Category Archives: Psychedelics

By Sam Wong

Microdosing, the practice of regularly taking small amounts of psychedelic drugs to improve mood and performance, has been taking off over the past few years. But the fact that these drugs are illegal makes it difficult to research their effects and possible health consequences. There are no rigorous clinical trials to see whether microdosing works (see Microdosers say tiny hits of LSD make your work and life better).

Instead, all we have are anecdotes from people like Janet Lai Chang, a digital marketer based in San Francisco. She will present her experience of microdosing at the Quantified Self conference in Amsterdam from 17to 18 June.

I started in February 2016. I wanted to understand how my brain works and how it might work differently with the influence of psilocybin [the active ingredient in magic mushrooms].

I had been struggling with a lot of social anxiety. It was really preventing me from advancing professionally. I was invited to give a talk at Harvard University and a TedX talk in California. I didnt feel ready. I felt all this anxiety. I procrastinated until the last minute and then didnt do it. It was one of my biggest regrets.

At first I was taking 0.2 grams of mushrooms every day, with a day or two off at the weekend. In August, Ihad a month off. From October to April, it was a few times a week.

I was less anxious, less depressed, more open, more extroverted. I was more present in the moment. Its harder to get into the flow of the focused solo work that Im normally really good at. But its good for the social aspect.

I have some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder left over from childhood abuse. Pretty much the only other negative thing was being more aware of negative emotions I had. I have a repressed anger response, according to my therapist. When I was microdosing I felt like I could really feel it; I felt the anger.

Occasionally, but Ive stopped the experiment. I dont want to be dependent on a substance to enable me to achieve certain desirable states of productivity.

I think everyone would benefit fromhaving at least one kind of experience with psychedelics. Thedosage really depends on the individual and what theyre looking toget out of it.

This article appeared in print under the headline Leading the high life

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What it's like to take psychedelics in small doses at breakfast | New ... - New Scientist

book By Kimberly Winston | 19 hours ago

BERKELEY, Calif. (RNS) In his new book, Changing Our Minds: Psychedelic Sacraments and the New Psychotherapy, award-winning author and former religion reporter Don Lattinlooks at how therapy sessions with psychedelic drugsare helping heal the psychological and spiritual woes of cancer patients, alcoholics, war veterans and the seriously depressed.

As Lattin details in the book, there are sometimes positive spiritual and religious changes for those who take these drugs under clinical supervision a key component of the treatment.During sessions to treat addictive behavior, post-traumatic stress disorderand depression, some patients report everything from a greater oneness with the universe to visions of Jesus on the cross.

Lattin, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area,is about to embark on a summer book tour that will take him from the Telluride Mushroom Festival in the Rocky Mountains to a psychedelic consciousness convention in London. He sat down with RNS to discuss the changing attitudes toward these drugs psilocybin (magic mushrooms), ayahuasca (a psychoactive tea brewed from two Amazonian plants), MDMA (ecstasy) and more and how they can bring religious and spiritual insight to some.

This interview has been edited for space and clarity.

Members of an ayahuasca church taking psychedelic tea as a sacrament in Brazil. Photo courtesy ofTom Hill

Well, the first difference between recreational use and the clinical trials now underway into psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is a difference of legality. Taking these drugs for fun is illegal, not to mention dangerous because when you buy psychedelics on the street you are never sure what you are getting. The clinical trials are legal approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. The purity and the dose are clearly established. Many people in my book are trying to overcome some serious psychological problem, or they are people in ayahuasca churches who are seriously trying to commune with God. Both are in it for the long term and will tell you this was not always a fun or easy experience. But it was cathartic. It was healing. This is not the way most people take psychedelics many thousands of people take MDMA (ecstasy) every weekend and most have a good time. The difference here is the intention healing or insight and that those who take these medicines or sacraments are being guided through the experience and get help to integrate whatever insights they have into their real lives.

Changing Our Minds: Psychedelic Sacraments and the New Psychotherapy by Don Lattin. Image courtesy of Synergetic Press

There is some truth to that critique. Someone in my book calls the psychedelic experience gratuitous grace. In a recreational drug context, it is too easy, and it becomes too easy to just dismiss it as some weird experience. But people in some of the clinical trials I write about say what they experienced in a couple of sessions with a therapist and psychedelics was like 10years of normal therapy. It can take less time. But psychedelics are not a magic bullet. They can show you another way to be. They can be an opening, that is all. The goal of a lot of this work, whether it is therapeutic or spiritual, is to help people make some lasting changes in their lives. They (researchers and spiritual guides) are trying to take psychedelics more seriously than one does at a party or a concert or a festival. Even though it can take one to a mystical place, the goal is to bring all this back down to earth.

You can have a mystical experience through lots of different means. You can have it by fasting a very accepted practice in almost every religious tradition. What happens when you fast? Things happen in your brain, a biochemical reaction. If you go on a hardcore meditation retreat with sensory deprivation, you are having a biochemical reaction in your brain. So whether it is through fasting or meditation or drugs or plant medicines, I believe what is happening in your brain is the same an alteration of consciousness through brain chemistry. It can happen through prayer and through meditation, and it can happen with psychedelic drugs. That is why the experiences are so similar. But the rubber hits the road with what you do with the experience. Does it make you a better person, kinder, more aware? (Religion scholar and mystic) Huston Smith used to say of psychedelics, It is not about altered states, it is about altered traits.

Don Lattin, author of Changing Our Minds, discusses the therapeutic uses of psychedelic drugs at Books Inc. in Berkeley, Calif. RNS photo by Kimberly Winston

There are actual churches in the U.S. that can legally have psychedelic communion with ayahuasca under a 2006 Supreme Court ruling, but they must be affiliated with one of two Brazilian sects. Outside of those brands of organized religion, I dont see much destigmatization. Religious leaders, like a lot of other people, have a very black-and-white attitude toward drugs. Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins is doing a study of religious professionals with clergy burnout to see if these substances could revive their interest in their calling through a mystical experience that might hit the reset button for them. But he has found it very hard to find clergy who want to volunteer. That said, I think psychedelics are slowly are being destigmatized by the universities and medical centers across the country that are sponsoring research. Peoples minds are changing about these substances when used in the proper context. The media coverage of the clinical trials has been very positive. At the same time, I think it is important to say these drugs are not for everyone. They are probably not for most people. But there are a large number of people these medicines can help.

Faithful Viewer logo. Religion News Service graphic by T.J. Thomson

Kimberly Winston is a freelance religion reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She covers atheism and freethought for RNS.

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'Changing Our Minds' explores psychedelic drugs and spiritual healing - Religion News Service

Today, research on the effects of psychedelics is one of the most exciting fields of psychology. The US Food and Drug Administration recently approved a clinical trial to test if the psychedelic compound in ecstasy can treat PTSD; psilocybin, the key ingredient in magic mushrooms is now considered a promising treatment for depression; and studies suggest that LSD could help combat alcoholism. Theres still plenty of red tape and skepticism, but it feels like scientists are well on their way to establishing the health benefits of these powerful drugs.

It feels terribly cutting edge, but such research is, in fact, old. Before LSD became a party drug, it was used to treat conditions like alcoholism, PTSD, and depression. And, as a new documentary on Cary Grant explores, the actor was one of the first to experience LSD in a psychiatric setting.

According to the film, Becoming Cary Grant, the actor first tried LSD at the Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills in 1958 and took the drug 100 times over the following three years. He was effusive about the results, as Vanity Fair reports, telling Look magazine in 1959, at last, I am close to happiness. He viewed the treatment as a way of resolving childhood trauma and coming to terms with the ends of difficult marriages; after starting his LSD treatment, Grant realized, all my life, Ive been going around in a fog.

Though LSD had been used as treatment for a few years previously, Grants enthusiasm helped popularize the then-little-known drug. In total, from 1950-1965, around 40,000 patients were prescribed LSD to treat a variety of conditions. The drug was little known at first but gradually increased in popularity before US drug safety regulations began to restrict its use in 1962. In 1966, possession of the drug was made illegal in the US.

The backlash against LSDpartly attributed to negative experiences of the drug, or bad trips, and partly to its association with the political counterculture of the timewas closely linked not just to its recreational use, but also the lack of rigor around psychological research at the time. Timothy Leary, a Harvard psychologist who was studying the psychological effects of psychedelics in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was not allowed to continue working at the university in 1963, in part due to his sloppy research. Leary was accused of giving psychedelics to undergraduates without medical supervision and, after leaving academia, went on to promote psychedelics with the phrase, Turn on, tune in, drop out. Then-president Richard Nixon reportedly called him the most dangerous man in America.

But though early research in LSD as therapy has a decidedly mixed reputation, Robin Carhart-Harris, head of Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, says that much of the work undertaken in the 1950s and 60s was actually quite strong.

Its easy for us to be derogatory about the old research but they were asking all the questions were asking now, he says, Perhaps the methods werent as tight as they are today but, even so, there was a fair amount of good work.

Today, he says researchers are more privileged. Brain imaging has been instrumental in navigating the effects of psychedelics and there are now standard rating scales for measuring depression, for example, as well as careful placebo control procedures and a greater awareness of biases.

Carhart-Harris says he and his colleagues occasionally read through older literature. It can feel reassuring, he says, to see that the effects theyre finding today were also noted decades ago.

In a way were re-inventing the wheel, but were doing it with the knowledge and methods we have now, he says. You can think of the old literature as being quite extensive and rich but also a little loose and quite poetic.

Herbert Kleber, professor of psychiatry and substance-abuse researcher at Columbia University, notes that the smaller doses used today are far safer than in previous decades. While working on narcotics addiction at the US Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky (now called the Federal Medical Center) in 1965, Kleber conducted research into LSDs potential as a treatment treatment for addiction.

He did not get far in his research, and though he believed there were early signs that the drug could be useful for breaking addiction cycles, he also saw plenty of bad trips. I remember there was a painting on the wall and under the influence of LSD, one patient [in the study] saw the painting come off the wall and chase him around the room, he says. Another one tried to break down a door because he was convinced his wife was on the other side and we were keeping her from him. Kleber was interested in testing the drug at a lower dose, he says, but LSD was banned soon after.

Despite the downsides, researchers were uncovering the potential value of LSD. Carhart-Harris points out that prominent figures such as senator Robert F. Kennedy were supportive of the research, and went to bat for LSD in Washington, DC. If they [LSD experiments] were worthwhile six months ago, why arent they worthwhile now? Kennedy asked the FDA in 1966, after research on the drug was banned. Perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that [LSD] can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly.

But research into the medical benefits of psychedelics stalled in the late 1960s. [Cultural attitudes] are very powerful and they stick, says Carhart-Harris. Were the victims of that, and so are patients to some extentvictims of this stigma and misinformation. As a result, there are no approved medicinal uses for LSD, but both Kleber and Carhart-Harris agree theres evidence the research should continue. If you have a compound that seems to be beneficial, works in a novel way, and does something different than currently available treatments, then you could really question the ethics of withholding funding, says Carhart-Harris.

The good news is that, thanks in part to tighter research methods, government agencies are starting to loosen up restrictions on studying psychedelics. Psychologists are now picking up a decades old experiment. Were both catching up and advancing, adds Carhart-Harris.

But theres no guarantee that the trend will hold. I dont want to be too naive and say, its just not going to happen this time because weve learnt from the mistakes of the past, says Carhart-Harris. After all, he adds, in politics, anything can happen.

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Cary Grant was one of the first to benefit from LSD therapy - Quartz

This story is part of When the Drugs Hit, a Motherboard journey into the science, politics, and culture of today's psychedelic renaissance. Follow along here.

In 1988, Rick Strassman set out to do what seemed to be impossible: convince the US government to let him give people illegal drugs.

But not just any illegal substances. Strassman, a psychiatrist at the University of New Mexico, wanted to dose subjects with one of the most potent psychedelics ever discovered: dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a neurotransmitter and tryptamine molecule that naturally occurs in the plant and animal kingdoms, including in humans. Strassman hoped to investigate the physiological and psychological effects of DMT, the so-called "spirit molecule," but knew that getting approval to do this research was a long shot.

Like pretty much every other psychedelic drug known at the time, DMT had been classified as a Schedule I substance under the 1970 Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. This meant that there was no recognized medical use for the substances and effectively placed a moratorium on all psychedelic research using human subjects. Studying and administering substances gets progressively easier as you move from Schedule I to Schedule V. Substances in Schedule I, including heroin, are the only ones, in fact, that require a special license to study.

But these obstacles didn't deter Strassman. After 19 months of arduous paperwork and a seemingly interminable argument with the Drug Enforcement Administration, in early 1990 he dosed his first participant with DMT. It was the first psychedelic study using humans in two decades.

"I figured as long as the DEA weren't saying no, it remained a potential yes," Strassman told me recently. "I never really gave up."

"'I don't care if you guys are smoking mushrooms back there, just keep out of the paper, get your grants and keep your cards close to your chest.'"

In the nearly three decades since Strassman's groundbreaking DMT study, little has changed for researchers hoping to study the effects of psychedelic compounds on humans. Although psychedelic research is experiencing a sort of renaissance, getting approval to study these substances is more difficult than ever.

At the same time, recent work done on psychedelics has shown potential in treating everything from post-traumatic stress in veterans to promoting creative problem solving and treating addictions.

If the federal decision to classify these substances as having no medical value was premature, then understanding the benefits (and dangers) of psychedelics in a rigorous and empirical way has been hindered by bureaucracy and authorities policing research laboratories. I reached out to Strassman and contemporary clinicians to learn more about their experiences and the difficulties faced by psychedelic researchers today. Just how hard was itis itto get the greenlight from Uncle Sam?

That's getting ahead. For most psychedelic scientists, problems begin at the local level.

*

To do science on humans with illegal substances, researches are required to submit a proposal to an institutional review board, which is supposed to ensure the experiment is both ethical and safe. Given the taboo surrounding psychedelics and universities' tendency to avoid controversy, even the safest and most well-designed studies may flounder on the shores of a dean's idea of what constitutes respectable science.

Fortunately for Strassman, he said the University of New Mexico was somewhat "off the beaten path," and that his psychedelic study was much less likely to draw significant attention than if it had been conducted at an Ivy League institution. Moreover, Strassman said neither his department chair nor the university president really cared what he was up to in his lab, so long as he "kept his nose clean."

Read More: America's Trippiest Chemist Says Making Psychedelics 'Was Fun'

"I spoke with the chairman of the research unit and he said, 'I don't care if you guys are smoking mushrooms back there, just keep out of the paper, get your grants and keep your cards close to your chest,'" Strassman remembered.

After gaining approval from the university, Strassman then had to make his pitch at the federal level, specifically the DEA and the Food and Drug Administration. The DEA was responsible for doling out Schedule I licenses, which authorized licensees to possess these illicit substances. The FDA, for its part, would give Strassman approval for what's known as an IND, or Investigative New Drug trial, which would allow him to administer the Schedule I substance to human subjects.

There was only one problem: The DEA wanted to see the FDA's IND license before granting its Schedule I license, and the FDA, in turn, wanted to see that Strassman was approved to use the Schedule I substance before granting the IND. It was a catch-22.

But as Strassman began to facilitate unprecedented degrees of contact between these two federal agencies, he realized he had a far more pressing problem to deal with: how to procure the DMT for the trials in the first place. In order to get his Schedule I license from the DEA, he would have to show that the DMT was pure, and that he would only have access to a limited and necessary amount of the substance.

Eventually Strassman linked up with Dave Nichols, a chemist at Purdue University with DEA approval to synthesize 15 Schedule I psychedelics and 20 years of experience doing just that. After finding a hookup for the DMT, Strassman returned to the DEA and started filling out the paperwork.

Several months later, Strassman had his Schedule I license and IND. It had been over a year-and-a-half of starts, stops, and red tape. But he was finally set to begin his research.

DMT crystals. Photo: Psychonaught/Wikimedia Commons

When Strassman was setting out, he had to rely on trial and error in his dealings with the feds, who were less than receptive to the idea of allowing Schedule I substances to be opened for research purposes.

The first paper Strassman wrote after receiving approval for his study was about how he managed to even make this happena kind of blueprint for getting approval to do psychedelic science. Although he was criticized for revealing hard-won, "sensitive" information about government legal processes, his blueprint was effective. According to Strassman, it helped guide researchers at the University of Arizona, University of Miami, and Johns Hopkins University set up their own studies on psilocybin (the psychedelic compound in "magic mushrooms") and ibogaine in the late 90s and early 2000s.

But overregulation continues to crush psychedelic science. Even with Strassman's blueprint and a number of precedents in place, getting approval to study psychedelics is still a steep challenge.

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), for example, has been pushing the limits of psychedelic research for decades now, yet its trials on MDMA and PTSD keep stalling out in a maze of bureaucratic and legal obstacles.

MAPS hopes to begin the third and final FDA study this year, and to see MDMA be a FDA-approved prescription medicine by 2021. But the phase 3 study is also the most difficult since it requires special parameters for the trials, which include large cohorts of study participants as well as using chemicals produced under a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) regime. GMPs are mostly quality control measures, but since the MDMA used in the first two phases was already 99 percent pure, this means that GMP is mostly a regulatory requirement that places copious paperwork and protocols on the researchers for the duration of the trial phase.

"Rescheduling would release a lot of these barriers that exist only for Schedule I substances."

This also means that MAPS will have to find a new source for its MDMA since the drug must be manufactured under GMP conditions. Even though pharma companies like Sigma-Aldrich have websites set up where you can order small quantities of every imaginable psychedelic, these won't meet the phase 3 GMP requirements. Natalie Ginsberg, a MAPS policy and advocacy manager, said so far just finding a manufacturer for the stuff has been hard enough.

Then there's the money problem. Historically, most psychedelic studies have been funded by the National Institute of Drug Addiction (NIDA). Although NIDA's pockets run deep, the agency is particular about the kind of drug research it will fundthat is to say, only research that investigates the abuse potential of substances, not their therapeutic potential. As such, organizations like MAPS have had to seek private funding for studies, which, all told, will cost millions of dollars. The GMP MDMA alone will cost nearly $500,000 for 1.5 kilos.

In this respect, Strassman realizes he was lucky. For his DMT trials, he had secured two competitive grants to support him during the year-and-a-half it took to get approval just to begin his research. Without this grant money, Strassman said it's unlikely he would've had the time or energy to pursue this research project.

Ultimately, he and Ginsberg see the difficulties faced by researchers as a consequence of the War on Drugs and its scheduling regime.

"All these extra burdens put on researchers like waiting for a Schedule I license, finding the right location, finding a manufacturer of the drug, add months or years to the process," said Ginsberg. "People who do psychedelic research aren't just any old researchersthey have to be committed and willing to fight through the regulations and have patience to wait for months on end for approval. Rescheduling would release a lot of these barriers that exist only for Schedule I substances."

Read More: How to Legally Buy a Kilo of Pure MDMA

Strassman likewise said he'd like to see psychedelic substances rescheduled, though he realizes researchers are caught between a rock and a hard place. To keep psychedelics as Schedule I substances makes researching them prohibitively hard, but to call for reclassifying them as Schedule II substances is unlikely to succeed either.

Schedule II substances, including stimulants like cocaine and Adderall, can be prescribed by everyone from dentists to veterinarians. As Strassman sees it, trying to argue that something like LSD should be as easily accessible as Adderall is a non-starter. Instead, he advocates for a new, intermediate schedule between I and II, that would make the substances easier to study, but not absurdly easy for a layperson to obtain.

"I think that category of clinical reality ought to be combined with a legal category of the scheduling," Strassman said. "People wouldn't be able to possess and give these drugs without special training and without certification and supervision, but if you keep them kind of behind the lock and key of Schedule I, you're also not going to be able to give them to people who might benefit."

Link:

Stop Policing Psychedelic Science - Motherboard

This story is part of When the Drugs Hit, a Motherboard journey into the science, politics, and culture of today's psychedelic renaissance. Follow along here.

After a flurry of scientific research in the 1950s and 60s, all human psychedelic drug trials in the US were effectively banned with the passage of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act in 1970. This moratorium on psychedelic research lasted until psychiatrist Rick Strassman's DMT trials at the University of New Mexico opened the door for new psychedelic research in 1990.

Since then, a number of studies have looked at the potential therapeutic effects of psychedelic substances. And in almost all of these trials, including Strassman's landmark study, the drugs have been supplied by a single individual: Dave Nichols.

As a chemist at Purdue University, Nicholas was in the business of supplying America's psychedelic research compounds from 1969 until he retired in 2012. He is perhaps best known for synthesizing the MDMA, DMT, LSD and psilocybin (the psychedelic compound in "magic mushrooms") that have been used in the new wave of psychedelic research. But most of Nichols' career was spent researching psychedelic analogs, molecules which have similar structures or effects to their well-known controlled relatives.

Despite his academic pedigree, Nichols has come under fire for fueling a "designer drug" boom that resulted in obscure research chemicals making their way from the lab to the street and resulted in a few deaths along the way. But this is merely an unfortunate side effect of his researchanyone with access to chemistry journals and a decent lab set up would be able to reproduce his research. Nichols has also strongly condemned a number of designer drugs, particularly synthetic cannabinoids like spice, as dangerous for consumption.

In many ways, Nichols is like a contemporary Sasha Shulgin, the infamous chemist who co-authored TIHKAL and PIHKAL , which are essentially psychedelic cookbooks interwoven with a love story (indeed, Nichols was actually the first to synthesize a handful of chemicals described in PIHKAL). But whereas Shulgin was getting high on his own supply in his backyard lab, Nichols isn't trying to spark a psychedelic awakening and was certainly not tripping in his Purdue laboratory.

"There was nobody else really doing what I was doing so it was fun and I didn't have to worry about getting scooped."

Still, life ain't easy for a psychedelic scientist, so I caught up with Nichols to learn about how he became one of the largest producers of psychedelic research chemicals in the US, and what that experience was like at a time when there was zero tolerance for psychedelic research on humans.

Motherboard: How did you get started making psychedelic drugs? David Nichols: I started in this field in 1969 as a graduate student, doing my PhD on mescaline analogs, basically. Then I got an academic position at Purdue and that allowed me to pursue whatever I wanted to follow, so I just kept working on psychotomimetics. I was lucky to get a grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse and that grant continued for about 29 years. There was nobody else really doing what I was doing so it was fun and I didn't have to worry about getting scooped by someone else working in the same area because we were doing a pretty novel thing.

Was it hard getting approval to make Schedule I psychedelics? Not really. When I made the MDMA it was before it was illegal so there wasn't a problem with that. And with Rick Strassman's DMT, I had a schedule I license for DMT already. Same thing was true with the psilocybin I made for Johns Hopkins. You're allowed to make a Schedule I substance if it's in collaboration with someone else who has a Schedule I license so that wasn't that difficult. I had to get the Schedule I license in the beginning, which required getting everything certified, but it wasn't as difficult as people might imagine.

The DEA never pushed back against your research? I had a license for 15 different Schedule I substances. At one point they started getting really pushy. Do you have an active protocol? Do you need all these? We'd like to get some of them out of your lab if you don't really need these 15. How often do you use them?

So I had to write a letter saying we don't do the kind of research you're used to. We don't fit in a boilerplate. We do studies where we modify a receptor and mutate different amino acids in the receptor. We have a whole library of compounds we want to put in there and see what did that mutation do to the activity of those structures. We never know which compound we might need on any given day.

The DEA aren't scientists, they're basically policemen. At a certain point they started sending protocols over to the FDA, which is totally inappropriate. But anyway they'd ask if this [is] research worth doing. That's an inappropriate question. If you're qualified, you have an academic appointment, you're respected, and you've got a CV, the DEA shouldn't be asking whether this research should be done. Anyway, if they got feedback saying the project was worth doing, then they'd come and investigate your facilities. They wanted to see what kind of safe you were going to keep substances in, where the safe's located. They're basically concerned with diversion of controlled substances. They want to make sure if you get it, no one else can get it.

What was your security like for these substances you were making? My office had a two-inch solid oak door that had a key lock that would've been difficult to pick. Inside my office I had a big, heavy steel fireproof file cabinet. In addition to the regular pushlocks, it had a hasp welded on top with another place welded on the bottom so that a one-inch steel bar could fit in front of the drawers with a padlock on the top. To get in that you'd have to be able to break through a solid oak door, then pick or cut off a substantial padlock, and then use a crowbar or something to break open the file cabinet.

Read more: A Beginner's Guide to Tripping on Acid

How long did it take you to get your license? That can take six months to two years depending on how you appear to the DEA. It's supposed to be a non-political process, but I've known people who've taken two years because the DEA said they lost their inspection forms after doing an inspection. You don't know if these things are willful are not. I've always had the impression that the DEA doesn't appreciate having to do Schedule I. They think these things are so dangerous, why should we be working with them. But that's just my own impression.

This was back in the 70s. Do you think studying psychedelic drugs has gotten easier? I think the DEA has gotten more stringent. When I first started the process seemed more transparent and I didn't have any trouble getting a license. I've talked to many people over the years who've really had a difficult time. Also the DEA didn't used to send the protocols to the FDA to get a ruling as to whether they were worth doing or not. It's like the DEA saying, "we don't trust you, we need to get an outside check to make sure you're a legitimate guy." They're real suspicious.

Outside of your lab, who else was synthesizing psychedelics? I don't know that there were that many people just making things. We generally made them because we had a certain hypothesis. So when we were doing the MDMA work, we were trying to develop a molecule that had MDMA-like activity but which was completely new so we wouldn't have to worry about the stigma of it being a research chemical or drug of abuse.

That was what drove a lot of the MDMA research. We basically were trying to understand the features of the receptor that were necessary for activity. It was a pretty complex program designed to understand how the molecules were interacting with biological targets. We didn't just make compounds like Sasha Shulgin, just to see what we could make and take. He was an alchemist, not a scientist. We had specific hypotheses, we made the molecules with specific ideas of what we wanted to figure out. I don't know anyone else who was really doing that with respect to psychedelics.

"I think it's because of the internet that these things have just proliferated."

A lot of your work was focused on psychedelic analogs. In recent years, the DEA has really been cracking down on analogs. Why do you think this is? Well, there are a lot more analogs out there than people are aware of now. In fact, a lot of the things I've made are now called designer drugs and are out on the street. But they don't have to cause any damage, they don't even have to be problematic. All the DEA has to do is suspect that they have abuse potential, then all of a sudden say we better control this. They don't wait for something to show up as a problem, they try to think of everything possible.

I think they can probably wait and see until these things are showing up on the street in a significant amount. They can quickly schedule with emergency scheduling. But they claim it makes their life easier if they have these things scheduled already, but it does shut off legitimate research. If these things have medical potential, nobody is going to look at them. So then that means they'll only be examined in the context of being drugs of abuse. So any potential benefit will never be studied.

A lot of the chemicals made in your lab have shown up on the street. How did it feel to know people were recreationally taking these obscure compounds you created? I was surprised. Some of the things we made were not that simple of a synthesis to carry out. So when these things showed up, I thought, "wow, someone's gone to a lot of trouble to make these." We published a lot of these things years ago, but they just started showing up in the last few years.

I think it's because of the internet that these things have just proliferated. Now people can go on sites like Erowid and read about these different substances and say, "oh, that sounds interesting," and there's people that sell the stuff so they can go buy a sample. That didn't used to happen. They used to have to go to a library and do some actual research.

Were pharmaceutical companies showing any interest in psychedelic analogs when you were working in the lab? Drug companies have stayed away from this field entirely. It was the case in their research that if they found a molecule that activated the serotonin 2A receptor, which is the target for psychedelics, it was a kiss of death for that molecule right off the bat. I think the drug industry has been very circumspect about things hitting targets that could be drugs of abuse. I don't really think that the drug industry as a whole sees these things as any sort of profit source for them now or in the future.

In terms of the paradigm, using psilocybin once or twice a year maybe, isn't the model that the pharmaceutical industry follows. Most of the research chemicals are like that. They're analogs of psychedelics. But pharmaceutical companies are looking for a pill you take everyday for the rest of your life. That's how they make their money.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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America's Trippiest Chemist: Making Psychedelics 'Was Fun' - Motherboard

Human hallucinogen use precedes written history, and has shaped many lives and cultures throughout time. These drugs can be quite different from each other, however, and are commonly grouped into three major categories: psychedelics, dissociatives, and deliriants.

Psychedelics

Examples: cannabis (marijuana), methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, ecstacy), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin mushrooms

The category psychedelic drug is a blanket term for many chemical compounds with a variety of effects. The three sub-groups of psychedelics are cannabinoids, empathogens (also known as entactogens), and serotonergics. The underlying similarities between all three types of psychedelic drugs are that they produce changes in consciousness that are generally unfamiliar, while other classes of drugs such as stimulants or depressants give rise to familiar, if greatly magnified, states of mind.

Cannabinoid drugs, which work as antagonists of cannabinoid receptors in the brain, are named after the prototypical drug in this class, cannabis (also known as marijuana), which contains the psychoactive compound tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Effects of cannabinoids vary between dosages, users, and the types and amounts of particular compounds (different cannabis strains contain differing ratios of many different cannabinoid compounds). Users commonly report mild euphoria, senses of well-being, increased awareness of external sensations, increased hunger, and disruption of linear memory processes.

Empathogens are a class of psychedelics that release serotonin in the brain and derive their name from one of their major effects: increased feelings of empathy. The best-known drug in this class is MDMA, although several similar compounds exist as well. Users generally report heightened feelings of love, openness, euphoria, and overall enhancement of sensory experiences.

Serotonergic drugs are so named due to their activity as agonists of a specific serotonin receptor (5-HT2A) in the brain. Drugs in this class include LSD, DMT, psilocybin (the psychoactive compound in hallucinogenic mushrooms), and phenethylamines such as mescaline and 2C-B. Users of these drugs experience intense, fundamental alterations of perception, including synesthesia, visual and auditory hallucinations, and unusual thought patterns or emotional responses.

Dissociatives

Examples: ibogaine, phencyclidine (PCP), ketamine, dextromethorphan (DXM)

Dissociative hallucinogens, including ibogaine, PCP, ketamine, and DXM (at dosages many times larger than its use as a cough suppressant), work as antagonists of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors in the brain. While many of these drugs produce perceptual alterations similar to the psychedelic drugs listed above, the distinguishing features of dissociatives are feelings of depersonalization, or being disconnected from ones body. Derealization, or the sensation that ones surrounding environment is somehow not real, is also a characteristic of these drugs.

Deliriants

Examples: atropine, scopolamine (hyoscine), diphenhydramine (benadryl)

Deliriants are a class of psychoactive drug that generally block the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from binding to receptors in the brain and central nervous system. As recreational drugs, deliriants produce vivid and generally very unpleasant hallucinations in addition to potentially dangerous side-effects. While users of psychedelics and dissociatives often report having euphoric, spiritual experiences, users of deliriants almost universally report unpleasant effects and have no desire to use these drugs again.

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The Three Types of Hallucinogens: Psychedelics ...

Governments around the world consider mushrooms and LSD to be among the most dangerous illicit substances, but a new survey of drug users suggests that these psychedelics are actually some of the safest.

Around 20,000 people reported having used either mushrooms, which contain the psychoactive compound psilocybin, or LSD in the past year, according to the2017 Global Drug Survey. Of those, just over 100 people reported seeking emergency medical treatment related to those drugs. Most of these cases were linked to LSD a total of 1 percent of recent LSD users and just 0.2 percent of recent mushroom users sought treatment.

By that metric, the survey concludes that mushrooms are the safest recreational drug. LSD ranked a close third behind marijuana, as 0.6 percent of people whod used cannabis over the past year reported receiving emergency medical care.

All three drugs were less dangerous than alcohol, which was by far the most widely used intoxicant in the survey and led to 1.3 percent of all recent users seeking emergency treatment. For methamphetamine, the most harmful substance included on the survey,4.8 percent of people whod used in the last year ended up rushing to see a medical professional.

Global Drug Survey

The Global Drug Survey, an independent research company that, since 2014, has partnered with medical experts and media groups to conduct its annual survey, compiled responses from more than 115,000 people in over 50 countries for its 2017 edition. More than 10,000 people from the U.S. responded.

Although drug concerns in the U.S. have centered around heroin and opioids in recent years, the survey suggests these substances are less of a problem elsewhere in the world. Just 2.4 percent of all respondents worldwide reported having used heroin in their lifetime, while 16 percent reported having used prescription painkillers. In the U.S., however, nearly 3 percent of respondents said they used heroin in the past year alone, while 21.2 percent said they used prescription opioids.

The survey underscores key differences between substances. For one, these drugs vary greatly in toxicity. Alcohol, cocaine and synthetic cannabinoids (sometimes called spice or K2) can cause acute harm at relatively low doses, which may lead users to seek treatment to prevent lasting health effects or even death. They are also linked to a number of common secondary health consequences, including injuries from accidents, self-harm or fights.

The typical harm profile of psilocybin and LSD looks a bit different. Its almost impossible to overdose on these drugs alone, though using them with other substances can create more severe interactions. Even on their own, these psychedelics can cause intense episodes of fear, anxiety or disorientation, which may lead users to harm themselves, or to simply decide that they need to seek medical help. Those issues can be compounded among people who have pre-existing mental health conditions like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

The surveys findings could say a lot about psychedelics and the way people use them.Theres little evidence of dependence or addiction related to mushrooms or LSD, said Adam Winstock, an addiction psychiatrist and founder of the Global Drug Survey, in an interview with HuffPost. Furthermore,people arent using them just because they think its fun to shroom or dose.

In fact, the survey showed that just 67.5 percent of lifetime users of psychedelics listed recreation or fun as a motivation for tripping. Gaining a deeper understanding of the world, learning more about yourself, mind expansion and curiosity all ranked higher. Another 35.9 percent wanted to deal with emotional issues and slightly more than one-quarter wanted to deal with stress.

Although the survey demonstrates that people use psychedelics for a variety of reasons, the relatively lower rate of purely social or recreational use means they have less overall to exposure to psychedelics than they do to other drugs, said Winstock.

He also pointed to a 2014 survey of psychedelics usersin which respondents reported that they take a number of precautions before tripping.

The second-most important strategy that psychedelic users said they adopted is they dont drive and cycle when theyre on psychedelics, because that would be really dumb, Winstock said. People are more reckless with other drugs, perhaps because they feel more confident about their ability to control their actions and not be so distorted in the way they see the world, but they know that if theyre going to take a trip, they have to have their shit together.

The emergency treatment rate for LSD was a full five times higher than it was for mushrooms, which Winstock said could be because LSD is far more potent and tends to be less predictable. Mushrooms come in a relatively standard dose worldwide a few pieces of fungi. Its not possible to eyeball exactly how much LSD is on a tab or blotter, nor can you tell if its been adulterated with a novel psychedelic substance that could increase the risk of potentially negative or harmful interactions.

Photofusion via Getty Images

In general, however, Winstock suggested that drug users appear to exercise more common sense around psychedelics than they do with other substances.

If people paid as much respect for the planning that they put in place when they take psychedelics, thered probably be a lot less problems with drugs, he said.

This isnt to say that psychedelic trips always go as planned. Just over 5 percent of people whod used mushrooms in their lifetime and 7.6 percent of those whod used LSD said theyd had a difficult or negative experience involving the drug, according to the survey.

But not all bad trips are equal. Although clinical studies of psilocybin use have shown that, in rare cases, these episodes can have troubling long-term effects, users more frequently appear to find themmeaningful or worthwhile.

This only stresses the importance of proper education and preparation, said Winstock.

The 2017 Global Drug Survey adds to a growing body of research that appears to challenge the grounds for the strict, nearly global prohibition on psychedelics. Both U.S. law and United Nations drug treaties hold that mushrooms and LSD have no medical value and a high potential for abuse and harm. But the data largely hasnt supported that position, and emerging science has suggested that the drugs could be used to treat complex psychological conditions, including end-of-life anxiety and addiction.

Inrecent U.S. studieson people suffering from cancer-related anxiety and depression, psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy led to clinically significant reductions in symptoms for between 60 and 80 percent of subjects. Some patients reported that the benefits of a single dose of psilocybin, along with therapy, lasted up to seven months, with minimal side effects. Similar studies using LSD are also underway, though not in the U.S.

Initial studieshave also shown that psilocybin may hold promise in treating alcoholism, building on a rich history of anecdotal evidence that psychedelic drugs, including LSD, could help people battle addiction. The Beckley Foundation, a leading advocate for psychedelic science, is also in the beginning stages of researchinto the effects of LSD microdosing on mood, cognition, productivity and creativity.

Supporters of psychedelics point out that this form of therapy is both controversial and potentially revolutionary because it doesnt focus on treating symptoms. Rather, it holds that some mental illnesses can be addressed by essentially disrupting the default mode network, or ego, of a persons brain, thereby targeting the root cause of the symptoms. In other words, its designed to eliminate the need for treatment, not offer an ongoing one.

Winstock says efforts like the Global Drug Survey prove its time to begin rethinking our approach to psychedelic substances. But he admits there are powerful interests standing in the way of progress, and not all of them are anti-drug government officials.

The reason its taken so long is Big Pharma must be terrified, said Winstock. Ive got patients that have been on antidepressants for years. [Theres a] possibility that you might be able to give someone six sessions of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and treat their depression so you dont have to be on Prozac for five years, all with a drug [like psilocybin or LSD] that doesnt have a patent.

Thats a huge threat to the industry, he added, but it makes sense to me.

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Psychedelic Mushrooms And LSD Are Among The Safest Recreational Drugs, Survey Finds - HuffPost

Liana Sananda Gillooly of the ArcView Group, speaks at the Psychedelic Science Conference in 2017. Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Cinematic Syndicate

In a new mini-documentary (posted below), researchers, artists, therapists, students and other participants in the international Psychedelic Science Conference stepped aside to talk about the larger implications of psychedelics research and the historic conference. I worked with a small team to help create the film for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), aimed at highlighting the larger themes moving through the conference.

The film's interviewees paint a portrait of hope for the future of humanity, hinging on a paradigm shift in the way our society views mental health, and how we relate to each other and the planet.

We cannot have peace in this world until we have peace within ourselves, says Liana Sananda Gillooly, outreach manager for the cannabis industry investment network ArcView Group, near the beginning of the film. She is standing in front of a series of visionary art paintings hanging in the Marriott Hotel in downtown Oakland, Calif., where the conference took place.

Sure, you can go and do vipassana meditation and do yoga for years and do these other healing modalities, but right now for the times that we live in, [psychedelics are] providing this avenue, this way in, that is faster and quicker and more immediately effective," Gillooly says.

Various psychedelic-assisted therapy studies, backed up by neuroimaging research, are showing that psychedelics are sometimes capable of safely reversing psychological issues that previously seemed impenetrable. Government-approved studies have been taking place across the globe, looking at MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder, and LSD for anxiety and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic" mushrooms) for addiction, among others. Across the board, studies have been turning over unprecedented results.

A big theme at the conference and in the mini-doc is the question of humanitys future. Given our mental health crisis, the blatant neglect of our natural environment and the rise of greed-driven world leaders who have lost touch with basic human values, conversations buzzed through the conference about whether psychedelics could help rewire human awareness before its too late.

At the conferences opening remarks, Czech researcher Stanislav Grof, a founder in the field of transpersonal psychology and a long-time psychedelics researcher, discussed the grave realities facing our species in a talk titled "Psychedelics and the Future of Humanity."

Watch the mini-documentary on the Psychedelic Science Conference 2017 below:

April M. Short is a yoga teacher and writer whopreviouslyworked as AlterNet's drugs and health editor. She currently works part-time for AlterNet, and freelances for a number of publications nationwide. She worked as story/line-producer forPsychedelic Science 2017 Short Form Documentary.

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WATCH: Psychedelics Could Impact the Future of Humanity - AlterNet

If you know any veteran psychonauts, odds are they're not Republicans.

A recent study published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs investigated the relationship between psychedelics, personality, and political perspectives, finding the use of psychedelics to be associated with liberal and anti-authoritarian political views.

This might not be a huge surprise: Timothy Learythe notorious Harvard psychologist who pioneered research into acid and magic mushroomsespoused the mantra, "Turn on, tune in, and drop out," and the belief that, "to think for yourself, you must question authority." But the interesting thing is that psychedelics might actually make people more liberal after they use them by breaking down their ego and driving them to feel more open and connected to nature.

Lisa Evans, a study author from Imperial College London, said personality has been traditionally regarded as stable and unchanging once you hit adulthood. "However, data from a few studies in the last decade have shown that a single psychedelic experience can lead to an increase in one of the 'Big 5' personality traitsopenness," Evans told Motherboard.

To conduct the study, the researchers collected responses to an online survey from nearly 900 people. The survey asked questions about their experiences with psychedelics and other drugs, personality, their relationship with nature, and their political orientation.

The data suggests a causal relationship between psychedelics and personality change that could help people grow, or even heal from trauma, Evans said. In the study, she and fellow researchers Matthew Nour and Robin Carhart-Harris found a link between using psychedelics and more open personalities.

When tripping, people have often described transcendent mythical states of consciousness and oneness with themselves and others.

When personality becomes more malleable after a psychedelic experience, it's often credited to the "mystical experience"officially defined by feelings of "internal and external unity, transcendence of space and time, ineffability and paradoxicality, sense of sacredness, sense of ultimate reality ('noetic quality'), and deeply felt positive mood. The mystical experience has also led to positive life changes like fewer cigarette cravings, or reduced depression and anxiety.

When tripping, people have often described transcendent mythical states of consciousness and oneness with themselves and others. "In this state the sense of 'self' that pervades normal waking consciousness is reduced, and may disappear completely," Nour wrote over e-mail.

This state is termed "ego dissolution," he explained. "We found that people who reported the most intense past ego dissolution experiences on psychedelics also rated higher on openness, liberalism, and nature-relatedness. This is important because it shows that it may be something about the psychedelic experience itself that is related to these personality traits and attitudes."

Nour is quick to establish that correlation doesn't equal causation, in regard to psychedelics and liberalism. "Our study, for example, is correlational and doesn't provide evidence for a causal link between psychedelics and a certain political viewpoint," he said. He suggests it's possible that liberals may be more likely to try psychedelics in the first place, so it's a self-selecting group.

Still, the researchers found a link between greater ego dissolution during intense psychedelic experiences and their openness, liberalism, and closeness to nature. "Ego dissolution seems to be an important part of the way in which people might change from using psychedelics," Evans said.

The study's findings align with other research on psychedelics, such as a study last summer that looked how how LSD affects language: Tripping can result in a "cascade of associations that allow quicker access to faraway concepts stored in the mind." In this sense, it's possible that psychedelics could help people break outside their regular modes of thought, and the overarching "cognitive metaphors" that frame their political perspectives.

"I think psychedelics break down barriers [and] they do a very good job at reminding us of our tendency to build wallsboth physical and psychologicalaround ourselves and our communities." These substances help people entertain new ideas, serving as catalysts for change and growth, she went on. "This is of course in direct opposition with conservatism, which attempts to keep the traditional and familiar intact."

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Do Psychedelic Trips Change Your Political Views? - Motherboard

However, questions arise. Are there people who aren't naive realists, or special situations in which naive realism disappears? My theorythe self-model theory of subjectivitypredicts that as soon as a conscious representation becomes opaque (that is, as soon as we experience it as a representation), we lose naive realism. Consciousness without naive realism does exist. This happens whenever, with the help of other, second-order representations, we become aware of the construction processof all the ambiguities and dynamical stages preceding the stable state that emerges at the end. When the window is dirty or cracked, we immediately realize that conscious perception is only an interface, and we become aware of the medium itself. We doubt that our sensory organs are working properly. We doubt the existence of whatever it is we are seeing or feeling, and we realize that the medium itself is fallible. In short, if the book in your hands lost its transparency, you would experience it as a state of your mind rather than as an element of the outside world. You would immediately doubt its independent existence. It would be more like a book-thought than a book-perception. Precisely this happens in various situationsfor example, In visual hallucinations during which the patient is aware of hallucinating, or in ordinary optical illusions when we suddenly become aware that we are not in immediate contact with reality. Normally, such experiences make us think something is wrong with our eyes. If you could consciously experience earlier processing stages of the representation of the book In your hands, the image would probably become unstable and ambiguous; it would start to breathe and move slightly. Its surface would become iridescent, shining in different colors at the same time. Immediately you would ask yourself whether this could be a dream, whether there was something wrong with your eyes, whether someone had mixed a potent hallucinogen into your drink. A segment of the wall of the Ego Tunnel would have lost its transparency, and the self-constructed nature of the overall flow of experience would dawn on you. In a nonconceptual and entirely nontheoretical way, you would suddenly gain a deeper understanding of the fact that this world, at this very moment, only appears to you. Thomas Metzinger, The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

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Quotes About Psychedelics (48 quotes)