Toward a Psychedelic Theodicy: Psychedelic Biomedicine and the Concept of “Risk”

Biomedicine cannot adequately address the negative entity encounters and 'bad trips' that many psychedelic users report. This essay argues that a different ontological approach is needed to understand these experiences and support patients. It proposes a psychedelic theodicy as a framework for contextualizing such challenging psychedelic phenomena, drawing on perspectives beyond the biomedical model.

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Abstract

Biomedicine is insufficiently able to address “bad trips” and specifically negative entity encounters that psychedelic users regularly aver. To address the inadequacy of biomedicine to address this question, this essay proposes a turn toward other ontologies better equipped to understand these experiences and support patients. This paper presents a model/framework for contextualizing psychedelic experience through one such ontological turn: a psychedelic theodicy.