The Dark Side of Healing Culture, Mental Health & Psychedelic Integration | Adam Aronovich

Adam Aronovich is a doctoral candidate in Medical Anthropology and Cultural Psychiatry at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain. He spent over four years conducting research and fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon, where he also facilitated Ayahuasca workshops in the context of shamanic and medical tourism. He is the creator of Healing from Healing — an online platform casting a critical and humorous eye on healing culture. He currently serves as director of therapy and integration at Rē Precision Health on the Pacific Coast of Mexico.In this conversation, we explore what Medical Anthropology and Cultural Psychiatry can teach us about mental health, how psychedelics are transforming our understanding of healing, and what happens when we examine our culture's dominant metaphysical assumptions about the self, independence, and reality.We get into the dark side of psychedelics and healing culture, cultural ideas of madness, the illusion of radical independence, and what pathology-free psychedelic integration actually looks like — a framework that moves beyond deficit-based models into something more relational, humanistic, and grounded.We also explore the problem of regulating psychedelic administration, the power of grassroots communities in psychedelic culture, expanding our ways of working with psychedelics, and the role of intention and frequency in psychedelic use.A critical, grounded, and refreshingly honest conversation for anyone navigating psychedelics and healing with open eyes.🔗 LINKS & RESOURCES 🔗Adam's site and community — Healing from Healing Articles on psychedelics Psychedelic Psychotherapy with Saj Razvi🕰️ TIMESTAMPS 🕰️0:00 - Introduction1:19 - Applying Medical Anthropology and Cultural Psychiatry to mental health7:15 - How psychedelics transform our understanding of mental health9:43 - Traditional vs modern views of mental health12:54 - Interpersonal neurobiology and embodied cognition17:36 - Examining our culture's dominant metaphysical assumptions20:00 - The dark side of psychedelics30:55 - Cultural ideas of madness35:03 - The illusion of radical independence43:24 - Pathology-free psychedelic integration52:37 - The problem of regulation in administering psychedelics57:45 - The power of grassroots communities1:07:50 - Expanding our ways of working with psychedelics1:21:28 - Intention and frequency of psychedelic use*Subscribe to my YouTube channel to watch the video versions of the Elevating Consciousness Podcast *Subscribe to the Insighter Substack to get in-depth articles on the theory and practice of human transformation through a post-conventional