Integration or commodification? A critical review of individual-centered approaches in psychedelic healing

Integration, the process of making sense of psychedelic experiences, is increasingly being reduced to formulaic checklists and sold as a marketable service, which risks stripping it of its potential for context-dependent personal change. This critical review traces the genealogy of integration in psychedelic medicine, contrasting contemporary Western practices with traditional Indigenous ones. The authors argue that the divergence stems from how continuous psychedelic experiences are with everyday social life and cosmology. Offering a Global South perspective, they warn against individualized, technological approaches prevalent in the US and Western Europe, and urge critical examination of assumptions behind digital psychedelia and app-based integration.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract In this article, we provide a genealogy of the concept of integration and a discussion of the multiplicity of practices it encompasses in the field of psychedelic medicine. Reflecting on our observations of psychedelic integration practices, we make three key observations. The first is that integration services tend to focus on the individual, at the expense of considering how societal factors lead to dis-ease. The second observation is that integration is increasingly rendered in formulaic checklists, at the expense of remaining an open-ended praxis, which runs the risk of emptying it of their potential to bring context-dependent change for people. Our third observation is that integration services are increasingly rendered as marketable services. Understanding how we got here and what is at stake requires a genealogical analysis of integration within the field of psychedelics. This critical review of psychedelic integration discusses the divergence between psychedelic practices in traditional or Indigenous contexts and contemporary psychedelic practices in Western industrialized, capitalist societies. We suggest that this divergence has to do with the degree to which psychedelic experiences are contiguous with everyday sociality and the cosmology that dominates in a given social context. Offering a viewpoint grounded in the Global South, our perspective aims to denaturalize some of the assumptions that prevail in research settings where highly individualized approaches and technological solutionism prevail, such as the USA or Western Europe. We highlighted the dangers of integration becoming too formulaic, commodified, and disconnected from the therapeutic or ceremonial contexts in which psychedelic experiences were carefully curated for millennia. Furthermore, we underscored the importance of critically examining the assumptions underlying the infrastructures of digital psychedelia and app-based integration practices.