De Davos aux forêts ancestrales : quand l'Occident cherche dans les plantes psychédéliques ce qu'il a perdu ailleurs

From Davos to ancient forests: when the West seeks in psychedelic plants what it has lost elsewhere

July 19, 2026

From Davos to the Amazon rainforests, passing through biotech labs, what the Western craze for psychedelics reveals about our societies and what it risks erasing.

To better understand this Western frenzy for psychedelics in recent years, it's worth looking at what's happening in a small corner of Switzerland where some global economic actions take place. We won't be talking about fondue or Gruyère, even though the Swiss terroir deserves a closer look at its rich gastronomic heritage. We'll get to that in another article, but not today.

Every winter, the small Swiss resort of Davos hosts the crème de la crème of the global economy for the World Economic Forum (WEF). Climate, energy, artificial intelligence... and, in recent years, a new guest has slipped into the hushed corridors of the resort: psychedelic plants and molecules. What was recently just an object of counter-cultural curiosity has become, in the space of three years, an institutional panel topic, an investment axis, and a business plan line. It's time to take a closer look at what's playing out behind this facade—and what it leaves in the shadows.

2022: Davos's first "Psychedelic House"

On the sidelines of the 2022 WEF, a private organization (Energia Holdings) opened the very first "Medical Psychedelics House" in Davos, a venue dedicated for a week to conferences and roundtables on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. We met recognized research figures—pharmacologist David Nichols, psychiatrist Rachel Yehuda, and Amanda Fielding from the Beckley Foundation—alongside investors and entrepreneurs in the sector. The argument put forward: increasingly solid clinical data, particularly on MDMA in the treatment of post-traumatic stress, which paves the way for medical recognition of these substances long classified as narcotics. (It is worth noting that MDMA is sometimes called ecstasy, and is a sympathomimetic amine, a molecule from the amphetamine class composed mainly of this psychostimulant well known in Free Parties, Raves, and Techno music.)

This venue, deliberately set up in parallel with the official summit rather than as part of its program, had a clear function: to normalize the subject for an audience of decision-makers, financiers, and political leaders who would probably never have attended a conference on ayahuasca or psilocybin in another context.

https://www.wholecelium.com/fr/blog/ce-qui-sest-passe-a-la-maison-psychedelique-de-davos/

2025: Psychedelics enter the institutional arena

Three years later, the change in status is striking. At WEF 2025, it is now a well-established organization in the European public health ecosystem, the European Brain Council (EBC), that co-organizes an entire day dedicated to mental health within Davos's "Brain House"—a space claiming over 5,000 members and a presence in 144 countries. Among the speakers is Tadeusz Hawrot, director of PAREA (Psychedelic Access and Research European Alliance), an organization that advocates for the integration of psychedelics into European health policies.

The concept of "Brain Capital" is also presented: the idea that the mental and cognitive health of populations is an economic asset in its own right, just like financial or human capital—a report on the "value of social production" co-authored with the World Bank is even unveiled the same week. The message is clear:
investing in the brain, including through psychedelics, is investing in growth.

In three years, we've gone from a somewhat provocative satellite event to a fully integrated discourse within Davos's dominant economic paradigm. Interesting, isn't it, and why isn't anyone telling us about it?

From therapy to performance: the "nootropic" drift

This is where things get complicated. Davos's discourse officially remains focused on supervised therapeutic use to treat resistant depression, post-traumatic stress, and addictions. But outside institutional lecture halls, another use has been thriving for several years: the microdosing of psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin) as a tool for cognitive performance and productivity, popularized initially in Silicon Valley. Friends living in California, like filmmaker Lisa Azuelos, also tell me that in the world of cinema and series, i.e., audiovisuals, this type of stimulant is also used without issue. These practices are therefore becoming commonplace in specific sectors where intense brain activity is required for short periods to maintain a rich form of creativity.
Social science researchers are precisely pointing out this shift: in an article in The Conversation dedicated to "psychedelic exceptionalism," academics highlight that use to optimize work performance illustrates this drift, which diverts substances conceived as care towards a tool for individual self-optimization.

The problem is that science doesn't follow this "cognitive super-fuel" narrative. Since 2019, a series of placebo-controlled double-blind studies—much more rigorous than the anecdotal testimonies fueling microdosing forums—have tested the effect of low doses of LSD or psilocybin on attention, memory, creativity, or mood:

A study published in Translational Psychiatry (University of Maastricht, 2022) on 34 people found no evidence of improved well-being, creativity, or cognitive functions with low doses of psilocybin, despite very real subjective effects and EEG changes.
A meta-analysis combining three double-blind trials (N = 171, ScienceDirect, 2025) concludes that psilocybin microdosing has no reliable effect on convergent or divergent thinking beyond placebo.
A systematic review of 19 placebo-controlled trials (Journal of Psychopharmacology, Polito & Liknaitzky, 2024) shows that reported effects on mood or cognition are largely explained by expectation bias: participants who correctly guess they received the active substance (and not the placebo) are those who report the most benefits—a classic "unblinding" bias that seriously undermines the nootropic argument.
Trials on very low-dose LSD (5, 10, 20 µg) also showed no measurable improvement in attention, memory, or executive functions compared to placebo.

In other words: the promise of an optimized brain with a few drops of LSD at breakfast currently relies on expectations and marketing much more than on solid data. The movie "Limitless" attempts to promote this type of benefit, but in reality, we are far from truly achieving it, as the physical body still has limits in its ability to absorb molecules; it's good to remember this, and even Amazonian practitioners don't consume daily, so some common sense regarding usage is needed.
This "productivity" framing also disregards the dimension of vulnerability and therapeutic support that surrounds these substances in a clinical setting, and it opens the door to self-administered consumption, without any follow-up, whose long-term effects are poorly understood. And as we know, daily use causes dependencies; we then talk about addiction and no longer about a boost to improve a specific capacity. It fuels a parallel market of supplements, office rituals, and "protocols" sold online, very far from the clinical trials whose results are nevertheless brandished to legitimize the sector. Hence this reflection here, because of the benefits opened up by these new markets, which the WEF is seriously considering. We must therefore remain vigilant and aware of possible abuses when so much energy is deployed to "democratize" substances that have never been before. And also ask ourselves: why now?

Economic opening: a rapidly structuring market

From a purely business perspective, the dynamic is real. Market studies estimate the "psychedelic drugs" sector to be worth several billion dollars by 2025, with double-digit annual growth forecasts until the early 2030s, driven by pharmaceutical biotechs (COMPASS Pathways, MindMed, Cybin, Journey Colab, or large groups like Johnson & Johnson positioned on ketamine). In the United States, several states have opened significant regulatory breaches: Oregon implemented legal, regulated psilocybin services in 2023, Colorado followed with its own law on "natural medicines," and the U.S. Congress even earmarked defense funding for clinical research on psychedelics for veterans' post-traumatic stress.

Global Psychedelic Drug Market Size, Forecast 2023 - 2033
https://www.sphericalinsights.com/fr/reports/psychedelic-drugs-market

This regulatory opening creates an economic opportunity for Western actors: patents on derived molecules or galenic formulations, private assisted therapy clinics, "facilitator" training platforms, and pharmaceutical extraction and production of synthetic psilocybin or ibogaine. A lot of venture capital is already positioning itself in what is presented as the next major innovation cycle in mental health, following the model of medical cannabis a decade earlier.
Based on this example, we also see the problems that arose in the CBD market: an initial explosion followed by a brutal economic collapse, with, depending on the country, legislative changes that can strongly alter economic development, not therapeutic use, since in France, thousands of people had their driver's licenses suspended due to positive cannabis tests, even though they had smoked CBD purchased from legal outlets like tobacco shops... All of this is very volatile and always in the direction of the people who regulate laws, not consumers.

The patent war: who owns a millennia-old molecule?

The economic opening is not limited to fundraising: it concretely involves patent filings, and this is where the tension with traditional uses becomes most visible. We fall back into the same pitfalls we experienced with the boycott of Vichy herbalism due to laboratories that understood that a synthetic molecule yields more than its organic version.

The most documented case is that of COMPASS Pathways, a British biotech listed on Nasdaq, which has obtained several US patents since 2020 for its synthetic crystalline form of psilocybin (dubbed "Polymorph A"), then filed international applications covering the treatment of a very wide range of mental disorders with psilocybin, as well as elements like the arrangement of the therapy room or the therapist's behavior during the session.

I must note here that there is a big problem with trying to synthesize life, because part of the organically experienced experience cannot be reproduced in the laboratory, and this powerful vibrational signature is impossible to add to these synthetic products. It is therefore perilous to make people believe that these molecules have the same properties; it is another intellectual fraud and disguised charlatanism. We must firmly denounce this kind of lucrative activity that still does not respect life in its entirety.

This strategy triggered a real rebellion within the psychedelic ecosystem itself: the non-profit organization Freedom to Operate filed several appeals with the US Patent Office to invalidate these titles, arguing that psilocybin and its manufacturing methods are nothing new—a common-sense argument when one knows that mushrooms containing this molecule have been used for centuries in Mexico. David Bronner (the head of the activist soap brand Dr. Bronner's, also a MAPS board member) went so far as to publicly accuse COMPASS of seeking to interfere with Oregon's public psilocybin therapy program, precisely because overly broad patents can lock out independent therapists or generic manufacturers. Some appeals have partially succeeded (one of COMPASS's patents was more narrowly redefined by judges), but the principle itself remains transferable to iboga, ayahuasca, or mescaline: as soon as a molecule from traditional use is isolated, purified, or slightly modified in the laboratory, it becomes patentable again for the company that did this work—without any share of the value structurally returning to the peoples who discovered and transmitted its use for generations.

This is theft and a violation of life. There is no consciousness in this approach, but once again, a desire to create chaos instead of harmony.

Real startups in the "nootropic" segment

The drift is not just an abstract concept: it already has its brands. In the Netherlands, where the sale of psilocybin truffles (a form of the mushroom that bypasses the local ban on dried mushrooms) is legal, several startups have jumped into the breach. Earth Resonance, for example, sells monthly microdosing programs, promising both "spiritual awakening" and increased productivity at work, with advertising communication calibrated for social networks—all in a gray area, as the company merely reminds its foreign customers to verify the legality in their home countries before ordering. Red Light Holland, listed on the stock exchange in Canada, cultivates its own truffles in the Netherlands and has signed export agreements for "homogenized" microdosing capsules to Australia and New Zealand. In the United States, brands like Flow State Micro or Mushroom Design emerged in 2021, betting on progressive decriminalization, initially selling non-psychoactive "functional" mushroom blends to prepare the commercial ground.

An example here with products from "Earth Resonance" that, without hesitation, want to sell you powdered molecules by mixing two very different and complementary types of mushrooms. One legal, the other not, but with communication based on the virtues of living things... it's still surprising to trivialize living organisms so precious, which it would be preferable for everyone to grow themselves rather than consume in powder.

The problem, beyond the ethical question, is also health-related: part of this market sells unregulated products whose actual composition does not match the label. An investigation into several hospitalizations linked to "gummies" sold as concentration boosters revealed the presence, in addition to the advertised mushrooms, of caffeine, ephedrine, undeclared psilocybin, and other unlisted substances—products sold in stores and gas stations as simple "natural" supplements. This is a perfect illustration of the risk posed by nootropic drift once it moves outside of any therapeutic or ritual framework: without quality control, without verified dosage, and without the monitoring offered by a clinical or community setting, the product sold as a simple cognitive boost becomes, in reality, a health lottery.

What this economic showcase leaves in the shadows

This is where nuance becomes essential. These plants and mushrooms are not molecules born in a laboratory: they are elements of cosmologies and healing practices that have existed for centuries, sometimes millennia, among indigenous peoples of Amazonia, Mexico, or Central Africa. Ayahuasca among several Amazonian peoples, peyote among the Wixárika (Huichol) and within the Native American Church, iboga among the Bwiti people in Gabon: in these contexts, the plant is never a product isolated from its use. It is part of a ritual, a relationship of reciprocity with living things, a community framework—and was never originally conceived as a commodity.

Peyote, exhausted by Western demand.

Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) grows wild only in a narrow band of southern Texas and northern Mexico, and takes ten to thirty years to reach maturity. The Native American Church, which has used it as a central sacrament since the 19th century, has been warning since the 1990s about a real "peyote crisis": overexploitation, habitat destruction, and above all, increasing pressure from the Western "psychedelic renaissance," which leads a portion of the general public to want to pick it, cultivate it outside of Mexico, or synthesize its derivatives. Indigenous religious leaders strongly oppose this: for them, growing peyote in a greenhouse outside its natural habitat, or extracting mescaline to sell in capsules, empties the plant of its sacred character—the place where it grows, they say, is an integral part of the rite. The Native American Church explicitly requests that peyote be excluded from general psychedelic decriminalization campaigns, precisely so as not to be lost in this commercial wave.

Note here that I am not trivializing the term "shaman" for practices involving specialists in altered states of consciousness. The word comes from the Tungusic šaman, a Siberian language (Evenk peoples). Its use became widespread in the 20th century by Western anthropologists (Mircea Eliade foremost) to refer for convenience to any ritual specialist figure in altered states of consciousness, all over the world—a shortcut that many researchers and practitioners now contest, precisely because it crushes very different roles, statuses, and cosmologies under a single word foreign to these cultures.
Regarding peyote, here are the appropriate terms:

Mara'akame (pl. mara'akate) — precise Wixárika (Huichol) term for the singer-healer who guides peyote ceremonies.
Roadman (or Road Chief) — English term used within the Native American Church for the person who leads the peyote ceremony ("guide of the road/path").
Peyotero — be careful, this term designates a different function: the person legally authorized to harvest and sell peyote (not necessarily a spiritual role).

You can listen to the medicinal song of Peyotl via the sound herbalism at this link:
https://naturasounds.bandcamp.com/track/peyotl-peyote-42962-hz-h20

Iboga, between documented plunder and reappropriation.

In Gabon, where iboga has structured the initiatory rites of Bwiti for generations, international interest in ibogaine (used notably against opiate addictions in clinics in Mexico, the Netherlands, or New Zealand) has fueled a largely anarchic parallel market, with a real risk of overexploitation of wild plant populations. Gabon had already classified iboga as national heritage in 2000, but in early June 2026, the government had to tighten the framework further: a new decree now requires prior ministerial authorization for any exploitation, processing, or commercialization of iboga and its derivatives, precisely to curb biopiracy and protect the rights of Bwiti communities recognized as guardians of this heritage. This is a clear signal sent to Western actors who would like to source without going through the consent and benefit-sharing process.

Here are the terms associated with practitioners:

Nganga — the most accurate and widely used term in academic literature: an initiated priest-healer who determines the iboga dosage and guides the initiation.
Kombo — another title for this same role of ceremony master according to traditions (Mitsogho, Fang).
Banzi (pl. banzie) — does not refer to the guide but to the initiated person who has successfully "seen" Bwiti; useful if you are talking about participants rather than the guide.

Ayahuasca and poorly regulated spiritual tourism.

Ayahuasca is undoubtedly the most striking example of the discrepancy between traditional use and Western appropriation. Among Amazonian peoples, it is not a "recreational psychedelic": it is primarily a ritual emetic and purgative, guided by years of training for the ayahuasquero, strict diets, and a precise ceremonial framework where vomiting and diarrhea are understood as a necessary purge, not as a side effect to be avoided. However, ayahuasca tourism, booming in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon, has largely developed outside of any regulation: no regulated diploma to call oneself an "ayahuasquero," no standardized dosage, not always medical personnel on site. The U.S. Embassy in Lima also issued a direct health alert in 2025 after several deaths and severe psychiatric episodes among American nationals during ayahuasca (and kambo) retreats in remote areas of the Peruvian Amazon, far from any access to emergency services. Documented risks include dangerous interactions with certain antidepressants (serotonin syndrome), uncontrolled traumatic reactivations in psychologically vulnerable individuals, and abuses committed by fake "facilitators" who take advantage of the craze to improvise ceremonies without the training or responsibility traditionally held by an ayahuasquero.

Here are the terms associated with these practices:

Curandero — the most common and precise Spanish/Quechua term: "one who heals." This is the recommended academic generic in place of "shaman."
Vegetalista — specific to Peru: healer whose knowledge comes directly from learning with the plants themselves (through dietas).
Ayahuasquero — specifically one who prepares and administers ayahuasca (can overlap with curandero/vegetalista).
Taita — a term of respect used in Colombia (Sibundoy valley in particular) to refer to these same healers.
Onanya — among the Shipibo-Konibo (Peru), literally "one who has wisdom/knowledge."

The European paradox: seeking far away what grows under our feet.

There's an irony we often prefer not to see: while Westerners fly to the Amazon, Mexico, or Gabon in search of an "authentic" psychedelic experience, a very real psilocybin mushroom—Psilocybe semilanceata, the "liberty cap"—grows spontaneously in humid meadows and pastures across Europe, including France, from late summer. Unlike ayahuasca or iboga, it is not attached to any comparable continuous local ritual tradition, and its harvesting, possession, and consumption remain strictly prohibited in almost all European countries, classified as a narcotic in the same category as heroin in some texts. This contrast—an idealized and commercialized foreign use on one side, a simply criminalized local resource on the other—says something important: the problem is not just access to the molecule; it's the almost total absence, in Europe, of its own cultural and ritual framework that would give meaning and safety to these experiences, rather than importing them ready-made from other cosmologies.

However, the Western rush for these substances carries a well-documented risk of biopiracy: patenting molecules or varieties, appropriation of traditional knowledge without consent or benefit sharing, and economic pressure on already fragile resources. The Nagoya Protocol (2010) exists precisely to regulate access to genetic resources and the fair sharing of benefits with originating communities, but its application remains largely insufficient in the face of the speed of ongoing industrialization.

This is why my anthropologist friend Jeremy Narby and I produced a video interview to raise awareness of these practices, because these plants are not for everyone, and it is important to be aware of the possible repercussions if one desires a psychedelic experience:

When you remove the ritual, you remove the protection

This is perhaps the most misunderstood point of all this craze: in the original traditions, ritual is not a folkloric backdrop for the molecule; it is the safety mechanism itself. Among Amazonian peoples, the preparatory diet, the presence of an experienced ayahuasquero, the communal setting, and the very meaning given to physical purging (vomiting is not an accident, it is the goal) form a coherent whole that contains and guides a potentially destabilizing experience. When this framework disappears, because the active molecule has been isolated, the ritual shortened to a paid weekend retreat, or the spiritual master replaced by a self-proclaimed facilitator, only the most unpredictable part of the experience remains, without the safety net that made it traversable.

This is also what I was trying to understand with the popularization of movements like "decriminalize nature," whose French branch I met in March 2026 in Lyon: why do Westerners want to normalize ancestral rituals that are completely unknown to us in our lands? My research led me to want to join this collective effort through my personal and professional background, but my participation was simply refused.
Not because of my work, which they affirmed was very relevant, but because "I would be difficult to manage" (without knowing me, that's quite a strong "judgment"). Yet I had joyful discussions with several people present, including my friend Jeremy Narby, who was happy to see me there. I followed exchanges while sitting next to Ansgar Rougemont, whom I had already met at Swiss sessions when I collaborated with the ALPS foundation in 2021/2022, as I had offered to film their conferences. I had cordial online exchanges with Zoé Hababou, and also with Balthazar Benadon. I had the pleasure of meeting Louis David Salmon and Ludovic Mattern, the president of the association from Belfort, with whom I had very pleasant discussions. Therefore, I confess I did not understand why my participation was refunded and who truly "fears" me in a setting that was clearly described as an "open to all" day.
"This meeting aims to bring together different perspectives: peoples and traditions, researchers, practitioners, authors, lawyers, therapists, engaged citizens... Not to provide ready-made answers, but to build bridges."

Those who follow me know the respect I have for teacher plants and my devotion to contribute meaningfully to the common good, to better understand the uses and potential of each so-called medicinal plant, starting by listening to its therapeutic song to open minds through works combining art and science. Works of public utility and public health.

If you can tell me why my participation in such civic engagements, with significant and pioneering work like mine, is refused, I admit I'd be interested, because I still don't understand who and truly why someone would want to block a collective work that is implied to be "open to all," especially when it offers solutions that are non-intrusive, without side effects, and without overdose, as I propose listening to the spirit of these plants and communicating with them through sound, rather than ingesting them.

Here's an example of my dedicated participation to the cause: I volunteered for two years to film and edit exchanges produced by the ALPS foundation (Awareness Lecture on Psychedelic Science), including the editing of Ansgar Rougemont's conference in 2022 in Bern, with the therapeutic song of mapacho in the credits, whose seeds were given to me by Jeremy Narby in 2021:

Having lived in Latin America for three years, I studied cacao with passion; it was the cacao trees that opened me up to bio-communication. And at no point have I offered you "sacred cacao" ceremonies, which are legal in our countries, or other "facilities" to understand the spirit of cacao, for example. Nor have I trivialized, with my ayahuasca experience, the potential of you taking it; quite the opposite. I have raised awareness of the risks rather than the benefits of these master plants by meeting many important figures like Jeremy Narby, who supports my work and understands the message I share, including through my book "The Secret Melody of Plants," which he believes should have the same destiny as "The Cosmic Serpent." Jeremy tells me it will take time, but when people understand the message, it will open many doors for those who awaken to the potential of interspecies bio-communication.
In my research, I also had the opportunity to meet other references such as Ansgar Rougemont, Rick Doblin (founder and president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies - MAPS in the US), Helena Aicher (clinical psychologist at the University Psychiatric Hospital of Zurich), Matthias Liechti (chief physician in clinical pharmacology and director of a research laboratory within the biomedical department of the University Hospital of Basel), Gregor Hasler (Swiss psychiatry researcher, psychiatrist, and psychotherapist. He is a professor and holds the chair of psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland) or Ose Hein (homeopath and general practitioner in Solothurn, Switzerland). This was thanks to Cyril Petignat and Federico Seragnoli of the ALPS foundation.

I have too much respect for these teacher plants to claim to share their essence or medicinal use. Hence the sharing through therapeutic songs of medicinal plants, like Icaros, which allow a connection with the plant's spirit without ingestion, to present an aspect that has the merit of not causing side effects, being non-intrusive, and preventing overdose. This is crucial when one wants to share a bit of a culture that is not our own: to offer a completely risk-free presentation, which is not at all the case with "facilitators" who are unaware of dosages, the psychoanalytic aspect, and the psychological support needed for each person who believes they are ready for a psychedelic use and experience.

As Jeremy Narby so eloquently puts it, psychedelic means "mind-revealing," meaning it will amplify who you truly are. It's best to be ready to face your true nature and be grounded so as not to be shaken, as my friend Pierrick Destraz was with his ayahuasca experience in Switzerland.

This is exactly what health warnings reveal: unassisted traumatic reactivations, prolonged psychotic states, fatal drug interactions, in contexts where no one has checked the participant's psychiatric history or their current treatment — checks that, within a well-maintained traditional framework, are logically integrated into the preparation. Western spiritual tourism often seeks, among people searching for meaning in uprooted societies disconnected from any direct relationship with the living world, a rapid, contractual transcendence, scheduled around a plane ticket and a few days of vacation. But a cosmovision that has taken generations to build a relationship of trust and precaution around a plant cannot be transmitted in an all-inclusive weekend — and selling that promise is selling dreams to vulnerable people, not transmitting a tradition.

The real market is our collective anxiety

We also need to look at this phenomenon from its root:
why is this demand exploding precisely now?
According to the WHO, more than a billion people worldwide currently live with a mental health disorder, and in France, one in five people is affected by a psychological disorder at some point in their life, with one in four employees reporting poor mental health. In areas directly affected by armed conflict, the WHO estimates that one in five people suffer from depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress — and permanent exposure to war images, even from a distance, now produces similar symptoms in populations not directly experiencing the conflict: a 2025 study of the Gaza population, for example, measured an extremely high rate of probable post-traumatic stress, and researchers have been documenting since 2024 an authentic "information anxiety" linked to the continuous stream of anxiety-inducing news on social networks.

Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, economic insecurity, eco-anxiety, a feeling of powerlessness in the face of crises that seem to accumulate without any individual action making an impact: our Western societies structurally produce a permanent climate of anxiety. And it is precisely this anxious breeding ground that makes the psychedelic market so attractive to investors: massive psychological distress poorly treated by existing healthcare systems is, from a venture capital fund's perspective, an unmet need with high potential, exactly the language found in the sector's commercial arguments.

But here's the crux of the problem: these substances do not treat the cause. They don't stop a war, reduce insecurity, or restore control over the climate's future. In indigenous cosmologies, the teacher plant never claimed to "repair" an individual isolated from their social context: its use is part of an entire cosmovision, a relationship to long-term time, community, ancestors, and the non-human that gives meaning to the experience and, above all, prepares the person to go through it. None of this can be bought in a capsule or settled in a single paid evening. However, contemporary Western society has largely lost its own collective rites of passage, its frameworks of initiation, its culture of shared sacredness, leaving a void that the market hastens to fill with individual, rapid, and above all profitable products: a session, a protocol, a subscription.

This is where the deepest deviation lies, even deeper than that of the office nootropic: selling an isolated psychedelic experience as a response to an existential and collective distress, without transmitting the framework, the preparation, or the long-term support that would truly allow for integration, is offering a pharmacological bandage where a much slower and less profitable work of reconstruction — individual as well as collective — is needed. It's therefore not surprising that it's the "product" version, fast and scalable, that attracts capital, rather than the slow, relational, and unprofitable version of traditional transmission.

This spiritual education vacuum also explains why so many "self-proclaimed facilitators" find an audience in the West: in a society that has severed the link between spirituality and community, anyone can claim to be an expert in a practice they have often not received years of training for, nor the legitimacy of an originating community — with the real risk that fragile individuals, genuinely seeking meaning, place their trust in public figures more concerned with their own position and audience than with genuine guidance. These 2.0 gurus sell you dreams by making you believe they have the solution for you. So be careful not to fall into the trap of these people who have hidden interests rather than a sincere reconnection of others to the living world and our common roots with the spirits of nature, where the soul acts.

For an economy that does not erase the source

Thus, two parallel stories are unfolding, and they should not be confused. On the one hand, there's a legitimate scientific and economic recognition of the therapeutic potential of certain molecules, as seen in Switzerland with strict methods and protocols that validate the medicinal benefits of these substances in a clinical setting, which can relieve suffering individuals where conventional psychiatry has failed.
On the other hand, there's a real risk of disembodying these plants from their context, reducing them to interchangeable "assets" — whether therapeutic or, worse, mere productivity tools — by erasing the peoples and cosmovisions who have been their guardians forever.

At Naturasounds, our responsibility as a public utility and health project is that these two worlds can coexist, but only if the Western economy built around these plants integrates reciprocity from the outset: recognition of knowledge, real sharing of benefits, protection of source ecosystems, and above all, respect for the fact that the original use never was and should never become a mere product line. A plant that heals in a lifestyle interconnected with the living world is not meant to end up as a productivity capsule sold on a marketplace. Hence the revaluation of these plants in a space I have called "sonic herbalism" to transmit the message of plants to everyone through their therapeutic songs.
The most important thing is to revalue our heritage with medicinal plants from our territories before believing that the grass is greener elsewhere...

The living speaks to us; let's listen to it.

Link to sonic herbalism:
https://naturasounds.bandcamp.com/

Here are the verified links for almost all sources cited in the article:

Davos