A Call for Embodiment
Navigating Consent and Sexuality Before and During the Psychedelic Experience
This article by Amsterdam-based Integral Psychotherapist Ben van Kempen was originally published in the Psychedelic Press journal (issue XXXVI). You can subscribe to future print issues here, or upgrade to a paid digital subscription on our Substack for the full article:
The psychedelic renaissance is upon us. Psychedelics are being rediscovered by the scientific community—both as objects of basic research and as therapeutic applications. We have finally, after many decades of prohibition, reached a time where some writers are no longer afraid to use such sentences as: ‘we are on the precipice of a mental health treatment revolution’[i]. And while it remains to be seen how soon this will happen, and what obstacles will pop up along the way, it seems inevitable at this point that society’s views on psychedelics will be changing rapidly in the upcoming years, and that means it is also only a matter of time before mainstream culture will become more and more aware of psychedelics—perhaps first only within the context of research and therapeutic applications, but from there, the shift in realisation regarding what psychedelics will mean outside of those contained contexts, might turn out to be a surprisingly fast jump.
This means that, regardless of a specific country or region’s legislation when it comes to legalisation or decriminalisation of psychedelics—or lack thereof—more and more people are going to be using psychedelics, in a recreational context. It will be something to enjoy with friends, with family, and inevitably, with our partners and lovers. This is, after all, already happening:
‘People in the psychedelic community seek to explore ecstatic, expansive, and non-ordinary states of consciousness. Two of the main avenues for reaching ecstatic states are chemical intoxicants and sex. It is therefore likely that some people will seek to explore them together.’[ii]
Unfortunately, even just based on the lack of how much sex and psychedelics are talked about, the truth of the matter is that as a psychedelic community, we are woefully unprepared for the rise of this utopian scenario of psychedelic acceptance; for the most part, the only time we are talking about psychedelics and drugs, is how much of an amazing, possibly mystical experience it is—and hardly ever about what I believe we really need to be communicating about:
‘How do we navigate the psychedelic sexual experience in a consensual, ethical way, when facing challenges inherent to the psychedelic state, such as the fact that the psychedelic experience can reduce the verbal and non-verbal ability to communicate consent, that it can diminish the capacity to make sexual decisions and that it has the power to, possibly drastically, change perceived sexual norms?’
In order to answer this question, it is paramount that we learn to talk openly about psychedelics and sex. And that includes means acknowledging and facing up to our shadow: sexual abuse, exploitation and misconduct in the context of psychedelics. Sexual misconduct in the psychedelic community is real, shockingly prevalent, and thankfully, awareness about it is growing. Of particular note is sexual abuse in ayahuasca cults, and for those interested to read up on the topic, Chacruna has a whole category of articles on their website on Sex & Power, with a good number of them concerning this matter.[iii]
However, these are often examples where sexual contact mixes up with an unhealthy power relationship (often in the form of teacher-student relationship), and where the sexual abuse is aided by the psychedelic intoxicant, but would have been sexual abuse either way.
Some people, particularly those with a more conservative way of looking at the world, question whether consent even exists in a state of psychedelic intoxication. It turns out that that question has a history, as Alexander Dawson explains:
‘Religious and other authorities have long objected to the circulation of psychedelics on the grounds that they pervert the sexual mores of their users. In early efforts to outlaw North American peyote religions, as well as struggles among the Navajos during the 1930s, critics of peyote rehearsed a series of myths: that peyote ceremonies were really just cover for orgies; that young, male peyotists lured innocent young women into peyote cults so as to incapacitate them and deflower them; that peyote turned upstanding citizens into sexual deviants. […] Their claim (which lacked any actual evidence) rested on the assumption that young women were intoxicated by peyote, and lost their moral compasses (their capacity to resist). They were thus incapacitated and, in the modern sense, unable to consent. […] If there is any lesson in this, it is a reminder that sex is never just sex; that it is bound up in a host of beliefs and assumptions that tell us a great deal about specific moments and places.’[iv]
However, taking into account the fact that there are a lot of beliefs and assumptions in place around, there is nonetheless an argument that can be made, that sometimes ‘at higher intoxication levels, irrespective of whether consent was verbally communicated, or what that decision would have been otherwise, people may lack capacity to make sexual decisions in the first instance.’[v]
So let us look deeper into the meaning of consent. Consent is a more complex concept than many people would like it to be. Definitions surrounding (sexual) consent and how it should be communicated is often contradictory, limited or without consensus. In addition, the moral notion of consent does not always line up with the legal notion of consent. These days, the golden standard in the eyes of many of consent is so-called affirmative consent: ‘it's the concept of both parties agreeing to sexual conduct, either through clear, verbal communication or nonverbal cues or gestures’.[vi]
Smith, Kolokotronia and Turner-Moore’s thematic synthesis study data also pointed to the need to move beyond affirmative consent: ‘Many policymakers, educators and activists position affirmative consent as the “gold-star” standard’.[vii] However, the data from this thematic synthesis suggest a need to go beyond the discussion of affirmative consent to identify what it means to have the capacity to make sexual decisions. Drawing upon the mental health and medical field may be beneficial when devising educational programmes and materials, as it sets out greater guidance for assessing a person’s capacity to consent. Using the Mental Capacity Act (2005) as a starting point, we may consider a model of consent that first encourages people to assess whether sexual partners are able to: retain information over extended periods of time (e.g., health-status, whether a condom is being used), weigh up the pros and cons of a decision (e.g., benefits and harms of engaging in this particular sex at this particular time), appreciate the likely consequences of a decision (e.g., emotional, relational, physical), as well as make and communicate decisions. In this review, drug-taking was found to impact each of these areas to varying degrees. For example, they increased suggestibility, increased and decreased clarity of thought and could result in an inability to remain aware during sexual encounters or remember what took place after the event. Drug-taking also resulted in a reduced ability to assess sexual health-related risks and/or consider the potential consequences of actions.’[viii]
As much as we would like it to be different, there is no crystal clear moment when the challenges of being in the psychedelic state compared to the default state of mind alters this capacity to consent to such a degree that consent can no longer be given in a meaningful way, if it can be given at all. In reality, there is a sliding scale, a grey zone where consent becomes more difficult to manage for parties involved. More difficult, but certainly not impossible. The key is that consent is not exactly a black or white, it is there or it is not there kind of situation: while it is absolutely true that there are cases where there is clear meaningful consent and also clear cases where consent has been clearly violated, there is a whole spectrum in between where the definition gets murky, and in the case of the psychedelic experience, it gets a little less clear by definition as the capacity to make sexual decision, as noted in the quote above, (possibly) decreases.
While affirmative consent is obviously still useful to strive towards (clear consent is still clear consent), there is nevertheless a need to look beyond this ‘gold-star standard’ for the psychedelic sexual experience, and it needs to be a model that looks at consent as a continuous practice.
Betty Martin, a sexologist and intimacy coach, created the so-called Wheel of Consent, which comprises the body of work she has developed in her body of work of over a dozen years. Without going into all the particular details about this model here, since the information is easy to find, it is a very powerful and valuable tool to use when considering consent: ‘The Wheel of Consent is a radical inquiry into the nature of receiving and giving and into the nature of consent and knowing what you want and how to communicate that.’[ix]
Included in the wheel are the non-consensual ‘shadow sides’ that each quadrant can turn into if not done consensually. These shadow sides can be helpful to check out whether we’re really engaging with other people consensually. Exploring this practice of consent, towards yourself and the other, will allow you to train yourself towards a genuine, deeper inquiry of consent, and it includes the notion of not just the perpetrator who takes non-consensually, but also, allowing, accepting and serving non-consensually.
We live in a highly non-consensual culture, and as a consequence, that culture is painfully ingrained within us. As such, facing our shadow—the fact that we all tend towards these shadow sides to some extent from time to time—and doing so as a practice, will greatly help to lay a foundation that prepares yourself for the psychedelic sexual experience. The point here is that if you do not explore your potential for non-consent (a potential that exists within us all) and do so in a ‘safe container’ outside of the psychedelic sexual experience, then that means you have not learned to know yourself and your shadow for when in the psychedelic sexual experience, when the conditions are dramatically more challenging.
After having gone into the notion of consent, and now realising that for the purpose of the psychedelic sexual experience, consent should be seen as a practice that goes beyond the limited concept of affirmative consent as held aloft by some policymakers, educators and activists, while still acknowledging the value of outspoken affirmative consent, let us turn back to our original question:
‘How do we navigate the psychedelic sexual experience in a consensual, ethical way, when facing challenges inherent to the psychedelic state, such as the fact that the psychedelic experience can reduce the verbal and non-verbal ability to communicate consent, that it can diminish the capacity to make sexual decisions and that it has the power to, possibly drastically, change perceived sexual norms?’
This is an open question, one intended for examination of what we do, and how we can do what we want to do in a better way. As such, do not expect a simple solution. There will be no ‘if you do this and that, everything will be fine’. However, anyone familiar with the concept of the ‘inquiry’, will know that it is useful to ask the question. And to do this repeatedly. It is the exploration itself that will yield wisdom, and will allow us to reformulate different answers, each of them helping to answer the question.