Rebecca Kronman, writing for Chacruna:
For Westerners, the topic of children and psychedelics is a near-untouchable one, mired in taboo and stigma. Many find the idea of allowing children to ingest psychedelics, or even be in their presence, dangerous and irresponsible. As we stand on the precipice of greater access to these substances, it may be time to examine the views that have governed our mode of thinking by reaching outside of the Western canon.
As an aspiring future parent, I am very interested in the topic of psychedelic parenting. In this enlightening article, Kronman explores the differences between how indigenous societies view the idea of exposing children to powerful psychoactive drugs vs. we view it in the West.
Caution is most certainly warranted. Psychedelics are illegal in many countries and there hasn’t been a whole lot of research conducted in this area. But that doesn’t mean that Western parents should avoid introducing psychedelics to their children altogether. Indigenous cultures certainly don’t feel that way:
Unlike Western culture, where adults are cautioned to keep psychoactive substances away from children, in indigenous cultures, children may be involved in the harvest, ceremony, and ingestion of substances in both small and full doses. During the 2019 Horizons conference, speaker Steven Bennally, Board Director of the Indigenous Peyote Conservation Initiative, showed images of elders in his community harvesting peyote buttons with young children. During this time together, he said, the adults took the opportunity to teach children that when something is taken from the earth, something must be given back.
So children in indigenous cultures are often involved with the harvesting of psychedelics. And they become familiar with ceremonies at an early age, too.
Children are often present in ceremony while the adults ingest a substance. In some traditions, young children are given varying amounts of the substance as part of an initiation ritual. The Huichol Indians in Mexico give small doses of peyote to their children around age six, or “the age of understanding,” when they can verbally articulate their experiences; larger vision-inducing doses are given around age eight. Similarly, members of the Fang tribe in Gabon administer ibogaine to children around age eight to ten. Parents who are Santo Daime Church members give miniscule doses of ayahuasca to babies just hours old.
Some societies start introducing babies to psychedelics before they are even born:
Even before early childhood, some indigenous cultures, like the Huichol Indians of Mexico and members of the Native American Church (NAC) in the United States and Canada, utilize plant medicines prenatally or during breastfeeding to help prevent miscarriage, ensure the maturation of the fetus, and increase breastmilk production In fact, the story of a pregnant woman ingesting peyote is woven into the NAC Peyote Woman mythology, where a pregnant woman is lost in the desert and starving, and is called to ingest peyote, which helps her deliver the child with ease.
Responsible approaches to psychedelic parenting have evolved over time in many indigenous cultures. Those of us in the West stand to learn a lot from them, assuming we are willing to listen. I’m excited to see this topic being discussed more often and look forward to future research that helps us better understand the ramifications of exposing children to psychedelics.