Psychedelics are revealing hidden sides to people's identity |
There is growing evidence that mind-altering drugs can be used to help people explore aspects about themselves they may not have realised.
Hunt Priest identified as straight for the first 60 years of his life. While he occasionally felt attracted to men, "it was not dominant and I was just much more interested in women", he says. He was happily married to a woman and had a stable career as a senior clergyman at an Episcopal Church in the Seattle area. Priest "never had any judgement about gay people at all", but queer culture and community "wasn't strong part of my experience", he says.
In 2016, however, Priest enrolled in a psychedelic drug trial at Johns Hopkins University. The study aimed to examine the effect of psilocybin – the primary active ingredient in magic mushrooms – on the religious and spiritual attitudes of clergy. For Priest, it would also put in motion major changes in his sexual orientation.
Psychedelic therapists, practitioners and academic researchers are beginning to recognise that mind-altering drugs can open up sides of the self that previously lay hidden, challenging entrenched understandings of gender and sexual orientation.
During two sessions of the trial where Priest received a dose of the psychedelic drug, he says he experienced the presence of God and the Holy Spirit "in a very dramatic and embodied way" that was new to him. "It was not necessarily sexual, but there was a sense of eros and sexual energy."
Priest did not experience any immediate difference in his sexual orientation. But he did notice a "subtle shift" in how he related to the world, he says. "I was more open."
Around the same time, his life was changing in other ways. He and his family moved to Savannah, Georgia. He switched jobs to work as a church rector, his son left for college and, most significantly of all, his wife asked for a divorce.
In the years that followed, Priest held off dating in the hopes that he and his wife might get back together. But five years after they separated, he was having coffee with a male friend-of-a-friend and – to his great surprise – suddenly felt "there was something there", he says. He eventually acted on those feelings. While lots happened in the years between his participation in the Hopkins trial and the start of his new relationship, he credits his psilocybin experience for making that possible. Today, he and the man are still together.
"I don't think psychedelics turned me gay," he says. What they did do, though, was make him receptive to new experiences and showed him it was OK to trust his body and intuition. "Working with psychedelics means opening yourself up to change," he says. "It brings about transformation."
Of course, unpicking the influence of a drug in such a transformation is complex. For one, the trial that Priest took part in was not conducted blind, so participants knew they were receiving a dose of psilocybin. It could conceivably have been that knowledge itself rather than the action of the drug that gave Priest the freedom to think differently about his sexuality.
A growing body of research, however, is suggesting there is something specific about psychedelic substances that make them useful for supportive explorations of sexual orientation and gender identity.
For decades, mental health practitioners and casual users alike have recognised that psychedelic drugs have potential applications in relationships, sex and sexuality. When therapists began working with MDMA in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, one of the first things they used it for was couples counselling – something that various research groups are now empirically testing. Certain psychedelics are also well known enhancers of intimate pleasure.
Although psychedelic drugs remain illegal in many parts of the world, some of these substances are now being legalised or decriminalised in a growing number of countries – opening up new therapeutic opportunities. Experts also warn against experimenting with these drugs at home or outside a carefully controlled therapy.
"Part of the beauty of psychedelics is that they loosen our fixed notions of ourselves in the world," says Jae Sevelius, a licensed clinical psychologist and behavioural health researcher at Columbia University who conducts research on psychedelics with sexual and gender minority communities. "The fact that they can create space for new ways for people to think about themselves – including their gender or their sexuality – is not at all surprising."
This work takes many forms. Some people intentionally pursue psychedelic therapy to address internalised negativity about their gender identity or sexual orientation, while others arrive at insights unexpectedly. For some, the realisation comes in a sudden, ah-ha moment during a drug trip. For others, it may take weeks, months or even years to distill what they have learned about themselves. For most, it takes time to process and integrate it into their lives.
"For some people, this is only something they've ever asked themselves internally, and........