Psychedelics are older than recorded history: ayahuasca, peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, iboga, the soma of the Vedas. Many Indigenous Spirituality traditions held specific plants as sacred teachers, approached within strict ritual containers.
Contemporary research, renewed after a long suppression, has found that high-dose psilocybin sessions reliably occasion experiences meeting Stace’s criteria for Mystical Experience — and that such experiences are associated with lasting changes in well-being.
Nearly every traditional voice that has spoken to this says the same thing: the chemistry is a door, not the room. What one brings and what one integrates matters more than the substance itself.