Exploring Psychedelics in Religious Trauma Recovery — Part 1: Introduction
(This is Part 1 in a series of articles about exploring Psychedelics in recovery from Religious Trauma. This anecdotal experience is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.)
I do not want Religious Trauma to be my story.
Of course, at this point, it is my story. I just devoted an entire volume to the topic. But for me, healing means that I must transcend the trauma of my formative years and move ahead, relegate the pain of my own experience to its appropriate place in the narrative of my life, and ensure that my efforts to raise awareness of Religious Trauma Syndrome are motivated by benevolence rather than bitterness toward my former oppressors.
That being said, as I explore the potential of psychedelics and Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy (PAP) as part of my own journey, I cannot help but acknowledge the possibility that reflecting my therapeutic experiences through the lens of Religious Trauma could benefit others who have been affected by Adverse Religious Experiences (ARE).
No. Religious Trauma is not my story; just a chapter of it. But for now, it seems this chapter has yet to close.
My Background as a Jehovah’s Witness Psychonaut
To rewind a bit, I was raised for the first three decades of my life as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. My comeuppance with the group was one of complete emersion including considerable leadership and administrative responsibilities as an adult. It was my life. While I had significant doubts from time to time (particularly surrounding contradictions between my religious theology and evidence from the natural sciences), I managed to mitigate this psychological conflict by performing a style of theological gymnastics all-to-common in closed religious communities. (After all, they have a lot to lose upon disillusionment.)
However, when the full weight of my complicity in promoting potentially harmful religious doctrine and policy befell me, I was compelled to deconstruct my faith. The subsequent crisis resulted in classic symptoms of PTSD including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, disrupted sleep, substance addiction, intrusive thoughts, and suicidal ideation.
It was hell.
Following my awakening, I documented the experience at length. I also read a lot of the growing literature surrounding Religious Trauma and Spiritual Abuse, and classic frameworks for Thought Reform and manipulative psychology that are used by scholars to analyze High Demand Religious Groups (HDRG) and cults. The results of this research combined with the memoir of my trauma and a discussion of the Physically-In-Mentally-Out (PIMO) phenomenon among disillusioned JWs comprise the thesis of my book, A Voice from Inside.
Overcoming Dogmatic Objection to Mainstream Psychology & Psychiatry
The field of clinical psychology can be uncomfortable for members of high control groups. When an organization claims to have the answers to “life’s most important questions” (Watch Tower, 2021) and sole ownership of these truths, they feel threatened by theories of psychology that conflict with their doctrinal assumptions. For this reason, there is an air of mistrust among devout Jehovah’s Witnesses of modern humanist psychology with its focus on personal experience, prioritization of the needs of self, and embrace of independent thought.
I grew up with this strong bias towards professional mental health services. I lived in a state of constant hypervigilance to attempts by Satan the Devil, “the ruler of the authority of the air that is at work in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2, Watch Tower), to influence my thinking. In the early stages of my religious crisis, getting myself in front of a therapist was terrifying and panic-inducing.
Confounding my religious objection to mainstream mental health support was influence from what Moral Psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls “the spiritual left” (Haidt, 2012). In the culture of the spiritual left, sanctity is based not on doctrine as in the case of religionsits, but on “impurity-avoidance” (Haidt, 2012). According to Haidt in The Righteous Mind — Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, we see “impurity-avoidance function in New Age grocery stores, where you’ll find a variety of products that promise to cleanse you of ‘toxins’.”
Haidt continues: “Many environmentalists revile industrialist, capitalism, and automobiles not just for the physical pollution they create but also for a more symbolic kind of pollution — a degradation of nature, and of humanity’s original nature before it was corrupted by industrial capitalism” (Haidt, 2012). Progress in the field of mainstream medicine and technology is often interpreted by the spiritual left as the manifestation of a broken society; symptoms that are the consequences of humanity’s departure from a simpler and more natural past. Although technological progress has been interpreted by some, including Stephen Pinker in his 2018 book Enlightenment Now, as the fruit of the evolving human mind and therefore a natural extension of our evolutionary biology (Pinker, 2018), those on the spiritual left vilify pharmacology and seek to rid their bodies of the influence of man-made chemicals and contaminants.
Some from this camp make their way into the Jehovah’s Witness fold. Promises of a “new system” and the destruction of existing national, financial, and social empires at Armageddon offers hope of a return to an Edenic paradise free of the complications of human technological and societal advancement. Images of simply clad, vegetarian, groups of equals in gardenlike states appear regularly in Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society (WTS) literature.
It was with this two-fold distrust of mainstream psychology and psychiatry, from both the Jehovah’s Witness perspective and that of the spiritual left, that I entered the quagmire of Religious Trauma Syndrome. My recovery was largely a result of incrementally overcoming such biases by curiously investigating secular approaches to psychological wellness. Rather than reverting my mind to traditional mores, maintaining as sacred a bygone era of intellectual and technological simplicity, I nervously stepped toward the thrilling potential of expanding human knowledge to improve the future of homo sapiens.
I could not turn back to rigid dogmatism in any form. Forward was the only option.
Although I was initially reluctant to fall to the financial wiles of Big Pharma, a fellow Jehovah’s Witness explained to me that medication would simply “allow some space” as I absorbed new psychological tools during psychotherapy. As it turned out, psychiatric medication provided immediate, albeit short-term and partial, relief from my suffering. Although this respite was temporary and pharmaceutically induced, it provided a breath of fresh air and a dulling of consciousness that allowed me to go about the mundane and (initially) soul-crushing task of navigating the societal power dynamics in my environment. After a few failed attempts at finding a therapist, I was eventually put in touch with a Religious Trauma-informed psychotherapist. The catharsis was immediate. From the very first visit, my rigid and toxic psychology began to unlock and I experienced a gasping breath of freedom that I had never before experienced.
Adjusting My Psychedelic Bias
Releasing my bias towards psychology and psychiatry led next to addressing my psychedelic bias. My journey away from my controlled informational milieu led me to popular books based on theories of evolutionary psychology and secular philosophy. I was for the first time allowing myself to give attention to the well-developed arguments of non-JW thinkers. Viktor Frankl (Mankind’s Search for Meaning) led to Mihaly Czizhelmehaly (Finding Flow, Creativity, and The Evolving Self), which led to Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion and Science In the Soul), and Sam Harris (Waking Up), who introduced me to Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy). I quickly realized that the human spiritual quest, absent of religion and mythology, continued beyond disillusionment with Abrahamic religions and even beyond stubborn atheism. It was a quest that I was inevitably upon and that felt, at many times, out of my control.
Both Sam Harris and Aldous Huxley speak at length about psychedelic experiences in relation to their spiritual quest. Raised in the era of the War on Drugs and the D.A.R.E program, I found it difficult to reconcile drug use with spirituality. Further, the scriptural principles underpinning WTS prohibition of illicit drugs (beyond avoiding “defilements of the flesh” [2 Corinthians 7:1, Watch Tower]) are based on fear that mind-altering substances will expose a person to demonic influence.
This belief is based on a parable attributed to Jesus of Nazareth and recorded in the Bible book of Luke, chapter eleven:
“When an unclean spirit comes out of a man, it passes through waterless places in search of a resting-place, and after finding none, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I moved. And on arriving, it finds the house swept clean and adorned. Then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and after getting inside, they dwell there. So the final circumstances of that man become worse than the first” (Luke 11:24–26, Watch Tower, 2013)
The publication Reasoning from the Scriptures produced by Watch Tower that is used as a manual to assist Jehovah’s Witnesses in theological debates links the parable in Luke chapter 11 to drug use.
“Many who use drugs are involved in spiritistic practices or associate with those who are, because a blank mind or one that experiences hallucinations is easy prey to the demons” (Watch Tower, 2009)
Quotes such as the above elicit great fear in the minds of devout JWs. It is no wonder that evidence-based psychotherapeutic interventions are held in such suspicion. Daily, JWs put up an intense psychological defense against the attacks of Satan. This fear-based obsession with protecting their belief system creates extreme psychological rigidity and maybe even religious scrupulosity, a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder involving religious or moral rituals (Greenberg, 2010). To release this death grip on one’s mind in a drug-induced high would be equivalent to welcoming the manipulative influence of Satan, or worse — demon possession! For many, residual fear of demon influence persists even after belief in an anthropomorphized almighty god has been deconstructed.
Still, I was curious about Harris and Huxley’s commentary on the spiritual implications of psychedelic use. As part of my trauma recovery, I promised myself that I would never again let fear stop me from benefitting myself and others; something I had done so many times before. I was not going to let fear of the demons stop me from exploring psychological well-being by way of psychedelics.
My deconstruction continued: after Huxley came Tao Lin’s zany memoir of his transition from pharmaceutical drug use to plant-based psychedelics (Trip). Lin led to James Fadiman (The Psychedelic Explorers Guide) and Michael Pollan’s classic How to Change Your Mind that discusses Robin Carhart Harris’ theory of the entropic brain. (More on this in Part 4).
The final piece of the puzzle was Dr. Carl Hart’s 2020 book Drug Use For Adults: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear. Hart’s book has been a real paradigm shift for me, exposing the implicit connections I held between drug abuse, race, law enforcement, and morality. Hart, an American psychologist and neuroscientist at Columbia University, boldly came “out of the closet” as a responsible user of cannabis, heroin, amphetamines, and psychedelics as part of his all-American “pursuit of happiness” (Hart, 2020). Hart gave me the confidence to trust myself as a responsible adult to use consciousness-expanding compounds appropriately in my quest for greater learning, creativity, and peace.
Connecting Psilocybin to Religious Trauma Syndrome
Psilocybin and Religious Trauma share an important connection. After all, for the traumatized ex-religionist, loss of spiritual identity and religious comfort (not to mention social support) are the very wounds that lead to religious trauma PTSD. It seems pragmatic then, to consider the healing power of psychedelic-induced mystical experiences in healing.
Research of psilocybin’s usefulness as a psychotherapeutic intervention centers on this connection. For example, the landmark article published in the journal Psychopharmacology by a team at John Hopkins University in 2006 was titled “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance” (Griffiths et al, 2006). The article states that “at two months, the volunteers rated the psilocybin experience as having substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance and attributed to the experience sustained positive changes in attitudes and behavior” (Griffiths et al, 2006). In other words, psilocybin yields a mystical experience that leads to improved mental health outcomes.
Key to the therapeutic benefit of the psychedelic experience is ego death. Anecdotally, it appears that allowing one’s ego to dissolve in favor of more authentic expression based on a feeling of connectedness with all the material and spiritual energy of the universe is generally conducive to healing. Additionally, in the case of religious trauma resulting from membership with a totalist group, existential threat and distrust of humanity can create a state of hypervigilance to potentially threatening social interactions. Personally, I had a deep fear of losing myself again to the powers of social influence and their potential to threaten my individualized and creative cognition.
I lost myself in the collective consciousness of my religious community and as a consequence found myself disempowered emotionally, intellectually, socially, and financially. The influence of the collective even led to oppression of others, sometimes by my own hand, in violation of my deeper, more fundamental human values. As result of this experience, I developed a hypersensitivity to all attempts at influence regardless of how benign they might be. I became rigid in my individualism, only feeling safe when alone and adamant in my refusal to rely on anyone for anything, even emotional support (outside of the therapist’s office where I felt protected by HIPAA laws, of course). The daring vulnerability needed to reestablish intimacy with others would be essential to moderate the dogged defense of my newfound psychological liberty. Perhaps the psychedelic experience of ego-death would assist this process.
Finally, exploring altered states of consciousness as a way of separating my emotional experience from analytical thinking has been instrumental in my recovery from manipulative religious theology. For example, mindfulness provides some distance from thought and emotion and allows the practitioner to attempt to observe consciousness as a disinterested third party. This distance allowed me to select behavioral responses that more accurately reflected my worldview and decouple the ingrained stimulus-response cycle of my religious compulsions. In time, as behavioral reinforcers were removed, I found that the post-traumatic emotional intensity subsided, my neuronal pathways altered and my cognition became more expansive. Buddhist mindfulness meditation emphasizes the experience of “no-self”; the recognition that what we often call the self is really just an illusion of our perception. This is similar to the ego dissolution said to be elucidated in psychedelic experiences.
Could psilocybin fast-track the kind of cognitive reshuffling that I had experienced through months of meditation and psychotherapy? Could psilocybin help other people who suffer from Religious Trauma Syndrome to recover from the rigidity of ideologically totalist psychology?
These are the questions I seek to understand as I explore psychedelics in religious trauma recovery.
My Maiden Voyage
It is with this background and intention that I entered my first psilocybin trip. I am ethically obliged to remind you that I am not a medical professional and the narrative of my experience is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
It is not uncommon for psychonauts to record their experiences. These reports may include vivid descriptions of the optical hallucinations and shifts in perception that accompany psychedelic trips. I have steered my discussion away from some of this content in an attempt to focus on what I believe will be more relevant to the therapeutic treatment of RTS. For example, I will not be discussing the lengthy conversation I had during my trip with an esteemed and well-respected leader of the bovine community. (Yes, I had a conversation with a cow. No doubt much to the amusement of my trip-sitter.) My visit to the great cow’s underground sand cave and conversation with him about his ethical stance on human beef consumption is not germane to this discussion.
However, it is my hope that the insights I share in this series of articles will be helpful for anyone considering Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy in their recovery from RTS and also for the therapists that support them.
Let us begin.
(This article is a repost from www.wallisbooks.com)
References:
Greenberg, David, and Jonathan D. Huppert. “Scrupulosity: A unique subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder.” Current Psychiatry Reports 12.4 (2010): 282–289.
Griffiths RR, Richards WA, McCann U, Jesse R. Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2006 Aug;187(3):268–83; discussion 284–92.
Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York: Pantheon Books.
Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Viking.
Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania (2009) Reasoning from the Scriptures. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc. Brooklyn, New York.
Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania (2013) New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc. Brooklyn, New York.
