The Ritualization of Drugs across Religious Contexts

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.