Psychedelic-assisted Coaching, Part II ($)

Having power to control your environment is necessary, but power to control yourself is not.

“Psychedelics prove to you that there’s more than one way of seeing the world”
― Jesse Lawler, host of SmartDrugSmarts podcast

In Part I of this series, I considered the history of therapy and how coaching has emerged as a cross between psychology and consulting. Here, I’ll consider how psychedelic work appears in the contexts of therapy and coaching. In the third installment, I’ll propose forms for psychedelic-assisted coaching.

Administration

Psychedelics are now being legalized for their commercial value and their psychological potential. They are being seen as agents in a pharmaceutical armamentarium and being presented as drugs and advertised by those empowered to prescribe drugs.

Here is the first conflict: those empowered to prescribe psychedelics are doctors or psychiatrists, and it’s this faction that sees psychedelics as agents whose effect is chemical. But the salutary effect of psychedelics is not chemical and no doctor and few psychiatrists have training, experience, or competence in the altered reality where psychedelics prevail. It is fair to say that no one is fully experienced in another person’s altered reality.

This is a conflict to the entire authoritarian model. Allopathic medicine forms the basis of mainstream healthcare. The allopathic approach has been disconnected from a person’s own intelligent agency since its inception. That is, allopathic medicine both presumes and requires that it understands and controls the invasive methods that it employs. Whether it’s surgery, blood pressure, or diet these are all mechanical systems even though they’re complex.

In truth, the body’s mechanical systems are not entirely reducible to separate parts. Their interaction creates feedback loops and from these emerge new structures beyond those that are seen and controlled at the mechanistic level. These higher structures, such as the mind, are considered as separate and subject to their own rules and standards.