They can trigger a paradigm shift in many other areas, not just mental health care.
Except it's so hard to explain this to a 'normal' person, who's never taken any.<p>"If God were to permit you a brief voyage into the divine process,
let you whirl for a second into the atomic nucleus or spin you
out on a light-year trip through the galaxies, how on earth
would you describe what you saw when you got back, breathless,
to your office? This metaphor may sound farfetched or irrelevant,
but just ask someone who has taken a heavy dose of LSD."
- Tim Leary, The politics of ecstasy, 1968<p>It's similar to the 'overview effect' reported by astronauts who've been to space.
Of course it triggers a paradigm shift and 'cures' depression or other mind-loops that we find ourselves in so often.<p>It's good to see that there are more discussions about psychedelics in the scientific community.
I suspect there are many (more and more) scientists and academics who use psychedelics so
I think we will see more and more material published on this subject, apart from the huge amount of anecdotal material available online.<p>I also suspect that people use more psychedelics now than ever in our history.
And it's happening globally. And it's a good thing.<p>Because I believe psychedelics are the mythical 'love bomb' which can stop wars and bring peace to people and other species on Earth.
And they could, in theory, cure cancer - certainly the psychological and spiritual effects of the disease, which could bring remission to it's physical manifestation.<p>So yeah, there's lots of research still to be done.
Psychedelics are a lot like taking a vacation. You may have an experience which will impact your life in some (perhaps significantly better or worse) way. You may gain new perspectives on life. You may gain insight into yourself and travel companions. You may develop an ugly tendency to be that annoying person who always talks about their trip to ___ and always find a way to interject it into conversations.
Support MAPS (Multidisciplinairy Association for Psychedelic Studies) <a href="http://www.maps.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.maps.org/</a> or the Dutch OPEN Foundation to promote research in this area.
<a href="https://twitter.com/FoundationOPEN" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/FoundationOPEN</a>
Pretty tangential, and i've no idea yet as to it's accuracy, but i loved the idea that the human race's "emergence into consciousness was triggered by our ancestors encounters with visionary plants". From an ironically, as otherwise i probably wouldn't have stumbled on it, Ted Talk by Graham Hancock:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0c5nIvJH7w" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0c5nIvJH7w</a><p>Out of interest, are there any other theories as to what might have caused this "leap"?
If LSD is this safe in a black market environment: <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210</a><p>I don't see how if it was clinically manufactured and administered the risks couldn't be acceptably mitigated. The interviewee seems confident the government is on board and things are going down a new path though so I guess this could be a thing now.
This is strong medicine, but the reports around ayahuasca, ibogaine, psilocybin, DMT and peyote all indicate the possibility of deep and lasting positive psychological shifts. I'd personally submit to treatment in the safety of a psych/medical clinic rather than a secret Peruvian yoga retreat but the fact that so many centers are popping up indicates some kind of global hive-mind desire for change. I'm supremely interested in the official and unofficial studies taking place all over the world right now in these domains.
Psychedelics are, I think, a genuine example of a suppressed technology. They're one of two major suppressed technologies of the 20th century, with the other possibly being nuclear power.
<i>"The exciting thing isn't just that these drugs work for something that we already have treatment for. It's that they're getting big effects on disorders for which we have very poor treatment."</i><p>It sounds to me like it may imply that much of what we call "mental health" disorders are really somatopsychic conditions.
I was surprised the article didn't mention Ayahuasca, maybe the original source did. I know a few people that used it to get off heroin for good after going through several Regan-relapse cycles.
I just finished reading "Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal" by Tom Shroder. It was parallel tour of the history of influential people (primarily Rick Doblin of MAPS), and a Iraq veteran suffering from PTSD that was treated later in the book with MDMA. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Test-Ecstasy-Power-Heal/dp/0147516374" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Test-Ecstasy-Power-Heal/dp/014751...</a>
Rick Doblin at MAPS has said he's funding the medical research of psychedelics and MDMA partly to change their public perception. It's a good strategy. "Medicinal alcohol" during Prohibition and medicinal cannabis during Prohibition 2.0 both helped sway a skeptical public.<p>Strategic concerns aside, psychedelics clearly are powerful medicines and can yield profound insights, and their relative safety makes their Schedule 1 status morally repellent.
Here's a link to an early-release PDF of the study: <a href="https://psilosybiini.info/paperit/Psychedelic%20medicine,%20a%20re-emerging%20therapeutic%20paradigm%20(Tupper%20et%20al.,%202015).pdf" rel="nofollow">https://psilosybiini.info/paperit/Psychedelic%20medicine,%20...</a>
The man made the "unreliable narrator" his main device, but I think "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" should put to rest any idea that such trendy chemical amusement aids have much therapeutic value in the general case.<p>It least puts such ideas in a position of having to work a lot harder to make their case.
TA: "The fact that the effects last beyond the time that you take the medication -- that's really a new paradigm in psychiatry."<p>I have no doubt that psychedelics are capable of producing lasting changes in behaviors, habits, or outlooks. Actually, I'd be surprised if that particular point is at all controversial.<p>However, prespcribing a psychedlic that could have lasting impacts on a person for "reasons we don't understand" seems... unnecessarily dangerous, whenever an alternative exists. Which of course is only an argument for more research.