A Plant for Peace? The Role of Ayahuasca Ceremonies in the Israel-Palestine Conflict
The usefulness of psychedelic drugs in creating inner peace, resolving inner conflict, and overcoming trauma has been well-documented. (1) However, what about the usefulness of these drugs in creating peace beyond the self? Peace between two groups in conflict? Could psychedelics offer healing for intergenerational traumas faced by different cultures and ethnic groups due to historical oppression? Or ongoing trauma experienced by those suffering because of political battles and war? Lead researcher Dr. Leor Roseman of Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychedelic Research (CPR), in collaboration with activist Antwan Saca, and Natalie Lyla Ginsberg of MAPS, set out to understand the potential role of psychedelics in healing cycles of conflict in Israel and Palestine. Through interviewing Palestinians and Israelis who had participated in ayahuasca ceremonies together, the research group investigated: “if and how psychedelics could play a role in moving towards a more peaceful and equitable society for Palestinians and Israelis.” (2)
Introduction
Ayahuasca is drink native to South America made from various plants, including the hallucinogen DMT. Drinking ayahuasca produces profound transformative experiences, and is often drunk in ritualistic and ceremonial settings for healing purposes and spiritual growth under supervision of a shaman. Ayahuasca ceremonies have found their way across the globe, including into Israel, which is fast-becoming one of the world leaders in research and medical use of psychedelics. (3)
Since the 1940s, conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over land territory and religious tensions has led to vast numbers of civilians being made to leave their homes. And devastatingly, there is an unfortunate number who have lost their lives as a result of armed violence. Ginsberg was inspired to go into the area of psychedelic research with the hope of finding ways to “heal global wounds”. Could this healing plant medicine play a part in soothing the global wounds from such disastrous conflict?
In her 2019 MAPS article Can Psychedelics Play a Role in Making Peace and Healing Cycles of Trauma? Ginsberg discusses the use of ayahuasca as a means of uniting indigenous communities healing from decades of violence in Colombia. Ginsberg, Roseman and Saca interviewed 18 Israelis and 13 Palestinians, seeking to determine whether drinking ceremonial ayahuasca in union might promote peaceful resolution between Palestinian and Israeli people.
Feelings of Interconnectedness
DMT researcher, Christopher Timmermann, found that giving DMT to volunteers in a scientific experiment produced feelings of harmony and unity.(4) Furthermore, a recent 2020 study found psychedelic-use led to increased feelings of social connectedness.(5) Brain scans have shown that, when people are on psychedelics, an area of the brain called the default mode network (DMN) is shut off. This is a brain area associated with the ego and sense of self which likely explains the biology of why people feel more in tune with others, as well as feeling focused on their own mind.
Feelings of interconnectedness with others and the world around are commonly reported when people drink ayahuasca. (6) Could having a greater connectedness with the “other” in the context of conflict help bring about a mindset more drawn to peaceful resolution?
In the team’s interviews of Palestinians and Israelis, feelings of unity elicited by ayahuasca brought about a sense of unity that seemingly overpowered political and religious differences.
At the 2019 Psychedelic Science Summit in Austin, Texas, Ginsberg quotes a Christian and a Muslim Palestinian Israeli woman she interviewed: (7)
“There were moments of love and open-heartedness, that we are all together. There is no ‘you are Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Christian.’ Everything was stripped, all this nonsense was out, and only acceptance and love were present.” “Arab letters have a wavelength, Hebrew has a wavelength, English has a wavelength, you are a wavelength, I’m a wavelength, there are endless wavelengths and at the merging of all the wavelengths there is the one which encompasses all the colours”.
Feelings of Empathy
Psychedelics have been shown to promote emotional empathy. (8) Would drinking ayahuasca bring about feelings and understanding and sympathy towards two separate groups in conflict?
A quote from an interviewed Jewish Israeli man: (7)
“There was one session that a group came from the occupied territories… someone began to cry.. another one began to cry, and it took me automatically to the madness of the pain of a whole people, I could see it. It was clear to me that they weren’t like weeping because they remembered a dead aunt or something, they are weeping for the pain of their people, and I am connected to that pain.”
One Christian Palestinian Man even quotes being inside the body of an Israeli soldier: (7)
“I had this weird experience of being in the body of an Israeli soldier. It was like seconds of experience- as the whole experience was the eye, looking down to shoot as the trigger is pulled, and that’s it, there is no seeing after… I could feel him after, this is painful, this is not an easy life after.”
Overcoming trauma
Trauma is the psychological and emotional response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is when someone has a constant remembering or “reliving” of the experience in the form of flashbacks, vivid memories and recurring dreams. (8) If someone has complex PTSD, they experience PTSD symptoms and are repeatedly exposed to traumatic events. This is unfortunately a consequence faced by experiencing repercussions from the armed violence in the Palestine-Israel conflict. One author describes: “Symptoms of trauma are logical responses to everyday violence and oppression; living in fear of being arrested or tortured at any given moment.” (3)
The role of psychedelics in overcoming trauma has been widely publicised. The psychedelic experience may allow one to experience and understand traumatic events in the past, and the non-classical psychedelic MDMA has shown promising results in treating PTSD. Experiments have suggested that the way in which ayahuasca works in the brain means it may be able to activate centres where traumatic memories are stored and help them be processed and reshaped. (9)
In the interviews with Palestinians and Israelis, it was apparent that engaging in ayahuasca ceremonies helped participants have a better understanding and relationship with their trauma. This better understanding could be a movement towards reducing fear and resentment towards the “other”.
One Palestinian man explained: (2)
“Even for me it was a big challenge which is how can you heal trauma if the trauma is ongoing. You can’t heal it, but you can bring a shovel and dig some shit out. Every once in a while, more shit will come out, but the more you dig out, the more space you create where people are free to see things differently, to engage differently, to be creative.”
A gender non-conforming Jewish-Israeli asked and articulated a perspective based on overcoming both individual and multigenerational traumas
“How do I heal the inner political map within me, to create change in the world? How [do we] heal the outer political map to create change within me? And how [do I] contain both”
The Problem of Bias
Ginsberg and team interviewed 13 Palestinians, 6 were Muslim and 7 were Christian. This is a huge overrepresentation, as Muslims make up the Majority of Palestinians, and generally Christian Palestinians have greater privileges and are less oppressed than Muslim Palestinians. (3) Also worth considering is the accessibility of ayahuasca. In Palestine, drugs are less culturally accepted than in Israel, with stricter drug laws. This means for Palestinian civilians, greater fear of policing is attached to ayahuasca ritual use.(3) A final consideration is that the interviewees were well-experienced with ayahuasca, questioning whether the openness in their experiences towards “the other” could be influenced by the fact they belonged to a type of people willing to step outside their normal consciousness.
With these cultural and personal influences, would ayahuasca would have a similar effect on the broader population of civilians from either territory in context of the conflict?
Conclusion
How could a plant bring about peace? When the interviewees were asked how ayahuasca could be implemented to bring about peace resolution, the majority replied: “to give it to the people in power.”(7) The findings from the interview shine a light on the potential of shared ayahuasca ceremonies in promoting harmony through an increased unity, empathy and changed approach to trauma.
The researchers are now beginning to explore how this internal work can lead to external work, from the individual to the population, and whether wide-scale social change is possible from the individual experience. We shall look forward to hearing how the research progresses, looking towards the future of how we as a global society approach hallucinogenic drugs, oppression and armed conflict as a whole.
References
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4813425/
- https://maps.org/news/bulletin/articles/438-maps-bulletin-winter-2019-vol-29,-no-3/7951-can-psychedelics-play-a-role-in-making-peace-and-healing-cycles-of-trauma
- Kassai, L (2020). Redrawing the MAPS: A critical analysis of a research study exploring ayahuasca’s role in Israel/Palestine
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6107838/
- https://www.pnas.org/content/117/5/2338#sec-11
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00020/full#h5
- “Can Ayahuasca Promote Peace in the Middle East? Conversations with Palestinians and Israelis.” MAPS, 26 Feb. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=arw3yzr5erY&t=880s
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5581487/
Originally published at https://www.thepsychedelicrenaissance.com on December 20, 2021.
