The New, Therapeutic Psychedelic Groove and Healing the Mind While Risking the Spirit?
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
For nearly 14 years, I've helped individuals navigate the complex landscape of addiction in order to achieve recovery. Nicknamed "The Casual Counselor", my approach is unconventional but undeniably effective.
The "War on Drugs", nee, "The War on Drug Users", indoctrinated generations of Americans into believing that psychedelic drug use would lead to depravity, delusion, destruction, and death. This has never been true on a wide scale.
Whatever the propaganda, Nixon’s draconian policies to outlaw and villainize citizens from autonomously experimenting with their own consciousness, that war he started has amounted to massive profits and economic growth for this nation since the early 1970s. Prohibition equals big bucks and lots of jobs. Today, the narrative has shifted from counterculture to clinical curiosity.
But it’s complicated. As of April 2026, the FDA has officially accelerated its review process for psilocybin (the notable compound in "Magic Mushrooms") and methylone (a compound showing potential for the treatment of PTSD).
While this promises a revolution in mental healthcare, it also raises a complicated ethical question: Is the Western medical establishment simply profiting from Indigenous knowledge while leaving the original stewards behind?
The FDA's decision to "fast-track" these substances, potentially shortening review timelines from nearly a year to just two months, is being driven by legitimate crises with respect to the mental well-being of millions of Americans.
Those millions suffering from conditions that traditional psychotropic medications, SSRIs, replacement therapies, mood stabilizers, coupled with evidence-based therapy modalities (CBT, DBT, ACT, EMDR, even Electro-Convulsive Shock Therapy [ECT]), cannot touch, these compounds seem to be profoundly life-changing, according to those who use them in a therapeutic setting.
Psilocybin: Clinical trials have shown that a single guided session can lead to significant remission in Treatment-Resistant Depression (TRD) and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD).
Methylone: As a "fast-acting" empathogen, methylone is being prioritized for PTSD and Substance Use Disorders (SUD), offering a potential alternative for those who find MDMA (Ecstasy) sessions a bit too intense.
The results: Anecdotal and clinical evidence suggest these medicines help "reset" and/or "rewire" the brain’s default network and neural pathways in their troubled minds, allowing clients to break loops of PTSD responses and obsessive and compulsive cravings for more dangerous relief-seeking in ways that the aforementioned treatment efforts cannot.
Caveat: It’s important and ethical to note, if these are therapies a person might be considering, results may vary. Psychedelic experiences without safe and proper integrative guidance can result in psychic harm. For instance, persons with very complex trauma or mental health disturbances that may include symptoms of psychosis should steer clear.
Though early data suggests game-changing efficacy in helping those for whom nothing ever worked, no Rx or talk therapy that could ever get them “un-stuck” from their tortuous loops, there’s another element that’s only appropriate to consider and honor.
I’m all for celebrating clinical "breakthroughs," but Indigenous communities must surely see a familiar pattern of extraction for this massive push to get these medicines on the market. If it’s for sale in the States, it’s a win for the investors.
For thousands of years, groups such as the Mazatec people of Mexico (with psilocybin) or African communities (with ibogaine) have treated these substances not as "drugs," but as sacred teachers of spiritual and ancestral wisdom.
The concern is the decontextualization of the medicine. Western medicine treats psilocybin as a molecular tool to be patented and sold, a free-market free-for-all. Much in the same way that prohibition leads to big bucks for powerful people, the decriminalization of plant medicines (see: recreational and medical cannabis in most of our states) also generates much revenue.
There are still non-violent citizens rotting in state and federal American prisons, serving life sentences for growing psychoactive plants on their own property. And it’s long since time those individuals were released and reimbursed for the piracy of their freedom.
The fact that the commoditization of what landed them in the clink to begin with is making other American citizens rich is blatantly disgraceful and wrong.
Reparations are due. In many directions. To the still-incarcerated men and women, and to the Indigenous cultures around this globe. They’re not coming.
To Indigenous communities, this is just another familiar story of American theft and imperialism, a sort of "biopiracy", the act of taking traditional and sacred knowledge, passed down over centuries from trusted, tried, and true practitioners, slightly modifying it (see: synthetic production), and then claiming legal ownership over it and launching it into the mainstream.
I personally know a few former colleagues, master's-level clinicians who, at some point, pivoted from working at a hospital or clinic somewhere in the Northern Americas and set up shop in the Southern Continent, fashioning themselves as “gurus,” then selling all-inclusive retreats, glamping in the Amazon, eating delicious and traditional meals prepared by private chefs, then blowing their minds on powerful hallucinogenic entheogens, before logging back onto the Wi-Fi and their smart devices to blog about their trips (“Lasers in the jungle…” Paul Simon), at an enormous out-of-pocket cost.
A tad disrespectful to the spirit of the essence of how these substances have been administered by shamans and brujas since time immemorial, no? Hell, such authentic practitioners wouldn’t charge you a dime for their help. They would just do it because they care.
Still, if the evidence of how psychedelic and empathogenic substances is truly as effective as it seems to be, we cannot afford to keep it from those who really need it in order to provide them a good-enough life. We should not withhold these medicines.
The clients I’ve been working with who have incorporated psychedelic integration into their recovery journey? I think it’s about 7 people at present, the results I’m personally seeing are hopefully incredible.
It’s not an instant miracle cure, but I’m watching people walk into my office with more confidence, clarity, sharper cognition, and increased self-esteem in a matter of just a few months. They’re changing. Changing for real. In deep and substantive ways.
They report to me that it feels like their unpleasant symptoms are truly diminishing to nearly “no symptoms,” rather than just being numbed by containment with traditional prescription meds. Their energy is different. I can feel it when I’m in the room with them. Though it might be the same person, it isn’t the client who first walked through my door seeking help months back.
Despite what ol' “Tricky Dick Nixon” and the subsequent commanders in chief had us all believing through their extensive propaganda campaigns, these are some of the safer substances that people can be ingesting in the wide world of pleasurable drugs.
Little to no side effects for the vast majority of users. No chemical dependency leading to withdrawal or long-term, post-acute rebound symptoms. These substances seem like game-changing life-savers. They cannot be ignored or discounted.
They will hit the free market. We will promote and commoditize them. We’ll Americanize them. You’ll see them on billboards and television ads and be able to purchase them with a legal ID in a shop that feels like an Apple Store in due time.
What will be missing from the push to make these medicines available to the public will be the rich history of the Indigenous peoples who have known for centuries about how a wounded soul might be served and saved from the true spiritual “magic” of the psychedelic experience.
The new psychedelic revolution will be something more than hippies spinning in a field, in a world of fractals and bliss. As we learn more about the true biological neuroscience of how they change us, may we also honor and respect the wisdom of our ancestors who were so far ahead of us in already knowing.
Most will not. But many people will find a resource that will serve them in highly beneficial ways. Like anything else in this country, it’ll be a mixed bag. That’s privatized healthcare in America for you! Nothing in this market comes for free or free from consequence.
Read more from Joshua Bennett-Johnson
Joshua Bennett-Johnson, Licensed Counselor & Owner of JBJ Counseling
After working for 7 years in an amazing clinic, I launched into private practice in 2018. I love my job. I can say that without reservation. Watching people rebuild their lives is something that is worth more than any dollar amount.
