Part 2 in a series. Read Part 1.

Integrative medicine treatment of post-traumatic stress has been evolving and growing worldwide to include entheogens, also called psychedelic medicine. Human beings have been exploring and altering consciousness since the first four-legged animals snuffled their way into a mound of mushrooms and shared their discovery with their two-legged companions.

It is difficult to say which is older, the experience of trauma or that of the first vision leading to what we now call spirituality or religion. Some believe the latter may have dawned on the earliest hominids after ingesting some of nature’s psychedelic bounty. Some scholars suggest that the apple of Eden was a psychoactive mushroom (Amanita muscaria) (Wasson et al., 1988). People have ingested psychoactive plants and mushrooms for millennia to enhance consciousness and as a route to ecstasy, which refers to “the withdrawal of the soul from the body” concurrent with mystical or visionary states.

Frequently, people of many cultures use plants and mushrooms in group rituals to alter consciousness, commune with the gods, or stay alert while engaged in long expeditions. Alternatively, they may use such substances........

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