Thomas Murphy
Earlier this year, I sat down with Haggeo Cadenas, a seventh-year philosophy Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego, to discuss his research. His dissertation identifies ways that biological and cultural evolution have shaped people’s learning styles and experiences over time, especially concerning psychedelic usage.
“My work shows how [social learning] evolves from reinforcement learning and social group dynamics,” Cadenas explained. “I also argue how norms for trust and the value of truth evolve from cultural evolutionary processes.”
Cadenas’ work offers a new approach to studying psychedelic use; in his papers, he synthesizes established biological, cultural, and philosophical research in the hopes of explaining how these different aspects come together to define a person’s psychedelic experience.
“Society’s norms, beliefs, and expectations of what psychedelic experiences are — and should be — lead people to seek out certain kinds of experiences,” Cadenas said. “If you expect psychedelics to be some very crazy experience, you will dismiss the more subtle and normal aspects of psychedelic experiences. To give another example, therapists can tell you to think about a negative psychedelic experience as a source of insight. The experience may have nothing inherently insightful about it, but you may be prompted to make meaning out of it.”
Cadenas argues that social factors, such as cultural and spiritual practices, influence an individual’s experience with the substance.
“Take ayahuasca rituals in Peru,” Cadenas offered as an example. “You’re not just taking a drug — you’re fasting, avoiding social contact, and stepping into a spiritual worldview. Shamans may say they learned a healing song or practice from a plant spirit. These cultural elements shape the experience and its effects.”
Cadenas noted that psychedelic rituals often tend to involve social and sensory isolation, which offers the consumer a moment of reflection. In contrast, cultural practices in the U.S. often lead to a completely different psychedelic-use experience.
“If you go to a shaman in Peru for an ayahuasca ritual, you don’t just take a psychoactive drug like you would take medicine from a doctor in the U.S.,” he said. “The point I want to stress is that these cultural elements impact the kind of experience someone has — and its effects.”
Despite this evidence, many in the research community question the utility of Cadenas’ research. The topic is largely unexplored, to the point where it is difficult to find existing research or researchers.
Cadenas believes that if the public begins to notice the parallels between psychedelic experiences and the sensations we usually feel without using substances — like time distortion — their minds will be more open to his research. According to Cadenas, psychedelic experiences are not caused solely through the use of substances; rather, psychedelics emphasize these feelings embedded in our everyday lives.
“The distinction between psychedelic experience and your ordinary experience is not sharp,” he said. “We might come to a point where we can recognize our ordinary life as full of psychedelic experiences, moments where you feel time differently, feel your sense of self kind of differently.”
Cadenas is on track to completing his dissertation soon, and he is engaging with other interdisciplinary academic pursuits to deepen his research in the meantime.