What Can the Chemical Hold?: The Politics of Efficacy in the Psychedelic Renaissance.

Political tensions arise between two sources of efficacy in psychedelic therapy: the self and the chemical. Researchers and therapists sometimes emphasize the specificity of chemical effects tied to the neurobiology of particular diagnoses, and at other times foreground the self as the true source of experience not bound to biochemistry. Anthropologists have long seen efficacy as historically and socially embedded, a perspective given new weight by recent theorization of chemicals as material-semiotic structures shaped by experimental contexts. The article argues that while empirical claims of these two efficacies can mutually include each other, a fundamental political tension remains between the efficacious ends envisioned by each. Clinical trials link specific chemical effects to diagnostic populations, enfranchising the chemicals but not all their efficacies.

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Abstract

Drawing from ethnographic research with psychedelic therapists and researchers, this article explores political tensions between two sources of efficacy within psychedelic therapy: the self and the chemical. At times researchers and therapists emphasize the specificity of chemical effects in relationship to the neurobiology of particular diagnoses. And at other times they foreground the self as the true source of an experience which is not tied to that same biochemistry. Anthropologists have long emphasized that efficacy is a historically and socially embedded category and practice. Those conversations have new valence in light of recent theorization of the chemicals as material-semiotic structures shaped by their experimental contexts. This article argues that while the empirical claims embedded in these two efficacies can and do mutually include each other, a fundamental political tension remains between the efficacious ends envisioned by each. As clinical trials develop these drugs as therapeutic agents, they do so through linking the specific effects of the chemical to particular diagnostic populations, which may enfranchise these chemicals, but not all their efficacies.