Have you noticed that people seem to be more open to talking and learning about death? In recent years, people have been exposed to a significant increase in death education. They are more accepting of their thoughts and feelings about death and willing to share them at places such as Death Cafés and Coffin Clubs. We are more familiar now with hospices and palliative care and turn to them as death approaches. Death doulas serve as companions to the dying and their families, providing support and education at life’s end. There are many books also available to us about people’s own experiences with death and loss.
Is this another example of baby boomers being on the cutting edge of things?
The fear of death is still a very real factor in many of our lives. There is likely to be some degree of death anxiety in all of us, which is not unusual. Most of us fear the unknown. There is such a thing as a healthy fear of death that keeps us from engaging in dangerous and self-destructive activities, protecting others as well as ourselves. Rightly so.
Is it pain and suffering, losing control of our bodies and minds, fear of the unknown, being alone or concerns for the people we will leave behind? If death itself is the greater fear, we might explore concerns about non-existence. Is there an afterlife and, if so, might there be eternal suffering involved? Some might be concerned that there isn’t an afterlife and we just fade into oblivion.
There are whole new fields of studies addressing how psychedelics can lessen these fears. Recently, Johns Hopkins University of Medicine (2022) found that when psychedelic drugs, such as lysergic acid diethyl-amide (LSD), psilocybin and N,N-dimeyhyltryptamine (DMT) were administered to people, their fear of death significantly decreased. Also, a single treatment of psilocybin, a hallucinogenic alkaloid found in some mushrooms, decreased anxiety and depression among cancer patients. Along with supportive psychotherapy, there were significant increases of death acceptance, and less anxiety about death. The results for patients without a terminal diagnosis resulted in strongly persisting positive changes in personal well-being, and life purpose and meaning.
Johns Hopkins is forefront in these studies after its founder, Dr. Roland Griffiths, expanded our ideas about death. His work in the field is credited with helping revive interest in clinical research into psychedelic drugs as a potential treatment for addiction, major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders. Interesting because in 2021 in the middle of his best studies, Griffiths was diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer. He died at his home in Baltimore on Oct. 16, 2023, at the age of 77. Less fear of death and dying, lasting effects, personal meaning, spiritual significance and psychological insight, all such good outcomes.
These drugs have shown success with the terminally ill, especially with those who experience a form of existential distress and suffering at the end of life. Cancer patients tend to have twice the suicide risk of the general population. With the appropriate dosing and medical supervision of the psychedelics, the patient’s sense of hopelessness often changes into feelings of acceptance and gratitude, decreasing the suicidal risk. Many even describe their experience as having been mystical.
While more research is needed about the use of psychedelics for the dying, the initial results seem positive. People’s anguish about death and dying can be transformed, whether it be through psychedelics or other forms of talk therapy.
Colorado voters approved Proposition 122 in 2022 to legalize natural psychedelics, for mental health and medical practices with clinical facilitator licenses, “healing centers.” Most of these are up on the Front Range. As of now, Durango only has clinics that offer ketamine, a therapeutic pain reliever and antidepressive that can cause disassociation, hallucinations and sedation.
None of us knows what the end will bring. How our last months, weeks, days will be spent is unknown, as is our level of acceptance. But if there is much suffering and distress, whatever the cause, perhaps it would be helpful to some to look at these alternative answers. To paraphrase Dylan Thomas, who among us would not want to be able to go gently into that good night?
Martha McClellan has lived in Durango since 1993 and has been an educator, consultant and writer. Reach her at mmm@bresnan.net.
