The Disenchanted Dose: Can the Third Wave Reclaim the Sacred?

By Gareth Kaatze

I saw a lecture from Jamie Wheal on psychedelics recently, and he pointed out some fair blind spots in the so-called psychedelic renaissance.
Things that many in the scene don’t want to talk about - or simply don’t see.

It landed because, if we are all consuming - whether it’s carbon, calories, or consciousness - then “more” is obviously not always better. Deforestation, fossil fuel burn, dopamine loops, ceremony-stacking… it’s the same operating system with a different skin. More tools. More medicine. More substances. More healing.

Even psychedelics - those great sacraments of mystery and meaning - aren’t immune to the gravitational pull of extraction.

From Enchantment to Extraction

The truth is, psychedelics are non-specific amplifiers. They’ll meet you wherever you are and crank the volume. That can mean deeper belonging, reverence, and wonder - or just another dopamine spike dressed in sacred geometry.

The danger isn’t in the molecule - it’s in the context.
Without the right frame, they can just become another consumer product.

But what if - just what if - we reframed them as portals instead?
A threshold back to enchantment.
A reconnection to reverence.
A remembering of ecological sanity.
A way to make the mundane mysterious again.

For me, that shift came when I moved from a hedonistic, more-is-better relationship to something quieter, more seasonal, more discerning. These days, one annual deep dive is enough to reset my compass, realign my heart, and keep the creeping cynicism at bay.

Microdosing in the Age of Mistrust

So where does microdosing fit?

For one - it keeps the existential dread on a leash. In a world that feels like Cold War 2.0 with AI writing its own myths, even a whisper of wonder can be an anchor.

Some dismiss it as Prozac 2.0. Maybe they’re right. But if the choice is between Prozac 1.0 and a fragment of sacred mushroom that reconnects me to breath, heart, and purpose - I know which one I’m swallowing.

That said, the microdosing scene has its own blind spots. I’ve been given doses by people in white coats and by naturopaths in sandals who’ve never touched the void, never stared down a five-gram heroic dose, never sweated through the slow unravelling of self. And yet they’re pushing sacraments they’ve never truly met.

The map is not the territory.
The tincture is not the teacher.

For me, even the subtlest dose - done with care - can tether me to the Mystery. A reminder that this isn’t all spreadsheets and scroll fatigue. That the cosmos is still humming with intelligence. And that my role isn’t to master it, but to commune with it.

The Lost Ritual

Here’s the rub: what happens when you strip away the initiation?
No threshold. No myth. No return to the circle.

You get a watered-down, influencer-filtered echo of the Mystery.
Psychedelic evangelism. Neo-shamanic tourism. The sacrament as brand.

I’ve seen the movement hijacked - in South Africa and beyond - by self-anointed “healers,” influencer mystics, and MLM spirituality. But I’ve also witnessed the real thing: barefoot, heart-forward, intellectually fierce humans trying to weave connection back into a fractured world.

And so we stand between two worlds:
On one side - the rattles, the breathwork, the light-language lunacy.
On the other - the spreadsheets, biotech IPOs, and controlled trials.
Somewhere in the middle - a still, small voice asking:
Do we really need another ceremony this month?

Welcome to the Lobby of Hotel California

One of Jamie’s questions stuck with me:
"Is this retreat, this sacrament, this journey in service of the Holy Grail - truth, love, and beauty - or am I just stuck in the lobby of Hotel California?"

Because I’ve met a lot of people in that honeymoon suite - sipping ayahuasca, racking up soul debt, not noticing the cosmic minibar tab ticking away.

Are we still in service to something sacred?
Or just looping peak-state afterglow, mistaking the fireworks for the fire?

Remember Eleusis

Maybe the Eleusinian Mysteries still hold the blueprint.

One annual rite of passage.
A communal pilgrimage.
A ceremony tied to the turning of the seasons, not the churn of the marketplace.

Even the Gnostics hinted at this. Even the story of Jesus, if you squint at the communion cup, feels like it’s hiding a sacramental secret. (And yes, part of me hopes the wine was active.)

But in today’s disenchanted world, those rites have been stripped away.
What’s left?

Hyper-individualistic healing.
Solo ceremonies.
Transactional tripping.

We need the myth back. The ritual. The return to the tribe with stories worth telling. Because without it, even the highest doses can leave us hollow.

Tortoise vs Hare, Again

Maybe comparing the Third Wave to carbon culture feels harsh. But it’s still the same underlying code: more.

Psychedelics were never meant to be about more.
They were meant to be about meaning.

So here’s my provocation:

May we not overdose on the divine.
May we not flatten the sacred into scrollable content.
May we not mistake the sacrament for the supplement.

May we let the little tortoise of mystery, meaning, and myth still stand a chance.

Because as Terence McKenna said:
"The world is not only stranger than we suppose... it is stranger than we can suppose."

Used wisely, these medicines remind us of that.
A little weirdness.
A little wonder.
A little enchantment pulsing just beneath the skin of reality.

Let’s not lose that.
Not in the Third Wave.
Not ever.