🎙️Rick Doblin, PhD on Prohibition to Progress: The Evolving Landscape of Psychedelics

It's a reintegration. But the last time psychedelics were fully integrated in Western culture was all the way back around 392 in Greece, with the Eleusinian Mysteries. Everybody that we know of, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Plato, all these people participated in the Eleusinian Mysteries that had a psychedelic component. So I think we need to realize that the domination of religion and politics that squashed the Eleusinian Mysteries then, during the Middle Ages, killed all the witches, many of whom had information about plant medicines. Then, when the conquistadors come to North America, the first thing they do is they kill the shamans who are working with ayahuasca, peyote and mushrooms, because they were the center of their communities. And there was only this brief flowering during the 60s with psychedelics again. But that was too controversial. The backlash came, and now we're trying to 50, 60 years later, have a successful landing.