Because the real power is inside, and the synergistic total alkaloid plant medicines are by nature going to have a better effect on your body, mind, and spirit in the long term. Ketamine, the only legal psychedelic is synthetic, and as many will attest is highly addictive, and MDMA has a high LD-50 and increases your heart rate. While I am utterly grateful for the awesome journeys it has given me, lsd, like it’s nickname “acid” is very hard on the body if you use it over a length of time, as are most synthetic prescriptions. There are ways to mitigate the side effects and after effects but I have found myself aligning more with the plant sacraments because they are synergistic, not synthesized, a product of billions of years of co-evolution, and as a whole food my body receives it better.

The monetization of psychedelic medicines and the focus on the patentable one’s for profit while suppressing the plant-based ones is the power trip, since without the synthetic version of the plant there is no profit. My partner and Awake co-founder Jack Cross has spoken for a while about the relationship between the words “profit” and “prophet,” so similar, just a phonetic drift, and what I realized is that by reducing the plant sacrament to a couple of molecules and the profit-driven model, you have reduced it’s effects as well, and thereby reduced its power. This reduction in power also shows up in your consciousness, because you, my friend, are the potential prophet when journeying with a plant sacrament like ayahuasca, iboga, psilocybin, san pedro, or even cannabis.

To be clear, even plant-based entheogens have side effects. The ibogaine in iboga slows down the heart rate and thus can be dangerous for those with cardiac conditions or contraindications. Some people have extreme nausea with ayahuasca or other plants. But these side effects occur during the active phase and the residual effects are usually strengthening post-journey.

The commercialization of psychedelics causes people to suppress or marginalize the plant-based medicines and instead put forward the “synthetic” – dictionary meaning — “devised, arranged, or fabricated for special situations to imitate or replace usual realities.”