For thousands of years, indigenous societies in Mexico and Central America have used psychedelics for medicinal, spiritual, and cultural purposes.
For instance, Native American tribes have used peyote in religious ceremonies, while indigenous people in the Amazon use ayahuasca for spiritual reasons.
In the 20th century, psychedelics became more widely known in Western society, thanks to the work of researchers like Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in 1938 and accidentally discovered its psychedelic properties in 1943.
This discovery led to a wave of research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics in the 1950s and 60s.
In the 1950s, R. Gordon Wasson, an amateur mycologist and banker, and his wife Valentina Pavlovna travelled to Mexico to investigate the use of mushrooms in traditional Mexican religious ceremonies. There, Wasson participated in a Mazatec mushroom ceremony in Oaxaca, where he consumed psilocybin mushrooms and had a profound spiritual experience.
His plant medicine guide was a woman named Maria Sabina, often referred to as the mother of mushrooms. She contributed to the popularization of the indigenous Mexican ritual use of entheogenic mushrooms with Westerners.
Wasson later published an article about his experience in Life magazine, which introduced the use of magic mushrooms to a wider audience in the United States. Wasson’s articles and subsequent research into the use of magic mushrooms by indigenous cultures helped spark interest in the psychedelic properties of psilocybin and other hallucinogenic substances in the US during the 1950s and 1960s.
The discovery of psilocybin mushrooms and LSD triggered a wave of research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics in the 1950s and 1960s. During this time, researchers studied the therapeutic potential of psychedelics for conditions such as anxiety, depression, and addiction.
Interest in psychedelics eventually led to the counterculture movement of the late 1960s, which embraced the use of psychedelics as part of its rejection of mainstream culture and values.
However, with the rise of counterculture and the association of psychedelics with the hippie movement in the 1960s, the use of psychedelics became increasingly controversial and eventually led to their criminalization. The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 in the United States classified psychedelics as Schedule I drugs, which are deemed to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use.
Despite the criminalization of psychedelics, there has been a recent resurgence of interest in their therapeutic potential. In recent years, research has shown promising results in the use of psychedelics such as psilocybin and MDMA for the treatment of conditions such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
Currently, many regions of the world are embracing a resurgence of the psychedelic revolution. Some countries, such as the Netherlands, Australia, and Portugal have decriminalized or legalized the use of certain psychedelics for medicinal purposes, and several states in the US have followed suit.
This article was first published on Nina’s Notes and is republished on Psychedelic Health with permission.
