Healing in the Native American Church: Ritual Psychopharmacology and Therapeutic Narrative

Healing in the Native American Church (NAC) centers on ritual use of Peyote, a psychedelic cactus regarded as a sacred medicine and a morally evaluative guardian spirit. The psychopharmacological properties of Peyote produce self-reflective states that are guided by ritual symbolism and a mythic language of transformative rebirth. Therapeutic change arises from both the experiential, higher-order mental processes induced by the drug and from "cultural emplotment"—the embedding of experience within NAC’s worldview, narratives, and collective ethos. Prior socialization into this worldview shapes participants’ interpretations, and convincing spiritual experiences reinforce collective identity and resistance to Western influences.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This chapter describes healing practices of the Native American Church (NAC) in terms of indigenous understandings, as well from an anthropologically and clinically informed perspectives. Therapeutic approaches are centered on ritual use of Peyote, a psychedelic cactus, which is seen as a sacred medicine and as an omniscient and morally evaluative guardian spirit. The psychopharmacological properties of Peyote produce self-reflective experiential states which are steered in positive directions by the structure of ritual symbolism, emphasizing a mythic language of transformative rebirth guided by the NAC worldview. Peyote experiences generate insight and therapeutic behavior change through both a psychopharmacological approach that is experiential, aimed at higher-order mental processes; and through a cultural emplotment that is dynamically related to cultural narrative and symbolic structures of NAC. Key therapeutic dynamics produced by cultural emplotment involve influences provided by the prior socialization into the NAC worldview which results in orientations to a collective ethos which is reinforced by convincing spiritual experiences. NAC’s rituals and beliefs embed the participant within a spiritual cultural narrative and engage process of integrating insights and higher-order mental processes into strategies for new behavior and self-changes that reaffirm Native American identity and resistance to Western influences.