The New, Therapeutic Psychedelics Groove: Healing the Mind While Risking the Spirit?
- Joshua Bennett-Johnson
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
May 4, 2026
Author of the Month
Joshua Bennett-Johnson, Author, LADC-II, Licensed Counselor
Tom O'Connor, Publisher
The "War on Drugs." New — "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.
President Richard Nixon
President Nixon officially launched the"War on Drugs" on June 17, 1971, declaring drug abuse "public enemy number one". He increased federal funding for drug control agencies, promoted mandatory sentencing, and created the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973 to fight the initiative.
Whatever the propaganda, Nixon's draconian policies to outlaw & 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 = big bucks and lots of jobs.
Today, the narrative has shifted from counter-culture to clinical curiosity. But, it's complicated:
New FDA Changes
As of April 2026, the FDA has officially accelerated its review of Psilocybin (the active compound in "Magic Mushrooms") and Methylone (a compound with potential for treating 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 literal 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 Electroconvulsive Shock Therapy (ECT)—cannot compare with these compounds; they seem 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 & neural pathways in their troubled minds, allowing clients to break loops of PTSD responses and obsessive & compulsive cravings for more dangerous relief seeking in ways that the aforementioned treatment efforts cannot.
Caveat: It's important and ethical to note that if these are therapies a person might be considering, results may vary. Psychedelic experiences without safe & 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 suggest 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 torturous loops — there's another element that's only appropriate to consider & 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 & ancestral wisdom.
Read:
Decontextualization of Medicine
The concern is the decontextualization of the medicine. Western medicine treats psilocybin as a molecular tool to be patented and sold—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.
American Prison Life
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 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.
Indigenous Communities
To Indigenous communities, this is just another familiar story of American theft and imperialism, a sort of "biopiracy"…the act of taking traditional & 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.
South America Attracts Masters-Level Clinicians.
I personally know a few former colleagues, masters level clinicians who, at some point, pivoted from working at a hospital or clinic somewhere in the Northern Americas, and setting up shop in the Southern Continent, fashioning themselves as "gurus", then selling all-inclusive retreats — glamping in the Amazon, eating delicious & traditional meals prepared by private chefs, then blowing their minds on powerful hallucinogenic entheogens, before logging back onto the WiFi 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 & 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 are truly as effective as they seem to be, we cannot afford to keep them from those who really need them to provide them a good-enough life. We should not withhold these medicines.
My Clinical Practice
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 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 just a few months. They're changing, and changing for real, in deep, 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 months back seeking help.
Tricky Dick Followers
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, in due time, be able to purchase them with a legal ID in a shop that feels like an Apple Store.
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 Psychedelics Revolution
The new psychedelics 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 psychedelics change us, may we also honor and respect the wisdom of our ancestors, who were already so far ahead of us in knowing it.
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.
To learn more about Joshua Bennett-Johnson's work, please visit his website at
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