I was using some 5-MeO-DMT with friends last year when we started discussing the effects of the medicine on different people. It was presenting quite differently in our respective nervous systems, and I’d noticed that it affects different people very differently. Very, very differently. Why was that, I wondered aloud?
We agreed that it seemed to give people what they needed. That it was beneficent to each person, even if it was very different. That it met them where they were.
Like skillful means, someone said! Upaya!
And then it hit us. We ought to call it Upaya!
People have called 5-MeO-DMT many names. Sometimes people call it Jaguar.
Calling a medicine a chemical name is, to my mind, like calling a person Z-X-31. U might associate a person with a number in a database, but they are a person, not a number. A unique living being, worthy of love and care, rather than a fungible item in a spreadsheet.
We develop relationships with these medicines, like we would with people. Giving a medicine a name is an act of affection and respect.
So that’s why we call it Upaya.