Category Archives: Psychedelics

In response to The Return Trip: Psychedelics may come back from the abyss of illegality, published November 21-27, 2019.

Design by Jennifer Levesque

Serene, I bet we beat your state to this.

Billy Tower, Facebook comment

Billy Tower, lol youre probably right! But glad to know its all on its way.

Serene Leona, Facebook comment

Ugh! Heaven help us all.

Lorre Smith, Facebook comment

Yea, heaven help us all open our minds and discover a better way to live in this godforsaken society.

Kyle Kelley, Facebook comment

Wonderful article! This is probably one of the best that Ive read having to do with the recent psychedelic revolution.

Dan Conner, website comment

In response to Monte Belmonte Wines: Trying to love Italian wine, published November 21-27, 2019.

Having read this article, it didnt take long to figure out it was really about the U.S. immigration policy and not really about wine. My paternal grandparents came from an Eastern European country in the late 1890s and arrived as legal immigrants at Ellis Island and, who knows, probably were deloused as well a small price to pay in order to enter the country. When you enter a country illegally, theres a price to pay. The only people I feel sorry for are the innocent children, who are brought here by adults who are breaking the law. You dont get to pick and choose which laws youre going to follow and then be surprised when youre detained.

Welcoming immigrants who enter legally is an honorable endeavor, and we should be helping those who enter our country honorably, not the ones who currently sneak in and hide out.

Judy Curtis, email

In response to Between the Lines: Use your billions on something other than running for president, published November 21-27, 2019.

I got my daily Tom Steyer flyer today. More dependable than the local paper.

Steve William Lindsey, Facebook comment

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Letters to the Editor: Psychedelics on their way - Valley Advocate

Taking DMT is a bit like putting your brain through a jet engine and getting your consciousness blown out the other side. Theres no you anymore. Youre just kind of everywhere, surrounded by colours and fractals and aliens that look a bit like elves. It feels a lot like being dead, or what you imagine being dead feels like, and then youre sucked back into your body feeling somewhere between terrified and peaceful. But whats weird is that for such a chaotic ride, there seems to be a pattern to the experience. The trip tends to follow a similar trajectory each time, and everyone seems to experience some variation of the same thing.

For scientists this uniformity presents some interesting questions. Namely: whats the neurology behind DMT? And why do so many people report seeing elves? These questions have instigated a few studies, including one at Johns Hopkins in the United States, but the latest findings have just come from the Imperial College London.

Last week a study published in Scientific Reports looked at the brains response to DMT, courtesy of the colleges Psychedelic Research Group. There, researchers administered intravenous DMT to 13 subjects, while measuring their brains electrical activity via a web of electrodes loaded into head capsdevices that are known as "EEG caps".

If were serious about understanding human beings and their consciousness, we need to understand psychedelic experiences, Christopher Timmins, a PhD student at Imperial College London and author of the study, told VICE over the phone. DMT [is] particularly relevant because, at normal doses, it generates this very strong sense of immersiveness.

We asked Christopher what else he and his team discovered about DMTs bewildering effects on the brain.

Christopher Timmermann. Credit: Imperial College London, photo by Thomas Angus

VICE: HI Chris. Can you start by explaining our current understanding of how DMT works on a neurological level?Christopher Timmermann: We know DMT works with the serotonin system in the brain. Serotonin is one of the major chemicals that we have in the brain thats responsible for a series of functions related to consciousnesswakefulness, attention. DMT is very closely related to the serotonin molecule. We also know that if you block a specific serotonin receptor in the brain, the psychological effects of DMT are inhibited. So we know that the specific receptor, the serotonin 2A receptor, is crucial for psychedelic effects. And this receptor is expressed all over the cerebral cortexits very prominent in sensory areas, and its distributed all around.

What neurological effects did you see in your subjects after theyd taken DMT? The brainwave patterns seen are particularly notorious in certain states of consciousness. For example, you have an Alpha wave pattern thats very prominent when you close your eyes and disengage from the environment. When we open our eyes after that, this Alpha wave pattern goes down a very significant way. In the DMT study, we found the same thinga very strong reduction of these Alpha waves. The only difference is that people kept their eyes closed. It's almost as if people were seeing with their eyes closed, engaging with a world. And we found this reduction in Alpha waves was very strongly associated [with] the intensity of the experience.

Another way we try to understand brain activity is to see how chaotically, or entropically, the brain behaves after we administer these drugs. With DMT, we found that there was a huge increase in this chaotic activity. This is interesting because its the opposite of what happens in the brain when there is a loss of consciousness, such as when youre in a coma, or youre sleeping or dreaming.

Were there any other brainwave patterns you noticed?Yeah we also saw an increase in Theta and Delta waves. Its interesting because these increases were particularly noticeable when people were in the peak of this experience, so the moment in which people felt completely immersed in this alternate reality of sorts. This Theta wave, specifically, is tightly related to dreaming, so therefore we have some initial evidence that theres a similar mechanism behind dreaming and this very immersive DMT experience.

Treatment room setup. Credit: Imperial College London and photo by Thomas Angus

Im interested in how the people in your study reacted to the DMT. You write that they were all exposed to psychedelics, but did anyone report seeing anything interesting during their trip?There were challenging moments for sure; moments where people in the interview after reported that it was too much. One participant said she reached a point in which she couldnt go further. She described encountering some beings or entities that were pushing against her, not allowing her to trespass into their realm, and I think this was particularly challenging. But after that, she said she was falling through pink clouds of comfort, and other entities were healing her once she was going through this space.

Now, the whole idea is DMT allows people to break through different realities. But it's fairly well established that while some can, others cant. Is there any neurological reason as to why this is?There are many factors that can influence this. Id say a very important one is that people usually smoke DMT, and smoking is a very ineffective way to ingest a drug because a lot of the product can be burned before its absorbed. Theres variability in the lung capacity people have, how much time theyre holding the smoke in, and basically, your history with smoking other substances.

Okay, but are there any explanations neurologically? You mentioned serotonin earlier, so could anything be altering those receptors, like antidepressant drugs for example? We dont know how well antidepressants interact, at least at the experiential level. The usual saying of psychedelics is that when people are taking antidepressants, psychedelics dont work as well. Theres also some evidence that this serotonin 2A receptor is mediated by a gene some people apparently have or dont have. But again, these things are speculative. Theres nothing mechanistically proven about why people may not break through. But I would say that dose is a very big explanation.

Is there any scientific way to explain DMT breakthroughs? Like, are we closer to understanding why, or how, people meet entities like machine elves?At the moment we dont know. What were doing now is were conducting other experiments in which we use DMT, and we give it inside fMRI scanners, because fMRI scanners allow you to look at things happening [inside] the brain with much more precision. And that is important because we know that certain areas of the brain are used for recognising faces, when were engaging in social activities, and so on.

So youre saying DMT might affect the parts of our brain that recognise faces, which could be why were seeing the faces of elves when were on DMT? Look, DMT might be acting on specific areas of the brain responsible for face recognition, or understanding the mind of others, or recognising intentions, but these are speculations only.

So, to you, whats been the point of the study? How has this research helped us to understand DMT or even this notion of consciousness? An important part of this study has been exploring how DMT trips are part of the human experience repertoire. These are states that human beings can have. As a scientist, theres a natural curiosity in understanding not only why, but understanding the experiences themselves. One of the important things about this study has been examining what kind of experiences human beings can have, and how we can make sense of them.

Interview by Sam Nichols. He's on Twitter

This article originally appeared on VICE AU.

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Scientists Have a Fascinating New Map of the Human Brain on DMT - VICE

The National Institute of Mental Health has mushrooms on its mind.

The federal health agency has invited Roland Griffiths a prominent psychedelics researcher to lead a discussion on Tuesday as part of its speaker series.

In this presentation, Dr. Griffiths will review the history, epidemiology, risks, and neuropharmacology of classic psychedelic drugs, the NIMH said. The presentation will highlight research into the effects of psilocybin in healthy volunteers, in beginning and long-term meditators, and in religious leaders.

While the invitation was not meant to be seen as an endorsement of the use of psilocybin, the agency said it is hoping to encourage broad thinking as opposed to incremental advancements in knowledge.

Innovation speakers are encouraged to describe their work from the perspective of breaking through existing boundaries and developing successful new ideas, as well as working outside their initial area of expertise in ways that have pushed their fields forward, the agency said. We encourage discussions of the meaning of innovation, creativity, breakthroughs, and paradigm-shifting.

With the legalization and decriminalization of cannabis making news and opening up new avenues of research around the world, the paradigm is already shifting on psilocybin mushrooms.

The NIMH made a fine choice in Griffiths, a researcher who has spent much of his career exploring the potential of psychedelics in the treatment of mental health issues. In September, he was chosen to head up a new facility devoted to the study of psychedelics at John Hopkins University.

Currently, psilocybin mushrooms are classified as a Schedule I drug by the FDA, the same category as heroin and cannabis. To be a Schedule I drug means the substance in question holds no medicinal value. As researchers find mushrooms have a positive effect onanxiety,treatment-resistant depression, andSeasonal Affective Disorder, that could change.

Like cannabis, psilocybin has a long track record of relative safety among recreational users, and it is not toxic. Unlike some drugs that treat anxiety and other mental conditions, psilocybin is not prone to dependence. But given its hallucinogenic effect, lawmakers may be reticent to allow distribution of the psychedelic drug without more restrictions.

And mushrooms may prove to be a growth opportunity for Big Marijuana as well. As legislators consider the decriminalization of the substance for medicinal use, theyll look to industries that already have a similar market with regulations that will likely mirror those for mushrooms.

Want to keep up to date on whats happening in the world of cannabis?Subscribeto the Cannabis Post newsletter for weekly insights into the industry, what insiders will be talking about and content from across the Postmedia Network.

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Hes a fungi: U.S. health agency asks researcher to give it the lowdown on psilocybin mushrooms - The GrowthOp

After years of debilitating depression, Kevin Matthews credits a transformative mushroom trip in 2011 as his turnaround. It allowed the clouds to clear and kind of gave me the perspective to see my life in a whole new context, he says.

Matthews, 34, doesnt look the part of a drug activist. Neatly dressed in a pale blue button-down, the young dad talks over the noise of clattering plates at a trendy Denver coffee shop about what fun it was to wander between parks that night. When he laughs, his brown eyes crinkle behind no-nonsense rectangular glasses that look like they belong on a teacher rather than an impassioned organizer trying to make magic mushrooms mainstream.

Yet as Decriminalize Denvers campaign manager, Matthews drove his citys push to decriminalize psilocybin, the active ingredient in mushrooms that causes hallucinations. Initiative 301 secured 50.5 percent of the vote in May, making Denver the first U.S. city to decriminalize the drug for those over 21 years old. Arrests for possession or use of psilocybin are now Denvers lowest law enforcement priority, though the drug still cant be sold or used for medical treatment.

After the narrow victory, Matthews and others from the campaign launched the nonprofit Society for Psychedelic Outreach, Reform and Education (yes, thats SPORE). Matthews, who will be the groups executive director, supports city officials who provide extra training to law enforcement focused on harm reduction. He hopes SPORE will evolve into an information and strategy hub for other grassroots campaigns as psychedelics gain political attention nationwide. Oakland, California, decriminalized psychoactive plants and fungi in June, while medical legalization of psilocybin could be on Oregons ballot next year and petitions are circling California for a 2020 decriminalization ballot measure.

Unlike the legalization of cannabis, this mushroom push isnt expected to create a booming industry or begin correcting decades of criminal inequities (psilocybin is identified in less than 0.5 percent of drug lab reports). Instead, supporters point to a small but growing body of research suggesting that psilocybin can be an effective tool to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and addiction. Growing acceptance of marijuana helped pave the way. This shouldnt be considered alternative anymore, says Matthews. We have a national emergency right now with our mental health and addiction crisis.

This shouldnt be considered alternative anymore.

Kevin Matthews

While this was Matthews first brush with organizing, hes been oriented by a sense of duty for decades. Since age 9, the Denver native dreamed of joining the Army and following in the footsteps of his adoptive father and grandfather. In 2005, he headed to West Point, where he was treated for depression. Suicidal ideation led to a medical discharge in 2008.

The discharge crushed him. The military doesnt really have the cultural infrastructure to work with people who are suffering from major depression, Matthews says, steady and soft-spoken, as sunlight pours into the caf. He moved home with his father and bounced among odd jobs. Today, he speaks openly about the sense of abandonment he traces to being adopted and without a mother figure. It took a cocktail of therapy, yoga, meditation and alternative spirituality for him to reach a place of clarity.

Self-medicating with mushrooms was part of that soul-searching. In 2011, Matthews moved in with Sheva, who would become his wife. (They met at a poker game: I got my ass kicked, he says with a laugh.) The couple worked at an outdoor rehabilitation center for at-risk youth until 2013, when the company shut down, after which they packed up their Subaru and moved to Mendocino, California. They lived off the grid in the redwood forest until Shevah became pregnant; in 2014, they returned to Denver back into the real world, Matthews says.

By 2017 he was working as a social media consultant and became captivated by the idea that psilocybin could alleviate others suffering as well as his own. Matthews helped to craft the ballot initiative, found the 10-person committee, canvas for signatures and coordinate more than 100 volunteers, with a boost of $48,000 in campaign donations.

An expanding body of research has been exploring psilocybins therapeutic potential to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder, cigarette and alcohol dependence, and treatment-resistant depression. Some research also indicates low abuse and dependence rates. A University of California, San Francisco pilot study suggests it is feasible to combine medically supervised psilocybin use with regular group therapy, says Brian Anderson, a UCSF psychiatrist with a background in substance use (the study has not yet been published).

Still, Anderson urges caution, saying psilocybin use can go wrong for example, triggering psychotic episodes in people with schizophrenia and must take place in highly controlled settings. Neither Denvers nor Oaklands initiatives authorize doctors to recommend psilocybin as treatment, though Oregons ballot measure would allow medical use. Decriminalization at a local level is not legalization, and its not regulation, Anderson says.

Theres also the broad cadre of public health and safety concerns about recreational use. Trips, which can last up to six hours, cause hallucinations that impair judgment. People on psilocybin have died jumping from buildings or walking into traffic. Matthews understands these concerns: SPOREs focus has shifted to educating people about how to use mushrooms safely (e.g., knowing strains and appropriate dosage) through TV public service announcements, radio spots and billboards, possibly in conjunction with city government. After seeing his success in Denver, I expect that he will be aggressive in his efforts to educate the population and decriminalize its use, says Denver District Attorney Beth McCann, who brought in Matthews for a psilocybin primer after the initiative passed.

While advocates note that hallucinogenic plants have been used in community settings since the shamans and medicine men of antiquity, modern psychedelic politics remains in its infancy. Organizing efforts have bubbled up in cities like Chicago, Washington, D.C., Phoenix and Dallas, while medical research on the drug continues. Matthews is fully aware that national curiosity, scrutiny and criticism will focus on Denver as the petri dish of this experiment. In many ways, he says, we kind of catalyzed this movement for the rest of the country.

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A Magic Mushroom Test Case, and the Man Behind It - OZY

Photos courtesy of those interviewed.

One of Mac Dres most beloved lyrics is from a song titled Weekend.

The shrooms I consume are making me laugh/ Im high as the eye on a fucking giraffe, he raps on the track Weekend. The song appeared on 2006s 16 wit dre, a mix album that was released two-and-a-half years after Dres death on November 1, 2004.

The Oakland-born Dre was a fan of magic mushrooms and MDMA; he even devoted a song to the pair titled Shrooms and E-Pills.

So, its likely that he wouldve celebrated the news of Oakland decriminalizing psilocybin (the scientific name for magic or psychedelic mushrooms).In June 2019, Oakland City Council passed a local ordinance to decriminalize certain natural psychedelicslike mushrooms, ayahuasca, peyote and DMT. (Synthetic psychedelics like LSD and MDMA are still illegal, and psychedelic mushrooms and other natural hallucinogens are technically still illegal under California state law and federal law. The ordinance also doesnt legalize the sale or distribution of psychedelic mushrooms.) Approved a month prior to Denvers voter-led ballot initiative to decriminalize psilocybin, Oaklands resolution is a continuation of Californias progressive drug reform history. The state became the first in the country to legalize medical marijuana in 1996.

These are not drugs. These are healing plants We just think they should never have been made illegal to begin with, Carlos Plazola, founder of Decriminalize Nature Oakland (DNO), an advocacy group dedicated to making natural medicine accessible to Oakland, told the Guardian.

Inspired by his own experiences using psychedelic mushrooms to heal from childhood trauma, Plazola created the DNO.

This is getting the word out about the healing power, Plazola said. Many people in communities of color and communities of trauma are not getting access.

For generations, communities of color utilized natural psychedelics for medicinal purposes. Rooted in spiritual-based healing, the practices of plant-based medicine became whitewashed by Americas counterculture movement of the 1960s. Despite this, black people have continued to experiment with psychedelics. The creation of hyphy music a subgenre of rap music that came about in the Bay Area in the late 90s and rose to prominence in the mid-2000s was a byproduct of rappers using MDMA, with the late Mac Dre at the forefront of that experimentation. Countless Dre songs, like Weekend and Shrooms and E-Pills, found him referencing not only MDMA but psychedelic mushrooms. While he was alive, Dre had also coined a term not just for ecstasy but for the euphoric effects people felt from taking it thizz. Dres Thizzle Dance practically served as an explainer for the term as the rapper (alongside Chuck Beez) broke down what thizz is all about: letting your body move as fluidly and erratically as it wants. In 2012, eight years after Dres death, Thizz Entertainment his record label was implicated in a nationwide ecstasy ring. (Court records revealed that most of the people arrested in the operation had no connection to the label.)

Aware of the regions previously established relationship with usage of psychedelics and the fear of being criminalized, Plazola wants to transform the headquarters of the DNO into a consciousness community, a co-working space where people can also reflect on their psychedelic journeys and learn about natural psychedelics. Helping him with this aretwo Black women: co-founder Nicolle Greenheart and community outreach and education activist Amber Senter.

Okayplayer spoke with Greenheart and Senter about being involved with DNO, the importance of people of color reclaiming and experimenting with psychedelics and more.

Greenheart: Denver;s strategy was focused on psilocybin through a voter-centered route. DNO ensured the resolution included all plant medicine because individuals should have autonomy over what plants they use to heal. We wanted to make sure people had that choice, because there is a wealth of plants. Going the council route resulted in the consultation of professionals in the psychedelic space scientists, therapists, and input from community leaders before the resolution was presented to council.

Carlos Plazola previously worked for city council and knew how to navigate and lobby. So it was helpful to have an individual with expertise in Oakland politics. Despite the creation of our resolution being predominantly white in terms of contributions, we received support from the indigenous community, and crafted a diverse team of advocates to discuss legislation with city council members. When we presented at The Public Safety Community, we intentionality chose diverse speakers men, women, and people of color so city council witnessed the diversity of voices in the psychedelic movement.

Greenheart: Since childhood, Ive suffered from depression and underwent the traditional routes of treatment such as psycho-therapy and antidepressants, which negatively impacted my health. After that experience I asked myself, How am I going to heal myself naturally? I tried meditation, yoga, homeopathic treatments, crystals, but I was always looking for community.

I attended an all-day retreat and was intrigued by a ceremonial practice of microdosing huachuma (San Pedro cactus) to align with your higher self and open your heart chakra. Once I found out the healing plant was a psychedelic, I began a one-and-a-half year long research study on psychedelics and attended local community-centered events in the Bay Area. But I noticed I was the only Black person in the room. I questioned the lack of my community in these spaces, because we need this medicine just as much as anybody else. It gave me a new motivation to create space for establishing community for Black people in psychedelic spaces. The integration of plant-based medicine in Black communities is an offering of help and support because Ive experienced how powerful and life transforming it is.

Senter: Theres an insignificant lack of awareness and education on how medicinal plants can help Black communities. Black voices in psychedelics are obscured by those in positions of power, and I wanted to ensure my voice was heard in these political efforts to decriminalize ISA genetic plants in Oakland. From my own experience dealing with lupus (a chronic auto-immune disorder), psychedelic mushrooms have been helpful for me. Disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis and Scholar Derma are rampant in Black women and women of color communities. I reached out to Carlos and told him I wanted to be involved, because as an advocate of women of color in the cannabis spaces through Supernova Women, I know the benefits of plant-based medicine for our communities.

Greenheart: Im familiar with her work and the challenges of getting communities of color to engage with psychedelics in the clinical and/or therapeutic route. I previously held a stereotypical perception of psychedelics as a recreational hippie drug for white people. It wasnt until I started researching the medicinal purposes of psychedelics that I wanted to destigmatize psychedelics in the Black community and advocate its healing purposes. Specifically, to treat the trauma expressed by members within our community while promoting responsible usage. I want to model how to be a safe and responsible user without going the clinical route. There is a place for the therapeutic model and for individuals who want to participate within a community-based environment, while receiving support and being safe.

Senter: Im from Chicago, so theres a regional difference in reception of natural plant medicines compared to Oakland. Indigenous and Latinx communities have been very open and welcoming to the decriminalization of natural psychedelics. I expected resistance from the Black Church, but attendees have understood that God made these plants for healing purposes.

Greenheart: There needs to be collaboration between hip-hop and psychedelics. Whether the merger is a conference we need people to join in. Were a small team with limited capacity, so we need to hear from local artists to participate in this movement alongside us. Were in infancy, so everybody is waiting to see what happens.

__

Taylor Crumpton has written for Pitchfork, PAPER, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, and more. You can follow her@taylorcrumpton

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The Two Black Women Helping To Reclaim & Encourage Natural Psychedelics Use In Oakland - Okayplayer

The University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) is financing a study into the psychedelic psilocybin with the help of decentralized fundraising platform Molecule Catalyst, in the first attempt to fund a clinical trial into psychedelics using decentralized finance.

According to a recent post on the Molecule blog, the effort will be a joint collaboration between Molecule Catalyst, Rotem Petranker and Thomas Anderson, directors at the University of Toronto Mississauga Psychedelic Studies Research Program (PSRP).

Through its partnership with Molecule Catalyst, UTM hope to raise an undisclosed sum to fund its planned psilocybin clinical trials.

Molecule uses blockchain technology to provide an incentive-based market for scientific research. Through Molecule Catalyst, research groups will be able to raise funds for the study of rare diseases, ageing & longevity and psychedelics, among other fields.

Be the first to get Decrypt Members. A new type of account built on blockchain.

To provide an incentive to investors, Molecule uses smart contracts to make the chemical intellectual property resulting from successful products easily tradeable on the Ethereum blockchain. In this way, funders receive a stake in the projects they supportallowing investors of all sizes to help fund potentially pioneering research and benefit from its success. Molecule uses the dollar-backed stablecoin DAI to overcome market instability.

UTM's psilocybin study is the first fund-raising project to be hosted by Molecule Catalyst, which ultimately aims to create a Web 3.0 marketplace and exchange for chemical IP.

The UTM study will investigate the effects of microdosing a psychedelic compound known as psilocybin on a variety of cognitive indicators.

Besides examining psilocybin's effect on creativity, mood and focus, the study will also measure its influence on social connection, self-efficacy and mindfulness.

Overall, UTM hopes that the data produced will help to guide global psychedelics research, by setting a new precedent that can be used to direct impactful psychedelics research.

Previously, psilocybin has been shown to effective in treating a wide variety of mental disorders, ranging from anxiety and depression, to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).However, due to its potential to be abused as a psychedelic drug, the psychoactive substance has been shelved as a potential therapeutic by most pharmaceutical research groups.

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Molecule Catalyst and UTM to crowdfund psychedelics research with blockchain - Decrypt

MICHAEL POLLAN: So this was an enormously challenging book to write. First of all, I knew very little about neuroscience. I knew very little about psychology, psychotherapy. And I had very limited experience of psychedelics. I had these mushrooms a couple of times in my 20s, but it was what people call a museum dose enough to make the world sparkle, but not to lead to any kind of profound insights. So I was faced with the challenge of mastering a new subject, and I was faced with the challenge of trying these psychedelics because I realized I could not describe the experience strictly based on interviews with other people.

And that's how I work as a writer. One of the very important parts of my work is to find a way to have an experience that will illuminate the story. So when I wrote about food, I bought a cow and followed it through the food system, through the meat industry. And I apprenticed myself to a great baker to learn how to bake. And I feel that these kind of experiences, especially when you're doing it for the first time, gives you an ability to see things very freshly. And you have that sense of wonder that comes with first sight, and you also get the common possibilities of a fish out of water, doing something that he or she is not very good at and the learning that comes from that.

So one of the things I always think about when I'm starting a project like this is, what are the different perspectives that I need to bring to bear on this subject? I don't believe any one perspective can unlock a subject as complex as psychedelics. So you need to look at it and this was true when I was writing about food and plants. Nonfiction gets interesting when you multiply the perspectives or layer the different lenses that you bring to. So you can look at this through the lens of neuroscience, say. A very interesting lens illuminates a lot.

But that doesn't tell you anything about the lived experience. Because neuroscience cannot reach consciousness. It has no tools for penetrating or measuring consciousness, except the absence of it. And so phenomenology the accounts of lived experience are very important. And I could get those from the volunteers I interviewed and from my own experience. So I needed a memoiristic element, as well as the neuroscientific element. And then there's the historical lens. History always illuminates things. How did we get here? Why did it take so long to get here? What have we learned along the way?

So I realized, O.K., I'm going to need to do a chapter of history, or two. I'm going to need to do a chapter of neuroscience, a chapter of my own trips, and it gradually comes together. Each chapter is going to represent a different lens on this subject, and I'm going to circle it from these different points of view. And that, to me, is how you make nonfiction rich. Otherwise, you might as well write an article. And what necessitates a book is the fact that no one perspective will give you the picture you need, the full dimensional picture.

Within that frame, the most challenging part was describing the psychedelic trips. And William James famously said that the mystical experience is ineffable beyond the reach of language. Well, I had an effort. I couldn't just let that lie and just say you had to be there. But it's very hard to describe because these are kind of pre-linguistic experiences.

One of the researchers I interviewed said I said why are these experiences so hard to describe? And he said, well, imagine a cave man coming to New York in 2019, and he sees subways going by, and planes overhead, and people talking on phones, and the noise of traffic. And then he goes back to his friends in the cave, and what does he say? He says it's loud and fast, and he doesn't have the words for cell phone or the bustle of urban life. The language doesn't exist.

But I had to find the language, and so I approach those chapters with a great deal of trepidation and as much trepidation as I had about the trips themselves. And it took me a while to figure out how to write about it. Because I was trying to write for a general audience. I'm not writing for psycho nuts. I'm writing for people who've never had this experience, but might be curious. And I want to tell them what it's like. And it took me a while, but I gradually found a voice in which I could do it. And this comes through trial and error of writing an account and reading it and going, that sounds crazy. Or that sounds really banal. "Gee, you've had an insight that love is the most important thing in the universe. That's a Hallmark card."

The solution I found to that was to be very candid with my reader and essentially tell the narratives. And then break the fourth wall at various points, step out of the narrative, and say, "Look, I know how banal this sounds, but let's talk about banality for a little while. There's a very thin line between the profound and the banal. What is a platitude? Well, it's a truth that's lost its emotional force from sheer repetition. So how do we recover that?" Or, in another moment, where if something crazy happens, I would break the wall and say, "I know how crazy this sounds."

So I kind of move in and out of the experience, sort of the way a memoir writer would juxtapose the point of view of the 10-year-old with the adult and go back and forth. Because if you just stayed in the head of the 10-year-old, it would have no perspective. It might have vividness, but no perspective. And if you stayed in the head of the adult, it wouldn't be evocative. So memoirs, I realized and I realized this teaching them because I teach writing get their savor or their edge from that going back and forth in perspective. And I kind of did the same thing, not in a temporal dimension, but on this inside outside of the experience.

So I found my voice to write about it, and once I did, it was great fun to write about the trips. I've never had more fun as a writer. I loved describing them. And I and I would license the absolute madness of parts of the experience by saying, "Yeah, I know, it's crazy, but this is what happened." So this book was great fun to write. I was learning new things. I loved being at the beginning of the learning curve on this subject, rather than at the end. One of the reasons I moved from writing about food to this was I realized I had become an expert after three or four books on food.

And I don't like writing as an expert. I think readers don't like experts. I think they want someone to take them on a journey. And my education becomes the story that you follow. I always start out as an idiot in my writing. I'm naive. I don't know what's going on. I'm confused. I have questions in my head. I'm reluctant. I'm skeptical. And gradually, I build my knowledge. We learn things. Things happen. And by the end, we are experts, but we're not at the beginning. And I think that's a really important lesson for writing in general.

I think even though when you finish a research project, you have your conclusions, don't put them on page one. That's like starting the joke with the punchline. Storytelling is you start from knowing less, and you move toward knowing more. So that the novelty of this subject, the fact that I was very naive, was a virtue, or at least, made a virtue. So we shouldn't be afraid of our ignorance. We should use it in our storytelling.

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On writing: What illuminates a story? - Big Think

From left to right, panelists Drs. Matthew Johnson, David Nichols, and Mendel Kaelen discussed the promise of psychedelics research.PHOTO COURTESY OF ANDRIJA DIMITRIJEVIC/MAPPING THE MIND

The promise of psychedelics research in a wide range of fields was explored at the Mapping the Mind: 2019 Psychedelic Science Conference at U of Ts Earth Sciences Centre in September.

Psychedelics are a class of mind-altering chemicals with therapeutic potential. The conference aimed to promote public education of psychedelic science and research in the field. It featured 10 speakers, including U of T professors, from a wide array of fields, such as psychiatry, pharmacology, and law.

Each speaker discussed their unique perspective on the future of psychedelic research.

Dr. David Nichols: psychedelic science researcher

The conference began with Dr. David Nichols, a respected pharmacologist and medicinal chemist from Purdue University, who has been widely known for his prolific work on psychedelic science since 1969.

Nichols has mainly worked with rats to study the effect of psychedelics on animal brains. Over his years of research, he has developed a strong faith in the therapeutic potential of psychedelics.

Patients with mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety, often display dysfunctional brain connectivity. Psychedelics can be used for treatment in these cases because they lead to a global increase in brain cell communications.

When Nichols began psychedelics research he faced difficulties receiving funding, as well as controversy due to the subject of his research. However, Nichols has described the field in recent years as blossoming, as it begins to demonstrate some promising prospects.

In support of psychedelic science research, Nichols founded the Heffter Research Institute in 1993. The institute works closely with some of the top universities in the world such as Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Yale University, and the University of Zurich.

What we work on today, [I] never imagined wed have them in my lifetime, Nichols said. When asked about his hope for the future, he commented, [If] at least the trajectory is going in the right direction, I will be happy.

In the future, when patients find themselves in crisis, Nichols hopes that they can experience at least one psychedelic session with their psychiatrists. His vision for the future was met with lasting applause from the audience.

Dr. Srinivas Rao: psychedelics as antidepressants in pharmacology

After a short break, the conference introduced the audience to a different perspective from Dr. Srinivas Rao, Chief Scientific Officer at ATAI Life Sciences AG and former CEO of Kyalin Biosciences.

Raos companies mainly work on the development of rapid-acting antidepressant drugs based on psilocybin and ketamine. These chemicals may lead to more compelling effects in contrast to the numerous limitations of conventional antidepressants such as poor compliance, delayed efficacy, and negative side effects.

For example, patients who are treated with ketamine have demonstrated rapid relief of depression symptoms and fewer side effects than with other drugs. According to Rao, the US Food and Drug Administration recently approved an esketamine medicine targeted for treatment-resistant depression, sold under the name SPRAVATO.

The drug is a nasal spray that needs to be administered in a supervised setting. A patient who has had a treatment session with the psychedelic described their experience as giving them the ability to step back, which Rao further elaborated on as the ability to give you the distance that you need from all the negative thinking.

The success of SPRAVATO is a lucky case. As Rao emphasized, the development of such drugs can take almost a decade, yet still fail to succeed on the market despite FDA approval.

Currently, Raos companies are testing psilocybin in early clinical trials, and he remains hopeful for the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics in treating depression.

Tags: conference, psychedelics, Science

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The future of psychedelic science - Varsity

For most of us, psychedelic drugs conjure up images of the 1960's. Hippies tripping out on LSD or magic mushrooms. But these powerful, mind-altering substances are now being studied seriously by scientists inside some of the country's foremost medical research centers. They're being used to treat depression, anxiety and addiction.

The early results are impressive, as are the experiences of the studies' volunteers who go on a six-hour, sometimes terrifying, but often life-changing psychedelic journey deep into their own minds.

Carine McLaughlin: (LAUGH) People ask me, "Do you wanna do it again?" I say, "Hell no. I don't wanna go do that again."

Anderson Cooper: It was really that bad?

Carine McLaughlin: Oh, it was awful. The entire time, other than the very end and the very beginning, I was crying.

Carine McLaughlin is talking about the hallucinogenic experience she had here at Johns Hopkins University, after being given a large dose of psilocybin, the psychedelic agent in magic mushrooms, as part of an ongoing clinical trial.

Roland Griffiths: We tell people that their experiences may vary from very positive to transcendent and lovely to literally hell realm experiences.

Anderson Cooper: Hell realm?

Roland Griffiths: As frightening an experience as you have ever had in your life.

That's scientist Roland Griffiths. For nearly two decades now, he and his colleague Matthew Johnson have been giving what they call "heroic doses" of psilocybin to more than 350 volunteers, many struggling with addiction, depression and anxiety.

Anderson Cooper: Can you tell who is going to have a bad experience, who's gonna have a transcendent experience?

Roland Griffiths: Our ability to predict that is almost none at all.

Anderson Cooper: Really?

Matthew Johnson: About a third will-- at our-- at a high dose say that they have something like that, what folks would call a bad trip. But most of those folks will actually say that that was key to the experience.

Carine McLaughlin was a smoker for 46 years and said she tried everything to quit before being given psilocybin at Johns Hopkins last year. Psilocybin itself is non-addictive.

Anderson Cooper: Do you remember what, like, specifically what you were seeing or?

Carine McLaughlin: Yes. The ceiling of this room were clouds, like, heavy rain clouds. And gradually they were lowering. And I thought I was gonna suffocate from the clouds.

That was more than a year ago; she says she hasn't smoked since. The study she took part in is still ongoing, but in an earlier, small study of just 15 long-term smokers, 80% had quit six months after taking psilocybin. That's double the rate of any over-the-counter smoking cessation product.

Roland Griffiths: They come to a profound shift of world view. And essentially, a shift in sense of self that I think--

Anderson Cooper: They-- they see their life in a different way?

Roland Griffiths: Their world view changes and-- and they are less identified with that self-narrative. People might use the term "ego." And that creates this sense of freedom.

And not just with smokers.

Jon Kostakopoulos: Beer usually, cocktails, usually vodka sodas, tequila sodas, scotch and sodas.

Jon Kostakopoulos was drinking a staggering 20 cocktails a night and had been warned he was slowly killing himself when he decided to enroll in another psilocybin trial at New York University. During one psilocybin session, he was flooded with powerful feelings and images from his past.

Jon Kostakopoulos: Stuff would come up that I haven't thought of since they happened.

Anderson Cooper: So old memories that you hadn't even remembered came back to you?

Jon Kostakopoulos: I felt, you know, a lot of shame and embarrassment throughout one of the sessions about my drinking and how bad I felt for my parents to put up with all this.

He took psilocybin in 2016. He says he hasn't had a drink since.

Anderson Cooper: Do you ever have a day where you wake up and you're like, man, I wish I could have a vodka right now or beer?

Jon Kostakopoulos: Never.

Anderson Cooper: Not at all?

Jon Kostakopoulos: Not at all, which is the craziest thing because that was my favorite thing to do.

Using psychedelic drugs in therapy is not new. There were hundreds of scientific studies done on a similar compound - LSD - in the 1950's and 60's. It was tested on more than 40,000 people, some in controlled therapeutic settings like this one. But there were also abuses. The U.S. military and CIA experimented with LSD sometimes without patients knowledge.

Fear over rampant drug use and the spread of the counterculture movement, not to mention Harvard professor Timothy Leary urging people to turn on, tune in and drop out, led to a clamp down.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the controlled substances act and nearly all scientific research in the U.S. Into the effects of psychedelics on people stopped. It wasn't until 2000 that scientist Roland Griffiths won FDA approval to study psilocybin.

Roland Griffiths: This whole area of research has been in the deep freeze for 25 or 30 years. And so as a scientist, sometimes I feel like Rip Van Winkle.

Anderson Cooper: And once you saw the results

Roland Griffiths: Yeah. The red light started flashing. This is extraordinarily interesting. It's unprecedented and the capacity of the human organism to change. It just was astounding.

Anderson Cooper: It sounds like you are endorsing this for everybody.

Roland Griffiths: Yeah, let's be really clear on that. We are very aware of the risks, and would not recommend that people simply go out and do this.

Griffiths and Johnson screen out people with psychotic disorders or with close relatives who have had schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Study volunteers at Johns Hopkins are given weeks of intensive counseling before and after the six-hour psilocybin experience; the psilocybin is given in a carefully controlled setting one to three times. To date, they say there's not been a single serious adverse outcome.

We were told we couldn't record anyone participating in the study while they were on psilocybin because it might impact their experience, but we were shown how it begins without the psilocybin.You lay on a couch, with a blindfold to shut out distractions and headphones playing a mix of choral and classical music a psychedelic soundtrack with a trained guide, mary cosimano, watching over you.

Everything is done the same way it was for the LSD experiments scientists conducted in the 1950s and 60s. Some of the most dramatic results have been with terminal cancer patients struggling with anxiety and paralyzing depression.

Kerry Pappas: I start seeing the colors and the geometric designs and it's like 'oh this is so cool, and how lovely' and, and then, boom. Visions began.

Kerry Pappas was diagnosed with stage III lung cancer in 2013. During her psilocybin session, she found herself trapped in a nightmare her mind created.

Kerry Pappas: An ancient, prehistoric, barren land. And there's these men with pickaxes, just slamming on the rocks. So

Anderson Cooper: And this felt absolutely real to you?

Kerry Pappas: Absolutely real. I was being shown the truth of reality. Life is meaningless, we have no purpose. And then I look and I'm still like a witness, a beautiful, shimmering, bright jewel. And then it was sound, and it was booming, booming, booming. Right here right now.

Anderson Cooper: That was being said?

Kerry Pappas: Yes. "You are alive. Right here right now, because that's all you have." And that is my mantra to this day.

Michael Pollan: It seemed so implausible to me that a single experience caused by a molecule, right, ingested in your body could transform your outlook on something as profound as death. That's-- that's kind of amazing.

Author Michael Pollan wrote about the psilocybin studies in a bestselling book called "How to Change Your Mind." As part of his research, he tried psilocybin himself with the help of an underground guide.

Anderson Cooper: The kind of things that cancer patients were saying, like, "I touched the face of God." You were skeptical about when you hear phrases like that?

Michael Pollan: Yeah. Or, "Love is the most important thing in the universe." When someone tells me that I'm just like, "yeah, okay."

Anderson Cooper: So you don't go for some of the phrases that are used?

Michael Pollan: No. It gives me the willies as a writer. And I really struggled with that cause during one of my experiences I came to the earth-shattering conclusion that love is the most important thing in the universe. But it's, that's Hallmark card stuff, right? And um, so

Anderson Cooper: And yet while you were on it and afterward

Michael Pollan: It was profoundly true. And it is profoundly true. Guess what? Um

Anderson Cooper: There's a reason it's on a Hallmark card.

Michael Pollan: There is a reason. And one of the things psychedelics do is they peel away all those essentially protective levels of irony and, and cynicism that we, that we acquire as we get older and you're back to those kind of "Oh, my God. I forgot all about love." (Laugh)

Pollan said he also experienced what the researchers describe as ego loss, or identity loss - the quieting of the constant voice we all have in our heads.

Michael Pollan: I did have this experience of seeing my ego-- burst into-- a little cloud of Post-It notes. I know it sounds crazy.

Anderson Cooper: And what are you are without an ego?

Michael Pollan: You're, uh (Laugh) You had to be there.

Researchers believe that sensation of identity loss occurs because psilocybin quiets these two areas of the brain that normally communicate with each other. They're part of a region called the default mode network and it's especially active when we're thinking about ourselves and our lives.

Michael Pollan: And it's where you connect what happens in your life to the story of who you are.

Anderson Cooper: We all develop a story over time about what our past was like and who we are.

Michael Pollan: Right. Yeah, what kind of person we are. How we react. And the fact is that interesting things happen when the self goes quiet in the brain, including this rewiring that happens.

To see that rewiring, Johns Hopkins scientist Matthew Johnson showed us this representational chart of brain activity. The circle on the left shows normal communication between parts of the brain, on the right, what happens on psilocybin. There's an explosion of connections or crosstalk between areas of the brain that don't normally communicate.

Anderson Cooper: The difference is just startling.

Matthew Johnson: Right.

Anderson Cooper: Is that why people are having experiences of-- seeing you know, repressed memories, or past memories, or people who have died or?

Matthew Johnson: That's what we think. And even the perceptual effect, sometimes the synesthesia, like, the-- the seeing sound.

Anderson Cooper: People see sound?

Matthew Johnson: Yeah, sometimes.

Anderson Cooper: I-- I don't even know what that means.

Matthew Johnson: Right, yeah. (LAUGH) It's-- it's--

Michael Pollan: Maybe the ego is one character among many in your mind. And you don't necessarily have to listen to that voice that's chattering at you and criticizing you and telling you what to do. And that's very freeing.

It was certainly freeing for Kerry Pappas. Though her cancer has now spread to her brain, her crippling anxiety about death is gone.

Kerry Pappas: Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, I feel like death doesn't frighten me. Living doesn't frighten me. I don't frighten me. This frightens me.

Anderson Cooper: This interview frightens you, but death doesn't?

Kerry Pappas: No.

It turns out most of the 51 cancer patients in the Johns Hopkins study experienced "significant decreases in depressed mood and anxiety" after trying psilocybin. Two-thirds of them rated their psilocybin sessions as among the most meaningful experiences of their lives. For some, it was on par with the birth of their children.

Kerry Pappas: To this day, it evolves in me.

Anderson Cooper: It's still alive in you--

Kerry Pappas: It's still absolutely alive in me.

Anderson Cooper: Does it make you happier?

Kerry Pappas: Yeah. And-- and I don't necessarily use the word happy.

Kerry Pappas: Comfortable. Like, comfortable. I mean, I've suffered from anxiety my whole life. I'm comfortable. That, to me, okay. I can die. I'm comfortable. (LAUGH) I mean, it's huge. It's huge.

Produced by Sarah Koch. Associate producer, Chrissy Jones

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Psychedelic Drugs: Researchers experimenting with active agent in magic mushrooms to treat addiction, depression and anxiety - 60 Minutes - CBS News

CHRISTIAN ANGERMAYER has never drunk alcohol nor smoked a cigarette. He is, however, a fan of ketamine. In January ATAI Life Sciences, the German biotech company he founded last year, acquired a majority stake in Perception Neuroscience, a biopharmaceutical firm from New York which is developing a medication for pyschiatric conditions like depression from the drug, which is illegal in parts of the world (though not in America). Along with Peter Thiel, a veteran Silicon Valley investor known for headline-grabbing bets, ATAI has also backed COMPASS Pathways, a startup in London aiming to be the first legal provider of psilocybin, which gives mushrooms their magic.

Messrs Angermayer and Thiel are not alone in putting money into the medical application of psychedelics. A clutch of investors see these drugs going the way of cannabis, whose creeping decriminalisation has spurred commercial interest in the weeds medical uses. In particular, backers think, psychedelic drugs could be used to treat mental-health disorders like depression, anxiety and addiction. In April Imperial College London, inaugurated the first research centre dedicated to psychedelics research. Last month Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore launched Americas first such scientific outfit.

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The market for antidepressants is dispiritingly large. Over 300m people worldwide suffer from depression. A report last year by the Lancet Commission, a body of experts, estimated that mental-health disorders could cost the global economy $16trn by 2030. Sales of antidepressants were $14bn in 2017 and analysts expect them to grow to $16bn-19bn by the middle of the next decade.

In October last year Americas Food and Drug Administration granted COMPASS breakthrough therapy designation, which fast-tracks the approval process. The company is using the $38m it has raised to run the largest clinical study of psilocybin ever. Ekaterina Malievskaia, its co-founder, hopes that the therapy could go on sale within five years if everything works out, including the science. Patients would receive carefully controlled doses in one-off, therapist-run sessions. These may last all day and cost $1,000 a pop. Field Trip Ventures, a Canadian startup, plans to open speciality clinics where they could be administered (and clinical trials conducted).

Sceptics doubt COMPASS can get its drug to market by 2024if at all. Worries about psychedelics side-effects, which can include drug-induced psychosis, abound. And it is unclear their medical use can ever be more than a niche. Finicky treatments make psychedelics trickier to scale than cannabis, which can be self-administered in spliffs, cakes and other forms. Field Trip Ventures co-founder, Ronan Levy, concedes as much. Big Pharma has steered clear, preferring pills which can be manufactured cheaply once approved and need to be taken regularly rather than just once, providing steady revenue streams. That left an opening for startups like COMPASS. Time will tell if ushering people through the doors of perception is a hard-headed business propostionor a trippy one.

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Investors hope psychedelics are the new cannabis. Are they high? - The Economist