Over the last decade, psychedelics—named for their “mind-manifesting” quality—have made a comeback in modern science, public discourse, and cultural significance. Popular books and mainstream media have focused on promising clinical research with drugs like psilocybin, MDMA, and ayahuasca (or its clinical analog, pharmahuasca) as treatments for chronic mental health problems such as depression, PTSD, and addiction. On one hand, the medicalization of psychedelics is paralleled by the expansion of institutional research and private investment as these new treatments move toward federal rescheduling and, eventually, the market. On the other hand, the above-ground revival mirrors another one happening underground, in legal gray zones and the global tourist circuit: the popularization of indigenous ceremonial healing (with psilocybin-active mushrooms, ayahuasca, iboga, peyote and san pedro cacti, and the toad secretions of bufotenin) among otherwise modern people from urban centers. A semantic drift reflects the currency of such practices; what were once “psychedelics” are now often referred to, even outside of these traditional contexts, as “entheogens” (meaning “god-generating”), “plant medicine,” or simply “medicine.” All of these developments have accelerated the push to decriminalize psilocybin in American cities as seen in a cascade of local movements over the last year. As mind-manifesting, god-generating, divinatory, curative, and unstable forces, these substances sit at the confluence of a number of topics pertinent to anthropology today: challenges to the practical, conceptual, and legal categories of modern medicine and subjectivity (such as the meaning of healing); spiritual legacies of colonialism and extractive capitalism and the contemporary politics of authenticity, appropriation, and recuperation; and critical departures from modern naturalism.

Notes on the Image

Serotonin is part of a series by artist Kelsey Brooks on psychedelics. The resemblance between the tryptamine psychedelics (e.g., DMT, psilocybin, and LSD) and this essential neurotransmitter is central to their effects on humans. Brooks was a scientist before becoming a professional artist. The print is based on meticulous paintings that began as molecular structures with dots in place of atoms that were then outlined by layers of color. Brooks said about the series, “I like to think of it as a colorful and kinetic representation of the tiniest pieces of our universe and of ourselves.”