In recent years, spiritual retreats and ceremonies involving the use of psychedelic substances such as ayahuasca have multiplied in Spain. They are often presented as experiences of healing, self-knowledge, or spiritual awakening, and they are frequently justified with a reassuring argument: “these substances are safe and people participate voluntarily.” But is that really enough to settle the matter?
Much of the public — and judicial — debate has focused on whether these substances are regulated or on issues of drug trafficking. However, a far more uncomfortable question is often left out of the discussion: what happens to autonomy and consent when states of high suggestibility are induced in contexts of spiritual authority?
Psychedelics do not only alter perception. They can also increase cognitive openness, emotional intensity, and sensitivity to the surrounding environment. Put simply, they can make people more influenceable. This is not necessarily problematic in a carefully regulated clinical setting, but it takes on a very different meaning when it occurs in unregulated ceremonies, potentially guided by charismatic figures who offer closed philosophical, religious, or spiritual interpretations of “the meaning” of the experience.
Here a largely unspoken form of harm comes into view: epistemic harm. This does not refer to “believing strange things,” but to something deeper: lasting changes in how a person forms and evaluates beliefs, which sources they consider trustworthy, and how capable they are of critically revising what they believe. These harms can coexist with subjectively intense or even positively valued experiences, which makes them difficult to detect — and even harder to question.
This raises uncomfortable questions:
Can consent given before an experience be considered fully valid when the experience, by its very nature, cannot be understood in advance?
Is a decision truly free when vulnerability is induced and interpretation is placed in the hands of an authority?
To what extent is the absence of explicit coercion sufficient to rule out undue influence?
Some court rulings have tended to conclude that if there is no trafficking, the substance is not especially dangerous, and consumption occurs at one’s own risk, then there is no case to answer. But this way of reasoning ignores context, power relations, and the cognitive effects of these practices. The risk lies not only in the substance itself, but in how, where, and under whose authority it is used.
Thinking critically about these phenomena does not necessarily mean calling for prohibition, denying religious freedom, or demonizing those who seek relief or meaning. It means something more basic: recognizing that autonomy is not exhausted by simply saying “yes,” and that protecting it requires looking beneath the surface. When an experience can reconfigure beliefs, values, and criteria of truth, the question is not only whether someone chose to participate, but under what conditions they were really able to decide.
Perhaps it is time to start asking these questions seriously.