“MYR” holds multiple meanings: in astronomy, it is the abbreviation for millions of years, while in Slavic languages, “mir” refers to the word “peace.” Beyond that, it is also the psychedelic support project led by Eta.
Eta lives in Utrecht and is dedicated to providing guidance and assistance to those who wish to embark on psychedelic experiences using psychoactive substances like psilocybin, found in specific types of truffles and mushrooms, a legal substance in the Netherlands.
When I first met Eta, I knew very little about psychedelics and was simply curious, as I wasn’t particularly familiar with psychoactive substances. During my journey through these plants, mushrooms, topics, and the theories of people advocating for psychedelics, I came to realize that I had been living with a deep depression for years, one I had largely neglected. Psychedelics saved my life because they quickly became a profound personal value and a beacon of hope for the global future.
From an anthropological point of view, how do we explain this promising response of psychedelics to mental conditions and the general well-being of the psychophysical and emotional state of the individual? Can our body, the first tool we have, built starting from learned habits and ways of being in the world, be somehow reprogrammed by the psychedelic experience? And how to translate the psychedelic experience into daily practice? Can psychedelics offer us a new way of being and being in the world?
This project is rooted in a fundamental ethnographic approach ― interviews, reports, trip transcriptions, and analyses developed through medical anthropology, which also served as a framework for my Master’s thesis in this discipline. Besides this, it is composed of a body of photographic work, consisting of the documentation of supports with the collaboration of Eta, still life of psychoactive substances, especially containing psilocybin, and above all images generated by meetings with people who wanted to share their most powerful and revolutionary psychedelic experience.