If there isn’t anything wrong with an individual using it, then why should it be secret from the public? Isn’t whether or not to use it still ultimately a personal choice?
That is certainly debatable, and does not even reflect the consensus of researchers. Research and therapy have different goals. When a substance has deeply subjective effects, it is hard to perform research under the clinical conditions required which will elucidate the effects for non-clinical therapeutic conditions. The hospital or laboratory setting seems fairly well-known to be an obstacle. Also, medical supervision is a non-issue with most popular psychedelics (such as Psilocybin, LSD, DMT) which have a minimal body load, with use of MAOIs being an exception. And even there, physicians commonly prescribe strong MAOIs which can easily be fatal if misused, they are not used only under close supervision, so it is not clear to me why these safer MAOIs should be an exception.
Why shouldn’t people be able to do something from which they might get hurt? Hardly anybody has been hurt by using Ayahuasca. Is it really more likely to result in participant being hurt than skydiving, sexual intercourse, or skateboarding?
Not taken seriously by whom? The reason why these substances are associated with “spiritual” (literally - breathing) stuff is because they are used as sacraments. How do they suddenly cease to be sacraments just because they prove to be useful? That was the whole point! The prohibition of psychedelics has not been a medical problem, but rather a political one. Ironically, freedom of religion in the Americas has generally been practised only for Eastern religions, while indigenous ones have been systematically and deliberately oppressed. You can often find the religious and ethnocentric bias clearly printed out as these things are legislated.
My experience is that what you are describing is not readily applicable to the various “shamanic” and other traditions of the Americas, which work more by directly confronting the content of the subconscious without conditioning people to a specific doctrine.
Isn’t that contradictory? How would people be informed when you started your post by saying that such things should not be brought to the public’s attention? I agree that people should always make decisions from an informed position. But I’d say that you have not clearly outlined what seems to be hindering people from making informed decisions with regards to psychedelics. As for supervision, why should those with less experience in this area be the ones who decide what constitutes adequate supervision?
The traditions are that these things are taken under supervision at special times and places as needed. Which sounds like what you are advocating, except that you are insisting that only a Western paradigm is legitimate rather than an American one.
