Mescaline: A Neglected Tool for Psychotherapy
The Main Players in the Therapeutic 'Psychedelic Renaissance'
The Therapeutic Potential of Mescaline
Mescaline is the psychedelic for which we have the earliest evidence of human use. Dried peyote buttons have been discovered in a cave on the Rio Grande in Texas that are around 5,700 years old, while at Chavin de Huantar, a temple complex in the Peruvian Andes thought to date as early as 1,200 BC, you can find a stone carving showing a part-human, part-jaguar figure clutching a San Pedro cactus.
Currently, the Tarahumara, Tepehúan, and Huichol peoples of northern Mexico, as well as the Navajo and Comanche in the southern United States, use peyote in a ritualistic setting for the purposes of healing and making contact with the spirit world. In addition, members of the Native American Church (NAC) – a Pan-Indian religion made up of different Native American tribes – participate in all-night peyote ceremonies as a way to receive visions and messages from the Great Spirit (a supreme being).
In high enough doses, mescaline can indeed induce profound visions, healing, and wisdom, much like ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms. Interestingly, however, the writer Mike Jay claims that for indigenous peoples using mescaline-containing cacti, not much attention is paid to the visions that arise; the focus is instead on the insights received. This contrasts with early Western experimenters, who focused a great deal on the visual aspect of the mescaline experience. These literary, scientific, and philosophical figures included Havelock Ellis, J.A. Symons, Jean-Paul Sartre, Aldous Huxley, and H.H. Price.
The most well-known account of the mescaline experience is Huxley’s The Doors of Perception (1954), from which we can see that the compound is capable of inducing profound experiences and philosophical insights. Moreover, when the British MP Christopher Mayhew took mescaline live on a BBC Panorama show in 1955, we saw how mescaline can cause mystical effects: after the experience, Mayhew said “on many occasions that afternoon I existed outside time”; it was an experience that took him “beyond absolute time”.
While many people find that mescaline does not induce mystical effects as easily as other psychedelics, it still certainly can include effects like ego dissolution, insightfulness, a sense of the ‘divine’, feelings of unity, transcendence of time and space, ineffability, and deeply felt peace and joy. But why is this relevant in the context of psychotherapy? Well, psychedelic researchers maintain that the mystical experience drives the efficacy of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Indeed, patients with depression who show the greatest improvements in their symptoms following psilocybin therapy are those who score high on questionnaires measuring mystical-type experiences.
Since mescaline can lead to these experiences, then there is every reason to think it can also be helpful in the treatment of depression, for instance. But mystical effects are not the only aspect of psychedelics that have therapeutic value. These compounds also help benefit people’s mental health by:
- Increasing connection to one’s emotions
- Producing emotional breakthroughs
- Enhancing spirituality and emotional regulation
- Encouraging acceptance of distressing emotions
- Eliciting insights
- Increasing psychological flexibility
- Altering one’s sense of self
Besides indirectly connecting mescaline use with improved mental health (based on studies with other psychedelics), as well as anecdotal reports of its benefits, there is some (limited) research on the therapeutic potential of mescaline.
A 2021 study, published in the journal ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, found that the use of mescaline appears to be associated with improvements in mental health conditions. Researchers recruited 452 adults from around the world who had used mescaline at least once. Participants then completed a wide-ranging questionnaire about their experience, well as a mental health assessment looking at symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD, alcohol misuse or alcohol use disorder, and drug misuse or drug use disorder.
Around one-third of participants said their mescaline experience was among the top five most personally meaningful or spiritually significant experiences of their lives. Nearly half indicated they experienced depression or anxiety at the time of their mescaline use, and among those who had depression, 86% reported improvements in the condition after using the drug, while among those who had anxiety, 80% reported improvements. However, most participants did not take mescaline with the intention of bettering their mental health.
The researchers found that mental health benefits were associated with specific aspects of the psychedelic experience, including more mystical-type effects, greater psychological insight, and more ego dissolution effects. The authors, nonetheless, add some caveats:
“It is important to note the methodological limitations of our study and to urge caution when interpreting these findings,” the researchers said. “As this was a cross-sectional study, we cannot infer causality regarding the impact of mescaline on psychiatric conditions. Results are also limited by possible self-selection by individuals favourably disposed toward psychedelic experiences.”
“Nevertheless, the results from our study indicate that when administered in a naturalistic setting, mescaline may facilitate unintended improvements in self-reported depression, anxiety, PTSD, and substance use disorders.”
Research from 1974 suggests that peyote could be useful in the treatment of alcoholism among Native Americans. Also, a 2005 study published in Biological Psychiatry found no evidence of long-term psychological or cognitive deficits among Native Americans who use peyote regularly in a religious context. The researchers who published the 2021 study on mescaline published a later paper, in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, noting that the substance has a “low potential for abuse”.
But research on mescaline is lacking. Controlled, clinical trials are needed to establish just how effective mescaline is for treating mental health conditions.
The Benefits of Mescaline Compared to Other Psychedelics
Mescaline should not be neglected as a tool for psychotherapy as it seems to have some unique benefits. Most likely due to being a phenethylamine (as MDMA and 2C-B also are), the mescaline headspace tends to be more lucid, more euphoric, and easier to control than psilocybin, for example. Many actually compare mescaline to being like MDMA combined with LSD or psilocybin. The mescaline experience is often characterised by feelings of empathy, connection, love, and physical euphoria. While it is, of course, possible to have a challenging and distressing experience when taking mescaline, it seems to be less likely to occur than with LSD or psilocybin.
The clearer, easier-to-navigate headspace of a mescaline experience is useful in a clinical setting, as this may reduce the risks of adverse psychological reactions. Many people who struggle with a mental health condition – especially one that is severe, chronic, and unresponsive to other treatments – could be eager to try psychedelic-assisted therapy as an alternative, effective option. Yet they may be hesitant and worried about experiencing states of anxiety, fear, panic, loss of control, confusion, and feeling overwhelmed. If mescaline is used, such reactions might be less likely to occur.
It should be underscored that the common anxiety seen in clinical trials with psilocybin is transient, so it doesn’t last long. Nonetheless, these trials involve small numbers of people. When psychedelic therapy becomes available to the masses, it is possible that more serious adverse reactions will occur. Indeed, it is not uncommon for people to experience strong negative experiences following the ingestion of psilocybin mushrooms, even in supportive settings. If research could show that mescaline leads to fewer negative subjective effects than other psychedelics, then this would make it a promising adjunct to psychotherapy.
Some Reasons Why Mescaline Has Been Neglected in Research
Mescaline was first synthesised in the laboratory in 1919, and then from 1920, mescaline sulphate was available as a pure drug from European pharmacy suppliers such as Merck. Psychologists and neurologists, particularly in Germany, gave mescaline to dozens of subjects, generating hundreds of pages of reports documenting their visions and revelations. By the 1950s, when psychiatry embraced the biomedical approach, mescaline was widely used in schizophrenia research.
LSD already existed by this time (the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann synthesised it in 1943). Eventually, psychiatrists and pharmacologists agreed that mescaline and LSD intoxication were very similar. However, Jay notes:
The most significant difference was the dose. LSD was massively more potent: a gram of mescaline was around three doses, but a gram of LSD was thousands. This made LSD more intriguing to the mind scientists since it was obviously working with far greater precision on whatever brain mechanisms these drugs were activating. It was also, of course, much more economical.
Researchers may also overlook mescaline in favour of other psychedelics because of its long duration (which would also make mescaline-assisted psychotherapy more expensive than the psilocybin variety, due to the greater amount of time involved). It is not unheard of for a high-dose mescaline trip to last 16+ hours. In comparison, a psilocybin experience lasts around six hours, while an LSD experience tends to last 12 hours (sometimes longer).
Having said that, the subjective effects of mescaline can last around the same amount of time as those of LSD for many people. Furthermore, ibogaine-assisted therapy is being researched, with treatment centres operating in several countries, and these involve journeys lasting 24 hours or longer.
Another possible reason why there is less of a push for mescaline-assisted psychotherapy could be due to nausea. Mescaline is known to lead to more nausea and vomiting than psilocybin. Even in its synthetic form, this compound can be hard on the stomach, especially in high doses (which would be used in psychedelic therapy).
Researchers from one of the 2021 mescaline studies, nonetheless, state that nausea and vomiting are more frequently linked to consuming peyote than other methods of mescaline ingestion. It has been suggested that this is due to its bitter taste, as well as other chemicals found in the plant, rather than just mescaline. It should be emphasised, however, that San Pedro can still produce noticeable and prolonged nausea.
When it comes to synthetic mescaline, volunteers in a 1992 study who took this form of the drug did not report nausea or vomiting. This doesn’t mean the pure, synthetic version won’t induce such effects, of course, as many people (including Jay) have experienced nausea from it. The overall likelihood, though, is that such physical effects will be less likely or not as intense compared to consuming peyote or San Pedro. For example, James, who was eager to have a mystical experience from peyote, instead had a day of vomiting and diarrhoea.
Despite the potential for mescaline to have more (initially) unpleasant physical effects than psilocybin or LSD, many people are willing to accept this price for the rewards of the experience. Patients wanting to sign up for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy should likewise have this option.
Promising Changes
