Ask Aristotle: Can Psychedelics Make You Wise?
Psychedelics & the Meaning of Life
Vishal: Jake asks, “How useful do you think psychedelics are when it comes to contemplating what it means to live a good life?”
Bill: The thing about psychedelics is that you don’t walk out of the experience with anything you didn’t walk in with. Different psychoactive substances can either stimulate or sedate parts of the nervous system. As a result, you might end up feeling some things more intensely or less intensely, or you might be able to perform certain tasks more efficiently or less efficiently.
It’s not just psychoactive substances that can have these effects. Other things can too, like how much sleep you’ve had, whether you’re in a familiar or unfamiliar environment, how much you’ve had to eat, or your general level of fitness or stress.
Take one common example: many people say they come up with their best ideas while in the shower or right before falling asleep. They’re in warm, safe environments with no distractions. They don’t have to worry about crossing a busy street, catching a train, taking something out of the oven, or driving their kids to soccer practice. So all the neural components that would normally be pulsing with activity as they monitor and respond to their environment are now quiet. That quiet allows them to focus on other things. It enables them to reflect on things they’ve experienced or imagine things they hadn’t previously imagined.
Psychoactive substances can have a similar effect. They can quiet down parts of your nervous system so you’re able to focus on things you normally can’t. What they can’t do is give you access to some type of secret knowledge.
I think some people imagine that there are multiple universes or worlds that are related to each other like different units in a townhouse. They imagine that we could break through the walls that separate our universe from others in something analogous to the way we could use a sledgehammer to break through the walls of a townhouse and step into your neighbor’s living room. The difference, they suppose, is that we break into other universes not using a sledgehammer, but using psychedelic drugs. And they imagine that visiting these other universes will enable them to learn things that people in our universe don’t usually know—secret things that no one would ever know unless they traveled to another universe.
People with this kind of image tend to have a romanticized, fantastical view of psychedelics. They see them as tools that open portals to other worlds. That entire idea is just another version of the gnostic desire for secret wisdom that we talk about in the Ask Aristotle book. In fact, psychedelics are just substances that alter the balance of molecules in different parts of the brain. That’s it.
Can psychedelics help you realize things you didn’t realize before? Sure. Just as quiet time in bed or in the shower can. Altering the activity levels of different parts of your nervous system can enable you to reflect on things you’ve experienced or imagine things you hadn’t previously imagined. But the raw material for that reflection and imagination has been with you the whole time. You just hadn’t taken the time to quiet yourself enough to process it. That’s what I mean when I say you don’t walk out of psychedelic experiences with anything you didn’t walk in with.
Moreover, you don’t need psychedelics to quiet yourself and reflect on things. You can get the same results—and probably more consistently—if you make a routine of setting aside quiet time to meditate and reflect.
I’ve nevertheless talked to a lot of people who have a gnostic view of psychedelics. Vishal has too. They think that psychedelics are going to help them find secret knowledge. But that’s just hocus pocus—magical thinking. Psychedelics don’t give you access to a hidden domain with secret knowledge. In the best case, they help you achieve the kind of mental state that experienced meditators can.