Psychedelics in the Polycrisis
Nick Sun
Isopogon anemonifolius
These days, reality feels like a bad psychedelic trip reminiscent of a dystopian scifi movie, and some of the only times I have a sense of sober clarity about the world is when I’m puking into a bucket after eating a bunch of weird plants.
Never before have we faced so many varied and largely man-made existential threats to the survival of ourselves and many other species. Climate change, AI, political corruption, economic instability, pandemics, the sixth mass extinction, societal division and polarisation, information warfare, nuclear weapons, possible extraterrestrial activity, the doomscrolling list goes on.
The polycrisis is the sum of all of the above-listed threats along with the interconnected nature of many of them. In other words, if one or more of these crises happen, they will trigger other crises to occur, amplifying the combined impact of one another and producing cascading effects too complex and variable to accurately predict or plan for.
Based on the current trends, this exponential shitshow isn’t going to end anytime soon, and unless the Aliens come down and give humanity a solid spanking, I’m expecting things to only continue in the direction of maximum entropy at varying speeds.
So what can we do, how do we live, and can psychedelics save us from what seems to be a potentially very unpleasant future?
Spoiler alert: psychedelics won’t save you. But in an effort to justify tripping balls during the potential apocalypse, I will say psychedelics can help you save yourself during these strange times and here’s what that might look like:
Psychedelics as ‘Super Adaptatogens’ - Surrender, state training and flow states.
Psychedelics as non-traditional tools for healing during system breakdown.
Psychedelics as non-traditional rites of passage into adulthood in the context of the polycrisis as a mass initiation event.
Psychedelics as tools for novel problem solving when all hell breaks loose.
Psychedelics as agents of cultural change and exploration to work out healthier ways of being that don’t involve acting like an extractive, disassociated toolbag.
An exploration and cross-comparisons of various entheogenic plants as guidance tools during the polycrisis: Iboga, San Pedro and Ayahuasca.
