The cause of the current of the problem of palliative medicine in the “mirror” of shmerian-akkadian mythology

Modern methods for treating existential distress in incurable patients are unreliable, leading some specialists to consider symbolic death-rebirth experiences generated by entheogens, a form of psychedelic therapy. Society remains wary of this approach despite high narcotic use in palliative care. This wariness stems from a cultural taboo traced to Sumerian and Akkadian mythology, where the fruit of the Tree of Life was prohibited. Analysis suggests the original reason was that entheogen-induced symbolic rebirth creates psychological "wholeness"—inner serenity that reduces external adaptive activity, threatening archaic societal security. This raises whether the ban remains appropriate for incurable patients when conventional palliative therapies fail.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The unreliability of modern methods of treating existential distress in incurable patients draws the attention of a number of specialists to the possibility of using such an effective means of combating thanataphobia as gaining a symbolic experience of death – rebirth in palliative care, the simplest and most effective way of generating which is the use of entheogens. However, the topic of psychedelic therapy of the dying patients causes a wary attitude of society, despite the habitually high level of narcotic saturation of the field of palliative medicine. This attitude seems to be clearly conditioned by the cultural tradition of the prohibition of eating fruits from the Tree of Life, traced back to the era of Sumer and Akkad. Interpretation and analysis of the content of the mythological works of this ancient civilization give grounds to assert that the initial reason for the historical taboo on entheogens was the effect of the experience of symbolic rebirth in the form of the formation of the so-called psychological “wholeness”, i.e. a state of complete inner serenity, accompanied by a sharp decrease in the need for “external” adaptive activity. This circumstance, without a doubt, posed a fundamental threat to the well-being and security of society in the conditions of the archaic availability of this class of psychotropic substances. Such an “adaptive-civilizational” nature of the ban raises the question of its expediency in relation to those incurable patients for whom palliative means of distress therapy used by modern medicine turn out to be untenable.