A couple of months ago, Gail Bradbrook, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, called for the mass ingestion of psychedelics as an act of civil disobedience. She suggests that psychedelics could serve as a catalyst to inspire people to turn to environmental activism.
However, others have argued that this suggestion might be poorly aimed. While it might serve to give some of the recorded benefits of psychedelic usage to a large number of people, it wouldn’t cause much immediate change in environmental policy. They instead suggest that we give our politicians drugs, magic mushrooms to be precise.
For the sake of argument, how bad of an idea is this really? Would it be effective?
Psychedelics have a variety of increasingly well-documented effects. Their use is associated with an increase in openness to new experiences and ideas, shifts in worldview, reduction in anxiety and depression, increases in creativity and empathy, and a newfound love of progressive rock.
Furthermore, they are known to decrease authoritarian tendencies in people which are, in turn, shown to be tied to a disregard for the environment.
It is easy to see why the suggestion of giving our political leaders the stuff would be made. Several of these traits seem like they could be good for anybody. If people with power gained these traits, perhaps they would make the world a better place.
The idea that we ought to give all of our politicians drugs isn’t a new one. Somewhat disturbingly, it is also one that has been suggested several dozen times throughout the past fifty or so years.
More of the more amusing suggestions came from the Beatles after they discovered marijuana and psychedelic drugs. In the Beatles Anthology, they discuss how they once felt that giving all of our leaders the stuff would put an end to wars.
Grace Slick, the lead singer of Jefferson Airplane, once even planned to spike the tea of Richard Nixon with 600 micrograms of LSD- roughly as much as your conspiracy theorist uncle took the day he realized the lizard people had taken over the world – to give him a new perspective on the world. Luckily for everybody involved, they didn’t let her onto white house grounds when they saw her bodyguard was Abbie Hoffman.
This story originally appeared at Big Think.