Drugs and rituals often form a pair. Some religious rituals use drugs to induce altered states, while drug use and recovery often take place in ritualized contexts. The papers in this panel examine the interaction between drugs and rituals through case studies that analyze the creation of rituals for psychedelic-assisted therapy, ritualized practices used in Alcoholics Anonymous, and the hypothetical smoking of marijuana in the First Church of Cannabis.
This paper describes the creation and evolution of a group psilocybin ritual developed under the Oregon Psilocybin Services program. The religiously-neutral regulatory structure of the Oregon program poses a challenge for facilitators, namely, how to cultivate bonds of trust and construct an interpersonal “container” that is solid enough for participants to accept the disorientation of altered consciousness, without transgressing state-mandated regulatory limits on religious content in psilocybin administration sessions? As regulated psychedelic-assisted therapy expands to other states, improvisational ritualization around psychedelics offers scholars an unprecedented opportunity to observe the rapid development ritual in non-religious, pseudo-religious, or religion-adjacent contexts. The high stakes and personal precarity inherent in psychedelic environments reveals the precise work that ritual accomplishes, of providing a bridge from “normal” life into liminal or even exceptional/transcendent states. The importance of pre-dose rituals to group psychedelic processes underscores the role ritual can play in developing social cohesion and social trust.
Many people come to Alcoholics Anonymous less than enthusiastic about the “God part.” How then do they come to experience a relationship with some kind of higher power that they say helps them to stop drinking? Reluctant newcomers are often reassured that they can choose a higher power that works for them and are sometimes encouraged to “act as if” they believe, until they actually do. Using anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann’s helpful concept of spiritual “kindling,” this paper will explore how AA members make “conscious contact” (Step 11) with their higher powers to help them get and stay sober. Grounded in archive research, ethnographic observation, and interviews with 34 current and former members of AA, I will reveal how ongoing “conscious contact” became the proposed solution to alcoholism advocated by AA’s founders and how contemporary members seek such contact through ritualized practices and resulting spiritual experiences.
In 2015, Bill Levin established the First Church of Cannabis (FCOC) in Indiana, and claimed that the state’s newly passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act legalized his church’s central ritual, i.e., the corporate smoking of marijuana. Subsequent lawsuits determined otherwise, but the FCOC continues to operate today, gathering weekly to hear sermons, share testimonials, and engage in what I call a “hypothetical” version of the this central ritual. The endurance of the FCOC and of a denuded version of this central ritual raises fascinating religious studies questions. This paper focuses on three: 1) The power of even a “hypothetical” ritual to organize and link a community’s ethos and worldview, 2) the fact and nature of ritual innovation, and 3) affect in the context of religious rituals and beliefs that explicitly center the body and acknowledge its needs and desires.