On the Exhaustion of "Psychedelic": Lisa Bieberman and the Religious Use of Psychochemicals

American psychedelic users have often taken a turn toward religious life to situate and make sense of their profound experiences. In the 20th century and into the 21st, this turn towards religion also meant a “turn to the East,” invoking either Hindu or Buddhist traditions and cosmologies to make meaning of an extraordinary experience. These patterns suggest that psychedelics entail something altogether new to elucidate their true meaning. Yet early in this period of popular psychedelic experimentation in the late 1960s, Lisa Bieberman—a veteran of Harvard’s psychedelic research and head of the influential Psychedelic Information Center in Cambridge, MA— presented an alternative philosophy of psychedelic religion, rooted in Quaker practice and a radically simply gnosis that resulted from a psychedelic experience. Drawing from her essays and unpublished memoir, this paper will outline her view of psychedelic religion for “the West” and present its implications for contemporary psychedelic religious life.