Psychedelics in Recovery

Psychedelics in Recovery (PIR) is a syncretic organization adapting elements of Twelve Step Fellowships (TSFs), most notably: Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Narcotics Anonymous (NA), and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA), to attract members looking to incorporate the psychedelic experience as part of a spiritual program of ongoing recovery. The philosopher Alan Watts described the psychedelic experience as, “revelations of the secret workings of the brain, of the associative and patterning processes, the ordering systems which carry out all our sensing and thinking” (Watts, 2013). Watts saw value in using psychedelics to elicit such states that are for the psyche, “not an acquisitive process of learning more and more facts or greater and greater skills, but rather an unlearning of wrong habits and opinions.”

Psychedelics have a long history of use as a treatment for addiction, and there has been a recent continuation in this line of clinical research. Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA, was an early proponent of the potential for the LSD experience, as he underwent treatment for depression by psychedelic therapists in Canada. According to the book Distilled Spirits, Wilson’s insights under LSD influenced his writings on the concept of a higher power and the spiritual component the twelve steps were founded upon. Wilson tried unsuccessfully to petition AA to support the use of LSD for alcoholics, to offer a preview of sorts of what a spiritual awakening might look like for a “recovered drunk.”
The founding members of PIR recognized that there were very likely members across TSFs who have found personal benefit from using psychedelics, and presumably had to negotiate within themselves that psychedelic use did not conflict with their interpretation of sobriety/abstinence. Rather than based on recreational or even medicinal desire, they are seeking psychospiritual experiences to deepen their practice of incorporating twelve-step spiritual principles of recovery into daily living. Our group was established to acknowledge these practices, and to make available a more appropriate forum to share experience and seek/provide support than could be found in other TSFs.

-Kevin Franciotti

This is a peer-led group meeting every Wednesday at 6:30pm at Psanctum Thrift.
4033 SE Milwaukie Ave. Portland, OR. 97202
Free admission. Donations gratefully accepted.