cannabis or psychedelics understand that these substances, though illegal, are much safer than alcohol and tobacco. I will make a separate post on the survey soon.
An altered state of consciousness is nothing more than a perspective of looking at this life, and so there is no right and wrong to it. Right or wrong depends upon the cost we pay for the perspective, and the learnings we receive from it. Unfortunately, some substances like alcohol or tobacco comes with a high cost like potential addiction, with a little to no teaching. Whereas, psychedelics have low harm potential and a great learning experience.
So, what are psychedelics?
The word psychedelics is a combination of two greek words: psychē (soul) + dēloun (to reveal) = to reveal the soul
Examples of psychedelic medicines: Psilocybin Mushrooms, LSD, DMT, Ayahuasca, Mescaline, Peyote, Ibogaine etc. Please note in all these examples, only LSD is a synthetic psychedelic, rest all are obtained from plants in our environment.
Remember the question raised in the beginning, “Who am I?” Well, the answer is hidden within us. It can be realized by deep meditative states (permanent), or like an instant hack by psychedelic substances (temporary). Here’s how!
Spiritual Enlightenment
It is shown that a well supervised psychedelic trip can induce mystical experiences, i.e. feelings of unity, sacredness, ineffability, peace and joy. It has been found those who report such experiences are also more likely to find psychedelics as a life-changing experience (Griffiths et al., 2006). Humans still don’t understand the exact scientific mechanism behind these mystical experiences. But we know that such an experience is extremely insightful, and it leaves the experiencer with the feeling of the existence of higher power and God.
Thus, these experiences are often equated with the spiritual enlightenment obtained from deep meditative states. In fact, due to their spiritual healing properties, people have used psychedelics as a sacrament for at least 5700 years, pre-dating the major organized religions (Bruhn et al., 2002). Such cultures view psychedelic plants as being of divine origin, and and call them as plant medicines and entheogens. Interestingly, the adjective “entheos” translates to English as “full of the god, inspired, possessed”, and is the root of the English word “enthusiasm”.
Ego-Dissolution on Psychedelics
The regions of the brain involved in the everyday task is known as the Default Mode Network (DMN). This DMN provides us with the sense of self — i.e. our ego. When the activity in DMN decreases, the person reaches an altered state of consciousness without the sense of self, referred to as ego-death or ego-dissolution. Because egoistic perspective is absent in this state of consciousness, the person often reports the feeling of oneness with the universe!
During deep meditative state, the activity in DMN decreases (Fox et al., 2014) — it makes sense because meditation aims to reduce the influence of self over resting thoughts. What’s exciting is that psychedelics also decreases activity in DMN (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012). In other words, both meditation and psychedelics lead to ego-death, i.e. a transformation of the psyche — shifting from self-centered to completely unbiased thought process.
When activity in DMN network decreases, there is increase in activity of other parts of the brain, which is reflected in the image shown below.
This image shows that compared to placebo, there is a substantial increase in the connections between different brain regions during a psychedelic trip. This causes synesthesia — i.e. combination of different senses, for example, seeing sounds and tasting colours! Synesthesia leads to complete blending of perception and provides an individual with a profound experience.
Benefits of Psychedelic Journey
In short, just one single dose of a psychedelic substance:
- Enhances well-being, connection with nature, life satisfaction, emotional empathy, creativity, divergent thinking and mindfulness-related capacities
- Stimulates neurogenesis — the growth and repair of brain cells
- Cures anxiety, depression, PTSD and other mental health disorders
- Cures addiction to drugs like alcohol, tobacco, cocaine and even heroine
- Has minimal side effects (unlike many other drug treatments)
- Has virtually no addiction risks
Enhances Well-being
In 2006, a research done at Johns Hopkins University found out that, of the 36 participants, who had never previously tried psilocybin— 67% rated the psilocybin experience among the top 5 most meaningful experiences of their lives, which improved their life satisfaction and well-being (Griffiths et al., 2006).
A study done by Polito and Stevenson (2019) revealed microdosing, i.e. taking sub-threshold doses of psychedelics improves psychological functioning. Participants also reported an uplift in their mood, attention, well-being, personality, creativity and interconnectedness.
Cures Depression and Anxiety
In a study done by Griffiths and colleagues (2016), 51 cancer patients with depressive disorder were given a high dose of psilocybin. After 5 weeks, patients showed significant improvements on multiple medical depression and anxiety scales. What’s more surprising is the sustainability of these effects during a long term (6-month) mark, wherein, around 60% of patients were no longer clinically depressed. Moreover, participants didn’t show any adverse side-effects.
Similar results have been shown with other classic psychedelics like Ayahuasca (Osorio et al., 2015; Palhano-Fontes et al., 2018; Uthaug et al., 2018), LSD (Gasser et al., 2014) and 5-MeO-DMT (Davis et al., 2018)
Zeifman and colleagues (2019) have shown a single administered dose of Ayahuasca as a potential intervention for suicidality. Can you imagine a medicine so effective?!
Cures Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
The neurogenesis property of psychedelics help break the traumatic cycle that occurs in patients with PTSD, and thus have significant potential for treating PTSD. But because the trip is unpredictable on classic psychedelics, researchers have shown that using MDMA (not a classic psychedelic, but is also illegal in India) can provide a better treatment of PTSD (Krediet et al., 2020)
Cures Drug Addiction
Opioid addiction: Ibogaine (used in spiritual purposes in Africa) is shown to reduce and even eliminate the dependence of all sorts of drugs, including opioids like heroin (Mash et al., 2001; Alper et al., 2008).
Smoking addiction: In one study, 15 treatment-resistant smokers were given psilocybin with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and 80% of psilocybin-treated participants were biologically confirmed to be abstinent from smoking six months after their first dose (Johnson et al., 2016). Another study found participants with stronger mystical experiences were more likely to successfully quit smoking (Garcia-Romeu et al., 2015). Similar results have been shown with other psychedelics too.
Alcohol addiction: A study done by Bogenschutz and colleagues (2015) on a sample of alcohol-dependent participants found that psilocybin dose combined with counseling substantially decreased their frequency of drinking even 36 weeks after their initial psilocybin dose.
Non-Toxic and Non-Addictive
Psychedelics posses very low physiological toxicity, and are not known to result in organ damage, neuropsychological deficits, or to cause addiction or compulsive use (Strassman, 1984; Gable, 2004; Halpern et al., 2005; Halberstadt, 2015; Bonson, 2012).
In their 2008 guidelines, for the safe administration of high doses of LSD and psilocybin in clinical settings, researchers at Johns Hopkins University writes that psychedelics aren’t considered addictive (Johnson et al., 2008).
As shown in the graph above, the fatal dose of LSD and psilocybin is 1000 times larger than the dose that causes an effect, which makes them much harder to accidentally overdosed than alcohol and other drugs.
The likely risk associated with psychedelics consumption is a “bad-trip”, wherein a person may get feelings of paranoia and fear, but such bad-trips can be avoided by consuming psychedelics in a proper set and settings with a trip sitter. Moreover, using meditation and other forms of spiritual practice also guides a psychedelic trip in a positive direction (Johnstad et al., 2019).
There are many more researches. I won’t stretch this article more; rather, I recommend you to explore further using the links given at the end of this article.
So, do you think the laws should be changed?
I hope you got some idea about psychedelics. Of course, experiencing them in a therapeutic environment is a life-changing event in itself. But these substances are illegal in India, and I completely vouch against any unlawful activities.
Luckily, right now, you have an option to raise your voice on the open consultation form facilitated by the Committee for Reforms in Criminal Laws. Please note that the consultation is only for amendments in criminal laws (and not legalization) of the drugs covered under NDPS Act, 1985.
Legalization refers to changing the status of a substance from illegal to legal, meaning a person could no longer be arrested and prosecuted for personal use and possession.
Decriminalization on the other hand is the act of removing criminal charges against these substances means the distribution and sale of controlled substances will still be prohibited, but the possession and use of psychedelics would not be considered as a criminal activity. Decriminalization may open doors to psychedelic research and prescribing these substances may become more accessible for medical use.
India needs decriminalization of psychedelics before moving towards legalization as currently many people in India are not aware of psychedelics. We have to take one step at a time so that such substances are introduced to society with true knowledge, thus reducing their potential misuse.
Recently, a lot of countries are considering legalization or decriminalization of psychedelics. Just a few days ago, Oregon became the first state to legalize psychedelic therapy!! Don’t you want India to grow in this direction?
YES? SO FILL THE FORM!
The deadline is 16 November 2020, but please don’t wait till the last moment.
Please share this article in your social circle and hit that clap button multiple times to increase the reach of this vital message. Also, follow me for more such content. I write about spirituality, psychedelics and philosophy.
References and Further Readings
YouTube Videos:
- The future of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy by Rick Doblin
- Cancer patient overcomes anxiety about death with psychedelics
- The Psychedelic Experience — Mind Field S2 (Ep 2)
Articles:
- The Ultimate Psychedelics Research Review by MAPS
- Synthesis Retreat Research
- Ego Death: Everything You Should Know by Double Blind
Books:
