Psychedelic EmpathY
Manifesto

THE TOPIC:

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION IN CONNECTION WITH PSYCHEDELICS

A central aspect of the psychedelic journey is the experience of oneness, in which we feel ourselves as part of the pulsating life stream and the entire universe. There are no more clear boundaries between me and other living creatures. This phenomenon is one of the great potentials in therapy: The feeling of separation - root of many personal, social and ecological problems - is counteracted on a visceral level, and the individual can actually feel the connection and experience oneness. From this perspective, animal experiments are an act of self-mutilation.

Before substances reach the marketplace as medicaments for humans, the law demands that various tests with animals have to be performed…. regardless of the growing body of evidence that new, animal free, human based methods (for instance mini brains or chip systems) can predict both, the psychological and the physiological reactions of humans, better and deliver more relevant results. The often used argument in defense of animal testing is, that one can not test directly on humans. This doesn’t apply to psychedelics anyway: Many have been consumed for thousands of years, have been legal until a few decades ago, and are already being tested on consenting human volunteers around the globe.

Animal experiments with psychotropic substances practically never deliver reliable information on the pharmacological and psychoactive effects - this is especially true in the case of psychedelics. Only a human being can determine whether a psychotropic molecule has the expected / desired qualities - or not. The procedure to test those molecules on one self was established by the German pharmacologist and chemist Arthur Heffter and is to this day called the “Heffter-technic”.

But testing on animals is practiced far beyond the legally required … also with psychedelics. To cause harm to another being is a bad strategy for the ultimate goal of wellbeing. In doing so, we have to suppress our spontaneous, innate compassion and mercy, it undermines our humanity. This is especially true, if we inflict it on beings that are totally in our power.

It would be wonderful and auspicious, if the subject ‘animal experimentation’ (according to Albert Schweitzer one of the darkest chapters in the human history) would take a more prominent place in the awareness of the psychedelic community and culture. By doing so, we could - here too - make a small contribution to a friendly, peaceful world.

While most readers of this statement will not plan, leave alone execute, a test with animals, many psychonauts support, half conscious / half repressed, the stressing of our fellow earthlings Incilius (Bufo) alvarius and Phyllomedusa bicolor. The secretion they produce in fear of death and self defense has become very popular among westerners. If indigenous people practice such a thing, it is one thing - if all of a sudden 10 or even 100 thousand well to do white folks ask for it, a relentless hunt brings them to the brink of extinction and, worse yet, the poor frogs are being intensively farmed and stressed at regular intervals, so that we can scrape off the desired secretion - what is trivializing and misleading called milking. At any rate, 5-MeO-DMT is readily available in many plants and can also be produced synthetically.

Last but not least: Keyword intensive farming. In this context it is important to remember that our eating habits are by far the most important and powerful instrument we have, a true magic wand in our effort to find a respectful, non-violent way of walking this world.