So what's so important about the psychedelic experience? Why is it any more interesting than your typical bizarre dream, nightmare, or other psychotic episode? Why is the state sought out by so many people? Why is it worth examining is such detail?
Yes, indeed, that is the big question: Why are psychedelics so important? There is no simple answer to that, none that will fit into a sentence or two. But nonetheless, psychedelics are important, they are very important. And when I say that they are important, I mean that they are an essential part of human culture; they should be respected; they should be studied; they provide insight into both past and future; they can have real influence over us. A quick dictionary check of "important" brings up this definition: Strongly affecting the course of events or the nature of things. Yes, that is psychedelics in a nutshell. They are important.
I won't presume to tell you why psychedelics are important, and I wouldn't expect you to take my word for it if I did. But when I say that they are important I say so because — like so many other things that have clung to us along the way — psychedelics have played an intrinsic role in the development of human culture, religion, and society since the dawn of our species. We would not be who were are today without their subtle and sometimes overt influence over us. We will not be who we will be in one-thousand years from now without them. They have influenced and will influence human culture for the rest of time, and I don't think there's any way of getting around that. Psychedelics are entrenched in human society; they are pandemic; they are intertwined into our history and collective consciousness as deeply as apples and stars and diamonds and gold. For proof, I only ask you to spend five minutes thumbing though the children's section of your local bookstore without being completely overrun by images of spotted Fly Agaric toadstools and fanciful fairies flitting about on trails of sparkling pixie dust. These innocuous icons of childhood lore are thumbprints of the psychedelic influence on our culture, and are only a few examples in a vast array of psychedelic influences which permeate our culture.
I mention this only because it is very easy to dismiss psychedelics altogether as not important, not useful, and perhaps even dangerous, simply because they are illegal and poorly understood. Prohibition aside, psychedelics do continue to affect society at large. Just because the effect of a psychedelic may be classified as "delusional" does not mean that they don't have real consequences or real influence on the real world. They do, they have, they will continue to do so. Locking the mystery away and labeling it taboo is not the answer. This psychedelic experience is possibly the most powerful beast in the entire arsenal of human experience, but it can be tamed, and it can be used effectively for a number of purposes, clinical, recreational, diabolical, and otherwise.
For someone who has not tried psychedelics, or who has had a bad experience, it is easy to dismiss the psychedelic experience as akin to a mental disorder; an induced delusional psychosis to be avoided at all costs. For that kind of skeptic there will always remain a big mystery here as to the whole psychedelic attraction. Why indeed would something so perverse as a mushroom induced delusional head-trip be so intimately woven into the fabric of our culture (both literally and figuratively)? If you look at the psychedelic purely as a catalyst for psychosis — a psychotomimetic as they were called in the early days — then of course it seems extremely perverse that an insanity-producing agent, a toxin no less, might hold such a prominent role in the fundamental development of our species. But if you view the psychedelic as a sacrament — an entheogenic agent that manifests divine grace in the user when ingested in a ritual context — then the answer to this question becomes obvious. In a culture so fascinated with religion and God, the question should be: Why isn't the psychedelic considered to be an essential part of human culture?