Narcissists and Psychedelics

Beware the pull...

Although rarely discussed, researchers have known for sometime about a major shadow of psychedelic work: Narcissists are drawn to psychedelics because they make perfect manipulation tools. In 2022, I sat in on a Chacruna session in which researchers and harm-reduction advocates Dr. Hannah McLane and Emma Knighton discussed the fact that narcissists are “highly drawn to psychedelic cults.”

There are many reasons for this, but here are a few salient ones:

• Psychedelics give people a sense of power. Although ego death is often touted as the apex experience of tripping, we’d be wise to remember that the opposite is also possible: ego inflation. Psychedelics make fabulous narcissistic extensions that can be easily used to support grandiosity.

• The psychedelic renaissance promotes a “curative fantasy.” This fantasy involves working with wise guides to achieve a restored sense of self and is ripe for manipulation. People with complex PTSD are especially vulnerable to this type of manipulation.

• Psychedelics obliterate all sorts of boundaries, providing ample opportunities for manipulation.

• Psychedelics facilitate intense bonding. Most non-naive drug users will tell you how easy it is to fall in love with your dealer, yet many advocates promote psychedelics as different from other drugs.

• The bonding experience with psychedelics can be so intense that it leads to limerence—a state of involuntary obsession.

• Aspects of the psychedelic renaissance have cult-like dynamics. Secrecy is encouraged in the underground. I still don’t understand why people idolize Rick Doblin or even listen to him because I think he’s boring and kinda gross. Of all the psychedelic researchers I’ve heard speak, he’s one of the least interesting, yet he arguably has some of the most power in the space. Ditto Michael Pollan, who does little more than rehash the insights of people who are more interesting than him but who people listen to as if he were a cult leader.

• Bad actors in the psychedelic scene rarely face consequences for their actions.

Research in the 80s showed cults appeal to narcissists because their structure provides a “psychosocial fit” for the needs of a narcissistic personality through their “offer to heal defects in the self.” Because narcissists operate from a defective sense of self, cults provide them a highly intoxicating fantasy of a new, idealized self. This is why you should never trust someone who isn’t out about their shadow side(s). Show me a bunch of guys who claim to be good, and I’ll be running the opposite direction. These days, I only fw my fellow underworld travelers who aren’t afraid to admit where they been.

A recent story in Business Insider that profiled Rick Doblin included testimony from dozens of former employees who described cult dynamics at MAPS in which power was co-related to proximity to Doblin. This creeps me out because it reminds me of the dynamics around my former teacher, a famous underground facilitator who has been working in the scene for more than 40 years. When he showed me special attention, an older woman I trusted suggested I was lucky, saying I could sleep with him. At first, her suggestion shocked me and grossed me out because he was a 5-foot man in his 60s, but the closer I got to him the more he pulled me in and the more intoxicated by the fantasy I became. I never did sleep with him and by the time I was writing my novel, The Shaman’s Wives, I was so disgusted by the idea that I imagined someone I worked with at a weed shop giving me a hickey instead. If you know me well, then you know I will never stop relating anything I can back to hickeys.

The women around my teacher were highly-educated, beautiful and jockeying for position. They pecked each other the way I see birds in the park fighting over a french fry—they had the I’ll-have-what-she’s-having syndrome. At first I thought it was curious and funny; at first I made fun of the women around my teacher. On the surface, they promoted ideas of healing, spirituality and enlightenment, but when it came down to it, they were backbiting each other just like the teenagers in Mean Girls. When his interest in me increased, these women forgot about my “healing journey” and began treating me as their rival. Then my teacher’s live-in girlfriend attempted suicide and it wasn’t so funny anymore.

When I reported these dynamics to other women who worked with my teacher, they validated me by rehashing stories of other women who had been harmed by him but then, paradoxically and painfully, often reported they would continue to work with him because of the healing potential of psychedelics.

But, you see, I don’t think that’s how this works. When I decided to move to Rocky Boy’s Reservation in 2020 instead of moving to LA to work for my former teacher, I immediately encountered creepy medicine men who helped me see the real effects of narcissistic manipulators in healing and psychedelic spaces. Once again, I met the creepy medicine men through women who encouraged me to trust them and their knowledge. Except this time, they were more crass. One self-proclaimed medicine man offered to teach me to be a water carrier in peyote ceremonies if I slept with him, despite the fact that he was married, nearly 70 years old and had only one leg.

I declined, saying I didn’t believe you could acquire such knowledge that way, leading the man and his family to harass me continually until I left Rocky Boy. This man had occupied many positions of power on the Rez, including serving as the chair of the school board and as the chief of police. Later, someone I love and respect very much told me a story about a cousin who was picked up by this creep one night when he was still chief of police. The creep took the woman to his house on the Rez where he locked her in his basement and then raped her for several weeks. Interactions with girls in the school where I taught revealed they feared this family so much that they wouldn’t report striking and terrible things that happened to them because it would “blow back on us.” I truly didn’t understand the consequences of supporting or working with creeps until I sat in a room with girls who flew into a state of agitation and hysteria over the idea of reporting sexual harassment. Some of my students were more afraid of reporting than they were of suffering abuse.

What you do when you refuse to report or call out a creep, especially in the psychedelic scene, is merely push the shit downstream. Maybe you can sit on your high horse and pretend you were smart enough not to be manipulated by the narcissist, but rest assured this position facilitates the harm of others. One of the most disturbing dynamics I experienced on the Rez was other women who were literally sleeping with the medicine man creeps AND doing their dirty work by finding them new victims and harassing people who were brave enough to call them out. The women around my teacher operated in the same way, just with the sheen of the psychedelic renaissance excusing their actions. Some of the people who do this have made a nasty bargain: They believe showing loyalty to powerful creeps will earn them protection, and possibly spiritual power and wealth.

But it never does.

No true power or healing can be found in such dynamics.