Updated 2 years ago
Pseudoscience and conspiracies are a serious problem in America. The antivaxxer movement, Trump’s promotion of Q Anon and hydroxychloroquine, Creationism, the list goes on and on.
As a subset of this problem, the New Age wellness industry, alongside the psychedelic scene, ayahuasca, and any other sector that encourages alternative medicine, Eastern mysticism, and/or “consciousness”, is a wellspring for charlatans and should be vetted and viewed with careful skepticism.
That said, I have partaken of ayahuasca many times and it was incredibly profound and life-affirming. Everything does not have to be parsed with 1s and 0s through a Newtonian lens. Although I welcome its use coming under the spotlight of critique, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Terence McKenna said it best – let the substances themselves do the heavy lifting, and leave the middlemen out of the equation. This intuition has always been one of the strengths of psytrance and psychedelic culture.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/aug/12/unwell-netflix-series-dark-side-of-wellness-industry
https://www.insider.com/netflix-unwell-looks-at-trends-like-fasting-tantric-sex-ayahuasca-2020-8
