Should I take psychedelics for healing? That is a good question that only you can answer. What I can say, while I’ve been sitting on my thoughts for the last couple of years – ever since the psychedelic boom started taking over the wellness industry – is that there is a question I keep returning to, one I don’t think I has a neat answer. It goes something like this : now that psychedelics have found their way into the wellness world, sitting beside sound baths and cold plunges and functional blood panels, are we actually healing ourselves? Or have we simply found a new pill?
I don’t ask this to be provocative. I ask it because the answer matters, and because I think we owe it to ourselves, and to the people who carried this medicine long before we did, to ask it honestly.
The history of the Medicine – Who Actually Drank it?
Psychedelics have been around, supporting and healing humanity, for thousands of years. Archaeological evidence of shamanic plant use reaches back well over 7,000 years, the thread running through nearly every continent, from mushroom stones in Mexico and Guatemala to a shaman’s pouch found in a Bolivian cave to cave paintings in the Sahara. Long before any of us were having this conversation, this medicine already had a home.
There is one detail in this history that I think changes the entire conversation, and it rarely gets mentioned.
In most of the traditional lineage, the curandero or ayahuasquero was the one who drank. The person seeking healing did not. Healing happened through the shaman’s own journey : their visions, their songs, their capacity to see what was wrong and work on it from within their own altered state, on the patient’s behalf. The seeker sat, was witnessed, received the icaros, and was worked on. They were not, typically, the one taking the medicine. Psychedelics for healing always existed, it’s just the participant was not meant to drink it – The shaman was.
The model most of us now associate with psychedelic healing, where the participant themselves drinks and journeys, is a genuinely recent development. By most accounts it has become common only over roughly the last two decades. It is, in its own way, still being figured out, dependent entirely on the presence of a trained healer who can hold what comes up, and quite different from centuries of practice in which the seeker’s role was to be held, not to drink.
I don’t say this to suggest the newer model is wrong. Plenty of people have found real healing inside it, myself included in certain ways. But I think it’s worth being honest that when we picture “the ancient shamanic tradition” of psychedelics, most of us are actually picturing something much younger, something closer to our own generation than to the shamans we invoke
A Pill, or a Path?
Much of the healing world is built on a deep respect for homeostasis : the idea (spiritually and scientifically) that the body is not broken, that it is intelligently, constantly working to return itself to balance. We say this about sleep. We say it about digestion, about the nervous system, about the wisdom of a fever. We trust the body, and the mind, and I’d say the soul too, to know what they’re doing, given enough time.
And yet in the world we work in, we talk a great deal about healing, and lately a great deal about psychedelics for healing specifically, and I don’t think we say clearly enough that healing can mean two very different things. There is healing as a path : slow, relational, held by ritual and by people who know you, oriented toward and around a change in how you live. And there is healing approached as a pill: something taken, something that acts on you, something you can measure by whether the symptom lifted. Psychedelics, in their traditional context, were never separated from the path.
The plant was one part of a much larger structure, the shaman who prepared it, the fasting or ceremony that preceded it, the community that received you afterward (even though you didn’t even consume it yourself!), the months or years of integration that followed. The substance did very little on its own. It was the container around it that did the healing.
The pill is what happens when we take the other path instead, when we say, quietly or otherwise, I don’t have the patience for the body, the mind, or the soul to heal itself, I need something external to do it for me. That posture isn’t dishonest, it’s deeply human and it is one that people take when they are in pain, and need relief, similar as we do with the pill. But it does sit in tension with the very trust in the body’s own intelligence that so much of wellness claims to hold.
So how did we, as an industry, end up here : reaching for something as forceful as a psychedelic and calling it a fix, in the name of healing a body that was already trying to heal itself?
I don’t say this to dismiss what psychedelics can offer, I have seen and heard too much to pretend otherwise, and I don’t think it’s a trap so much as a habit we fell into without noticing. But I do think it’s worth asking, honestly, whether we’re willing to acknowledge there is a way to hold this medicine other than as something to fix us, and whether we’re willing to truly build that container back. Shocker! The container is not only the facilitators responsibility, but also the participant’s, as they need to choose to truly embrace and sit in the container for as long as it takes. Did you book the retreat for the ceremony or for the retreat?
I don’t think there is one honest answer to this. There are situations, real and well documented, where a nervous system is so locked in a pattern of harm that it seems to need something to interrupt the loop before homeostasis can even begin. And there are situations where reaching for something powerful is really just impatience wearing the language of healing. I suspect most of us who are drawn to this medicine are living somewhere between those two, and I don’t think it’s bad to admit that.
The Question We Don’t Ask Out Loud
There is something else I don’t see us talking about honestly, and I think it’s time we did.
I have watched people come to their first ayahuasca ceremony believing it would change their life, once. I have watched people take their first mushroom journey believing one trip a year would be enough to keep them steady. And I have watched those same people, over time, need the ceremony twice, three times, four times a year, then some more. The mushroom trip becomes monthly, then every other weekend. And somewhere along the way, we as an industry started calling this normal. Devoted, even. A practice. But.. are people getting addicted?
I want to be careful here, because this isn’t about whether a particular substance is chemically addictive. That conversation has its place, but it isn’t this one. Feelings are addictive and we know that as a fact. A high is addictive, whether it comes from a plant, a workout, a relationship, or a revelation. The nervous system doesn’t much care what delivers the relief. It just remembers that it felt relief, and it wants more.
So where do we, as a community, actually stand on this? I don’t see anyone in the healing world particularly even think about it. I see calendars getting fuller. I see loyalty built into how often someone returns. I don’t think this is coming from something ill in the facilitator, but I do think it’s rarely even considered, and an industry that profits from repeat visits has very little incentive to ask whether repeat visits are what a person actually needs.
I don’t have a clean answer here either. But I think the question deserves to be asked plainly : when someone keeps returning to the medicine, are we sitting with them to understand what they’re actually reaching for, or are we simply glad to see them on the schedule again. Are we supporting the person, or are we selling them the service. I think we owe it to the people who trust us to at least be honest about which one we’re doing.
What Are We Teaching?
The shaman did not administer a substance. The shaman held a role, built over a lifetime, inside a community. The shaman would not, and does not exist without the village, without the community. When we teach psychedelics in a wellness context now, often across a weekend, sometimes over a single evening, I wonder what exactly we are passing on. The plant, certainly. But the structure that once held it? That part seems harder to shorten.
This isn’t a case against psychedelics, and it isn’t a case for them. It’s an invitation to notice which one we’re actually doing when we reach for this medicine : are we walking a path and actually take psychedelics for healing, or are we taking a pill and hoping the path shows up around us afterward.
Questions Worth Sitting With
Do psychedelics belong in the wellness industry? They can, but the record suggests they were never meant to stand alone. Traditionally, the substance was one part of a much larger structure of preparation, ceremony, and integration held by community. Without that structure, what remains may still be powerful, but it is a different thing than what was practiced for thousands of years.
Should I take psychedelics for healing? This isn’t a question anyone else can answer for you, and I would be cautious of anyone who claims they can. What seems worth asking first is whether you are seeking a path or a pill and whether you have the support and integration in place to actually walk that path. If you do want to go ahead with the path, be intentional. Research your facilitators, meet them prior and always try to take recommendations from people you trust.
Disclaimer: We are not medical professionals, please speak with your doctor or medical professional prior to taking any substances.
How long have humans used psychedelics for healing? Archaeological evidence points to well over 7,000 years of shamanic use of psychoactive plants, found across the Americas, Asia, and Europe. The Western medical world only encountered this practice in the early 1950s, which makes our relationship to it, however sincere, still quite young.
Did the person seeking healing traditionally take the psychedelic themselves? In most of the traditional lineage, no. The healer drank the medicine and worked on the patient’s behalf through their own visions and songs, while the person seeking healing was witnessed rather than dosed. The now-common model, where the participant drinks and journeys themselves, has largely become widespread only over the last two decades.
Can someone become dependent on psychedelics for healing even if the substance itself isn’t considered addictive? Yes, this is worth taking seriously. Dependence isn’t only chemical. A feeling of relief or a powerful high can become something the nervous system starts to crave, regardless of what produced it. If a ceremony or journey that was once occasional starts becoming frequent, it may be worth asking what’s actually being sought, and whether it’s being found.
With gratitude, and love,
Zoe Michala
