Kevin Spacey Is the Latest Pot-Puffing Shrink to Hit the Movie Screens -- Why Is This a Trend?

There's quite a bit of smoke blowing over the title in the trailer for the movie Shrink, starring Kevin Spacey as a "pothead" psychologist to the stars, which opens on July 24 in selected theaters.

Spacey, most will remember, played a middle-age man who rediscovers life after smoking marijuana in 1999's American Beauty. His pot-smoking shrink is one of a series of mass-media psychotherapists who smoke the leaves of the Tree of Knowledge.

In last year's The Wackness, Ben Kingsley lights a bong and has his own midlife renewal while trading his psychoanalyst services to Luke Shapiro for pot. (Kingsley also puffed a hookah as the Indian major/caterpillar in a 1999 version of Alice in Wonderland.)

In a 2006 episode of Showtime's erstwhile series Huff, Angelica Houston passes a joint to her BMW-driving psychotherapist colleague (Hank Azaria), before guiding him on an Ecstasy trip/therapy session. (That intelligent series was canceled in favor of the unenlightened Weeds.)

Bette Midler imbibed pot in shamanic style as Mel Gibson's therapist in What Women Want (2000), but you won't see that part of the scene on TNT, where it is censored. Midler returns to turn Meg Ryan on to pot in The Women (2008), but you'll have to watch the deleted scenes on the DVD to hear Ryan say, "I'm really stoned." After this scene, her character finds her way to her center. (The Women was based on a 1939 Clare Booth Luce play; Luce took LSD and liked it but didn't think it was for the masses.)

All of this begs the question: Is it fundamentally human to alter one's consciousness in order to gain insight into the nature of man? And if so, can people be happy without that experience?

Psychedelics have been used since the dawn of mankind, in adolescent initiation ceremonies and religious gatherings like the ancient Greek Eleusinian mysteries.

Getting a glimpse of the other side of reality can be a profound, life-changing experience. Oftentimes, the shaman would be the one imbibing, and then sharing his or her insight with the patient. The Oracle of Delphi inhaled sacred fumes before she divined the future. But the Romans closed all that down after the Adam-and-Eve myth made munching anything mind-expanding a sin.

Dr. William C. Woodward of the American Medical Association testified at the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act hearings that cannabis hemp could unlock past memories, doubtlessly helpful in psychotherapy. Despite Woodward's objections, the U.S. made marijuana (and hemp) illegal, driving underground a potentially useful psychiatric tool and ending most meaningful research into its uses.

In 1955, Drs. Timothy Leary and Frank Barron collaborated on a study of 150 psychoneurotic patients presenting themselves for treatment. About one-third of those in therapy got better, one-third saw no change and one-third got worse: the same ratio as those who had no therapy at all. Then Leary discovered psychedelics, conducted the Harvard Divinity School experiments (which proved entheogens can cause profound spiritual awakenings) and reduced prison recidivism and alcoholism through LSD therapy.

Thanks to the hard work of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, clinical trials are now taking place on the use of MDMA (aka Ecstasy) for post-traumatic stress disorder and end-of-life anxiety. But MAPS failed to win approval for U.S. researchers to study cannabis that isn't the schwag grown by the government in Mississippi. Instead, European researchers are making remarkable findings about cannabinoids, finding they can halt the progression of illnesses such Alzheimer's, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka Lou Gehrig's disease) and cancer.

By unanimous vote in November 2007, the Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association approved a statement supporting legal protection for patients using medical marijuana and calling for more research on the topic. Studies out of Britain have reinforced a possible link between cannabis use and schizophrenia, although the question of whether the condition preceded the use remains open. But what can we say about cannabis use for relatively healthy people looking for a spiritual side to life in a world gone mad?

Thousands of Californians are reportedly puffing legal medicinal pot for mood disorders and anxiety. San Francisco psychiatrist Philip Wolfson has some sound advice on his Web site about it: "Marijuana is best used thoughtfully, with awareness of the effects on self and others, and non-compulsively. Compulsive use blunts marijuana's utility and creates a sense of sameness of experience instead of uniqueness and learning. Marijuana can be a tool for healing, learning, love, sensuality, sexuality, growth and spacious mind and is best used as part of an overall approach to goals for personal development that include wellness, spiritual, psychological and community practices."

Richard L. Miller, Ph.D., says of his 50 years as a psychologist: "During that time, our government has suppressed university research into certain psychoactive drugs including, but definitely not limited to, LSD, THC and MDMA. In addition, when I met with high-ranking Israeli scientists a few years ago, I was told that the United States suppresses research in Israel and other countries as well.

"I host a radio program on a National Public Radio affiliate. If I, or one of my guests, speak certain words on the air, the station can be fined an amount so great that the station ceases to exist.

"Freedom to do research and freedom of speech are core values of our democratic republic, and we have lost these freedoms. The future of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is in jeopardy. It is imperative that we organize, at the grassroots level and work to regain our lost freedoms."