By Michael Pollan — 2015
Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is now yielding exciting results.
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Study participants at some of the country's leading medical research centers are going through intense therapy and six-hour psychedelic journeys deep into their minds to do things like quit smoking and worry less.
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In the 1950s a group of pioneering psychiatrists showed that hallucinogenic drugs had therapeutic potential, but the research was halted as part of the backlash against the hippy counterculture.
In the world’s largest study on psychedelics and the brain, a team of researchers from The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) and Department of Biomedical Engineering of McGill University, the Broad Institute at Harvard/MIT, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, and Mila—Quebec...
The drug lowers brain barriers, allowing distant regions to talk and thoughts to flow more freely.
Many people have a spiritual experience on psychedelics. How they make meaning of it could be influenced by the metaphysical beliefs of their therapists.
Like most people of color in the United States, psychotherapist and researcher Monnica Williams has experienced myriad forms of racism. Early in her career, understanding its effects on her mind and body motivated her to help clients address their own racial trauma in therapy.
The first randomized controlled trial to compare the illicit psychedelic psilocybin with a conventional selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant found that the former improved symptoms of depression just as well on an established metric—and had fewer side effects.
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In a survey of thousands of people who reported having experienced personal encounters with God, researchers report that more than two-thirds of self-identified atheists shed that label after their encounter, regardless of whether it was spontaneous or while taking a psychedelic.
How magic mushrooms expand consciousness.
Once considered the quintessential party drug, MDMA (also known as “ecstasy,” “X,” or “molly”) is now experiencing a surge of interest in a completely different area: psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.