Since ancient times, even before the appearance of Homo sapiens, the hominids that inhabited this planet used the surrounding plant world to alter their consciousness. This use has continued to our own times, manifesting in diverse forms of consumption and within a much more ritualized environment.
By Raúl del Pino
Of all existing substances, there is a family that, due to its effects, plunges us into diverse forms of consciousness that transcend the barrier of the physical and temporal to show us Reality from a point of view that is, if not broader, at least different and unique.
These substances, called psychedelics in academic and scientific circles, represent a large group of drugs that encompass a wide—though defined—spectrum of effects. The term psychedelic was coined and proposed by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in 1956, after experimenting with mescaline.
Visionary, entheogenic, or hallucinogenic
But their forms of consumption lead us to examine these substances not only from the point of view of psychology, but from the perspective offered by the effects experienced. The shaman or the medicine man calls them visionary, because with them they are able to cross the barriers of the physical and discover the sought-after answers in the world of spirits. To experience the future or the past through revelation. Entheogens, so named by the philosopher, the mystic, or the one who has found revelatory spiritual experiences behind this key. Hallucinogens, a misnomer used by those who are unaware of the potential of these substances or by those who seek in them hedonistic pleasure or a chimerical escape, without wishing to imply that I reproach the hedonism that the experience itself provides.
From prehistory to modern pharmaceuticals
Since the dawn of humanity, the use of these types of substances has meant a significant change in the way of perceiving the environment and oneself. From the cave paintings found in some caverns in North Africa, through the beginning of many religions and syncretic cults, to the modern forms of consumption that open up a quite interesting panorama within the knowledge of the human psyche. We have moved from plants and fungi to a whole series of new drugs designed to open the door that dissolves human duality—this feeling of being alien and separated from everything. Although in all cases, the essence of the experience provided by psychedelics is ecstasy, in the original sense of the word, “to withdraw the soul from the body” (Ott 1996).
These substances can take us to incredibly beautiful paradises or to the most ruthless of hells, lead us from blindness to light or from sanity to madness, but, ultimately, it is the subject who will mark the course of the experience. As Gordon Wasson said: “The psychedelics give us the first verse; it is we who have to write the rest of the poem.”
