While psychological studies continue to suggest that “magic” mushrooms help alleviate depression, another out of Imperial College London believes the fungi may also have political value. The study, conducted by Robin Carhart-Harris, the school’s head of psychedelic research, found that shrooms left those with treatment-resistant depression with feelings of “decreased authoritarian political views” and that “psilocybin therapy may persistently decrease authoritarian attitudes post-treatment.”
Although he’s quick to assert “further research is required to test the robustness of this relationship,” mostly because of the study’s small sample size, the intuitive answer for mushroom lovers (like, you know, me) is, “Duh!” Especially given psilocybin’s well-researched effects on one’s openness and personality.
I first spotted this research on an Antifa Instagram celebrating the results. This got me thinking about the vocal neo-conservative political voices populating the media today, especially the Alt-Right. What would happen if they all did shrooms? Beyond that, if Trump is our “homegrown authoritarian,” then how might mushrooms affect all those people who voted for him? Could they become empathetic enough to begin undoing their racist and xenophobic thinking? Could their depressed, gun-loving digital isolation be treated with a few potent mushroom caps?
On that count, history isn’t a great guide (not like shrooms at least). There are no accounts that I could find about prominent Western political leaders and the use of psilocybin. And when I ask Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor at NYU and author of the upcoming Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed and How They Fall, she responds that she didn’t think so, and offers instead “evidence of squads of Italian fascists using cocaine and other stimulants on their head-bashing expeditions in Ethiopia and in World War II.”
I did find one account of hallucinogenic mushroom use during battle — among the Zulus during their battle against the British Empire in the late 1870s, but they were unsuccessful and subsequently colonized. (Many indigenous cultures have consumed hallucinogenic mushrooms in regular ceremonies, particularly the Aztecs, but Western colonial powers have long understood mushrooms as pacifying and thus avoided them).
melmagazine.com
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