The extraordinary therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs explained

Information from an external source

In the meantime I have, Marcel, Much has been written about why psychedelics are a very powerful remedy for various mental health conditions and that the general acceptance of these "drugs," which means "medicine" in English, is still low, but will improve once their medical value is recognized. I've translated the message below from VOX.com so you can also get information from another source. In the source below, ayahuasca is mainly discussed as an illegal psychedelic drug, while we use legal psilocybin-containing truffles. Psilocybin from mushrooms and truffles works almost identically to DMT from ayahuasca.

Read more about the differences between ayahuasca and psilocybin-containing mushrooms and/or truffles.

The extraordinary therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs, explained

I spent months talking with psychedelic guides and researchers. This is what I learned:;

I was suddenly “on” on the second evening of the ayahuasca ceremony.

As a teenager, I saw myself melt into particles and eventually disappear completely. I'd take off my sleep mask and see the people around me shifting into shadows. I thought I was dying, or maybe losing my grip on reality.

Suddenly, Kat, my guide, appeared and began singing to me. I couldn't make out the words, but the cadence was soothing. After a minute or two, the fear washed away, and I went back to sleep peacefully.

The 12 of us—nine women and three men—who took ayahuasca in a private home in San Diego were led by two trained guides: Kat and her partner, whom I'll call Sarah because she requested anonymity for legal reasons. Together, they have over 20 years of experience with psychedelics, including ayahuasca, a herbal concoction containing the natural hallucinogen known as DMT.

Kat (her full name is Tina Kourtney) and Sarah work as a team serving psychedelic drugs in a different city every month or so. Their primary role is to create a space where everyone feels safe enough to let down their emotional guards and open up to the drugs' potential to change their attitudes, moods, and behaviors.

There's a lot of discomfort in these ceremonies, especially for those who have never experimented with psychedelics. The fear of what you might see or feel can be overwhelming. But guides like Kat are your harbor in the storm. When things get turbulent, they respond with a steady, calm hand.

While psychedelic drugs remain illegal, guided ceremonies or sessions are taking place across the country, particularly in major cities like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Self-guidance has become a viable profession, both underground and above ground, as more Americans seek safe, structured environments to use psychedelics for spiritual growth and psychological healing. This new world of psychedelic therapy operates as a kind of parallel mental health program. Access to the program remains limited, but it is evolving faster than one might expect.

A majority of Americans now support the legalization of marijuana, and while a 2016 public opinion poll on psychedelics suggested they weren't particularly beneficial, it's possible that attitudes will change as research on their therapeutic potential enters the mainstream. (Author Michael Pollan's 2018 book "How to Change Your Mind," about his own experiences with psychedelics, helped spread the word.)

But what would a world in which psychedelics were legal look like? And what kind of cultural structures would we need to ensure these medicines are used responsibly?

Psychedelic drugs like LSD seeped into American society in the 1960s, and the results were mixed at best. They certainly revolutionized the culture, but ultimately left us with draconian drug laws and a cultural backlash that pushed psychedelics underground.

Today, however, a renaissance is underway. At institutions like Johns Hopkins University and New York University, clinical trials of psilocybin as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression, drug addiction, and other anxiety disorders are yielding promising results.

In October, the Food and Drug Administration took the extraordinary step of designating psilocybin therapy for depression as a "breakthrough therapy." This signifies that the treatment has demonstrated such potential that the FDA has decided to expedite the development and review process. It's a sign of how far research and public perception of psychedelics have come.

It's because of these advances that we need to seriously consider what comes next and how we might integrate psychedelics into the broader culture. Over the past three months, I've spoken with guides, researchers, and therapists who train clinicians in psychedelic therapy. I've participated in underground ceremonies and spoken with people who claim to have overcome their drug addiction after a single psychedelic experience.

Our current laws allow the use of some toxically addictive substances and medications, including alcohol and cigarettes. These are drugs that destroy lives and fuel addiction. Yet, one of the most striking aspects of recent (limited) psychedelic research is that psychedelics do not appear to be addictive or cause adverse effects when used with a guide. Many researchers believe that these medications, when used under the supervision of trained professionals, could revolutionize mental health care.

Cultural movements

The countercultural movement of the 1960s was transformational in many ways.

It has catalyzed the environmental movement, the civil rights movement, contemporary feminism, and the anti-war movement, among others. But it also produced a decades-long backlash against psychedelic drugs that, until recently, made it nearly impossible to conduct clinical research.

It wasn't until 1960 that psychedelics were fully legalized and widely regarded as a promising avenue of psychological research. But just a few years later, the political and cultural tides had shifted so dramatically that the country was in a state of panic over psychedelics. In 1965, the federal government banned the production and sale of all psychedelic drugs, and shortly thereafter, the companies that manufactured these drugs for research ceased production.

Michael Pollan explains this at length in How to Change Your Mind (a book I highly recommend), but the short version is that psychedelics never escaped the shadow of the countercultural revolution they sparked.

Timothy Leary, the renegade psychologist and psychedelic evangelist who told children to "turn on, tune in, and break down," is the familiar scapegoat. Leary, the argument went, was too reckless, too confrontational, and too scary for the mainstream. Leary was such a threat that at one point President Richard Nixon called him "the most dangerous man in America.".

But blaming Leary is too easy and hardly the only cause. The culture simply wasn't ready for psychedelics in the 1960s. The experiences these drugs induce are so powerful that they can become a kind of rite of passage. But when they arrived on the scene, the population had no experience with them, no understanding of their meaning. As Pollan told me in an interview earlier this year, "Young people were having such a radically new kind of experience that the culture couldn't handle it."’

Psychedelics were abandoned so quickly that there were no cultural structures to absorb them, no manual or norms surrounding them. Cultures around the world—from the ancient Greeks to the indigenous cultures of the Amazon—have been taking psychedelics for thousands of years, and each developed rituals for them, led by experienced guides. Because there was no established community in the US, people were left to fend for themselves. When you combine this with a general lack of awareness of the drugs themselves, it's not surprising that things went wrong.

But much has changed since the 1960s. The political and cultural landscape is radically different and much more receptive to psychedelics. Rick Doblin, a long-time psychedelic PhD and the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), made an interesting point when I recently sat down with him in Washington, D.C. (MAPS is a nonprofit research and education organization dedicated to promoting the safe use of psychedelics.)

“"In the '60s," he said, "the psychedelic counterculture was a direct challenge to the status quo… it was about abandoning the culture. Today, things like yoga and mindfulness meditation are fully integrated into popular culture. We've integrated spirituality and all these things that were so strange and alien in the '60s. So we've been preparing for this culturally for 50 years."”

At the same time, psychedelics may also play a role in addressing newer health threats, such as the opioid crisis. (70,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2017, more than the total number of Americans who died in Vietnam.) They are used to treat populations such as veterans with PTSD, cancer patients facing mortality, or those struggling with major depressive disorder. .

Psychedelics are becoming healing tools rather than threats to the social order. And the scientists, organizations, and training institutes leading the way are working within the system to reduce the potential for backlash. This is a stark departure from the approach of the 1960s, and so far, it has been successful.

Your mind on psychedelics

Psilocybin has become the most widely used drug for most researchers in recent years for several reasons. First, it has less cultural baggage than LSD, and therefore study participants are more willing to work with it. Psilocybin also has strong safety data based on studies conducted before its ban, and therefore the FDA has allowed a small number of small clinical trials to proceed.

Although the most recent studies are still preliminary and the sample sizes are quite small, the results so far are compelling. In a 2014 Johns Hopkins study, 80 percent of smokers who participated in psilocybin treatment remained completely abstinent six months after the trial. By comparison, smoking cessation trials using varenicline (a prescription medication for smoking cessation) have a success rate of about 35 percent.

In a separate 2016 study on cancer-related depression or anxiety, 83 percent of 51 participants reported a significant increase in well-being or satisfaction six months after a single dose of psilocybin. (67% said it was one of the most meaningful experiences of their lives.)

A typical psilocybin session lasts between four and six hours (compared to 12 hours with LSD), but it produces lasting reductions in depression and anxiety in patients. That's why researchers like Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins believe psychedelics represent a completely new paradigm for treating serious psychiatric disorders. Conventional treatments like antidepressants don't work for many patients and can have numerous side effects.

This is a key reason why many researchers believe psychedelics will eventually be moved by the FDA (more on this below) and legalized for medical use—though the timeline for this is far from clear. In November, Oregon officials approved a 2020 ballot measure that would allow medical professionals to perform psilocybin-assisted therapy. If it passes, Oregon would be the first state to allow licensed therapists to administer psilocybin. Other states, such as California, are likely to follow suit.

For more information on the broad medical potential of psychedelics, I recommend reading my colleague German Lopez's 2016 review of the science. Here, I wanted to focus on how psilocybin works and why it's so powerful for those who take it. To understand the clinical side, I traveled to Johns Hopkins to sit down with Alan Davis, a clinical psychologist, and Mary Cosimano, a research coordinator and trained guide. Both help lead the psilocybin sessions at Hopkins.

Hopkins researchers have worked with a range of populations since receiving FDA approval to study psilocybin in 2000—healthy adults without any mental health problems, cancer patients suffering from anxiety and depression, smokers, and even seasoned meditators.

A key part of the process at Hopkins is what they call a "life review." Before administering the medication, they want to know who you are, where you are in your life, and what kinds of emotional or psychological walls you've built up around yourself. The idea is to work with patients to identify what's holding them back in life and explore how they can overcome it.

Davis and Cosimano both say psilocybin has benefited every population they've worked with. "It's not for everyone," Cosimano said, "but for the right person at the right time, it can be positively transformative." (They don't accept patients on the psychosis spectrum—it's simply too dangerous.)

The psilocybin sessions are intense and in some cases last all day. The rooms they use are a curious mix of drab doctor's decor and New Age decorations. There's a vanilla-colored couch covered in embroidered pillows and draped on both sides with South American art. Near the couch, on a side table, sits a ceremonial cup and miniature mushroom sculptures; it's not quite an altar, but it might as well be.

The most important thing, say Cosimano and Davis, is to make the patient as comfortable as possible. They even encourage people to bring personal items, letters from loved ones, or anything with deep emotional resonance. Just like the underground guides, researchers do everything they can to create a safe psychological space.

Sessions can unfold in multiple directions, depending on the depth of the experience (which is difficult to predict) and the individual's mental state. Patients typically lie on a couch with a sleep mask over their eyes. Cosimano, Davis, and other clinical guides act as guides—holding the patient's hand and helping them process what they're seeing and what it means. "I'm never bored here," Cosimano told me. "Every session is different, every experience is different, and I'm simply blown away by being able to experience each person's journey."“

Yet scientists aren't entirely sure what it is about these experiences that produces such profound changes in attitude, mood, and behavior. Is it a sense of awe? Is it what the American philosopher William James called the "mystical experience," something so overwhelming that it shatters the authority of everyday consciousness and alters our perception of the world? What is clear, in any case, is that psychedelic journeys often transcend the boundaries of language.

The best metaphor I've heard to describe what psychedelics do to the human mind comes from Robin Carhart-Harris, a psychedelic researcher at Imperial College London. He said we should think of the mind as a ski slope. Every ski slope develops grooves as more and more people come down the hill. As these grooves deepen over time, it becomes harder to ski around them.

Like a ski slope, Carhart-Harris argues, our minds develop patterns as we navigate the world. These patterns harden as we age. After a while, you stop realizing how conditioned you've become—you simply respond to stimuli in predictable ways. Ultimately, your brain becomes what Michael Pollan aptly calls an "uncertainty-reducing machine," obsessed with protecting the ego and locked in uncontrollable loops that reinforce self-destructive habits.

Taking psychedelics is like shaking a snow globe, Carhart-Harris said. It disrupts these patterns and unleashes cognitive barriers. It also interacts with what's called the Default Mode Network (DMN), the part of the brain associated with mental chatter, self-absorption, memories, and emotions. Anytime you're anxious about the future, ruminating on the past, or engaging in compulsive self-reflection, this part of the brain lights up. When researchers looked at images of brains on psychedelics, they found that the DMN almost completely shut down.

Think of it this way: you spend your entire life in this body, and because you are always at the center of your experience, you get caught up in your own drama, your own story. But if you pay close attention, for example, in a deep meditation practice, you will discover that the experience of the self is an illusion. Yet, the sensation that there is a "you" separate and apart from the world is very difficult to shake; it's as if we are programmed to see the world this way.

The only time I've ever been able to cut through this ego structure was under the influence of psychedelics (in my case, ayahuasca). I was able to see myself from the outside, to see the world from the perspective of nowhere and everywhere simultaneously, and suddenly this horrific display of self-esteem stopped. And I believe I learned something about the world I couldn't have learned any other way, something that changed how I think about, well, everything.

At Johns Hopkins, the drug experience is only one part of the treatment. The therapy that follows is equally important. People regularly tell researchers that the psilocybin session is the most personally and spiritually significant experience of their lives, including childbirth and the loss of loved ones.

But there's a need, Davis said, "to understand these experiences and bring them into your daily life in a way that doesn't compromise their meaning." That doesn't necessarily have to be therapy or one-on-one mentoring with a guide, but it's crucial to integrate the experience into your daily life, whether that's taking up a new practice like yoga or meditation, spending more time in nature, or simply building new relationships.

The point is, it's not enough to simply take the ride and move on; it's about establishing new habits, new mental patterns, new ways of being. Psychedelics can kickstart this process, but for many people, that's all they can do.

When I returned from my first ayahuasca retreat, I struggled to process what had happened to me. I had no formal help, no instruction, no real support. It's jarring to shift back into your routine after having your inner world turned upside down so much. I adopted new practices (like meditation), and that helped me a great deal to stay connected to that first encounter with psychedelics, but there are limits to what you can do alone.

Recognizing the need for greater integration, schools like the California Institute of Integral Studies and psychedelic researchers like Elizabeth Nielson of NYU are focusing on training professional therapists to work specifically with psychedelic users. Nielson is part of the Psychedelic Education and Continuing Care program, which does not provide psychotherapy but offers instruction to clinicians who want to learn more about psychedelics.

“"People who have used psychedelics or will use them in the future will need help integrating their experiences, and many will feel safest doing so in a therapist's office," she told me. "That means we need more therapists who understand these experiences and know how to have these kinds of conversations with patients."”

Meanwhile, we've seen a parallel growth in a more informal support system for people experimenting with psychedelics, one that exists largely underground.

Psychedelics and the underground

For decades, a community of guides has been quietly working in the shadows, administering psychedelics to people across the country. And they're not so different from their above-ground counterparts—or at least not as different as you might expect. Many of them have spent years apprenticed under traditional healers in places like Peru and Brazil and follow a strict code of conduct to formalize practices and ensure safety.

This was certainly true for Kat, the guide I stayed with in San Diego. She studied for eight years under a Peruvian mentor and estimates she's used ayahuasca over 900 times and led hundreds of ceremonies in Europe and the US.

She calls herself a "tone setter," someone who commands the space. She usually puts everyone at ease by projecting a calm and reassuring presence. "I take the pulse of the room, and when I need to approach someone, I try to be as grounded as the earth itself—that kind of calm is contagious," she said. "The most important thing is to be attuned to what's happening and how people are feeling, and respond accordingly."’

Her role is to walk a tightrope between letting people through what they're going through and intervening when they're too close to the edge. If everyone is okay, she sits somewhere in the room playing medicine songs and keeping an eye on things. If someone panics, Kat has to coax them back and do it in a way that doesn't overwhelm everyone in the room.

A few months ago, she told me that a woman at one of her ceremonies was convinced demons had taken over her body. She became hysterical and threatened to call 911. These kinds of situations happen all the time, and the guide has to investigate immediately.

Unlike the clinicians at Hopkins, Kat manages the journeys of multiple people simultaneously, sometimes dozens, and that carries risks. I asked her, why this? Why risk causing someone to react in ways they can't control, or risk going to jail?

“"Because it heals people," she told me. "I see it every time I have a circle, every time I walk a group of people through this experience. People come in with one perspective and leave with another. Sometimes that means seeing the world with new eyes, and sometimes it means realizing they are more than their addiction, that their flaws don't define them."”

Kat, now 43, has faced many of her own struggles. Before discovering ayahuasca 13 years ago during a trip to Peru, she struggled with alcoholism, bulimia, and bipolar disorder—at one point even attempting suicide. "The medicine wasn't a miracle cure," she said, "but it set me on a different path, and I've essentially dedicated my entire life to this work."“

She tried traditional therapy for several years, mostly to treat her bipolar disorder and bulimia. When that didn't work, she enjoyed self-help workshops, from Radical Awakening seminars to Mastery in Transformational Training courses. "I was obsessed with finding some kind of relief," she told me, "but nothing worked, nothing stuck."“

Everyone who attends Kat's ceremonies has their own reason for being there. Some are psychonauts—people who explore altered states of consciousness through the use of psychedelics. Others, like Laura, a 35-year-old woman from Philadelphia, are drawn to plant medicine as a last-ditch effort to overcome addiction.

In Laura's case, it was a 14-year heroin addiction. "I was on the verge of death. I tried every conventional method imaginable—detox, counseling, rehab—and nothing worked," she told me. Finally, she discovered ibogaine, a psychedelic substance derived from the roots of a West African shrub. "Ibogaine was like a myth on the street, this miraculous modality that could reset your brain and save you from addiction."“

Laura told me she finally went to her family and said, "Put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger, or send me to an ibogaine clinic." They sent her to an ibogaine treatment center just north of Cancun, where she had a few sessions. She's now been clean for eight years.

Ibogaine isn't as well-researched as psilocybin or LSD, and it's relatively dangerous, but it's one of the most powerful psychedelic drugs known, and there's preliminary research suggesting it may be an effective treatment for opioid and cocaine addiction.

Another woman, a 48-year-old from Kansas whom I'll call April, told me she'd been addicted to Adderall, a stimulant prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for 15 years. "It ate up my whole life—every decision, every plan, basically every moment." She tried to quit several times, but the withdrawal was too much. On a whim, she decided to look into psychedelics and found her way to Kat's website. A few weeks later, she was in a ceremony.

Her first ayahuasca journey was in September, almost three months ago, and she hasn't touched Adderall since. "The experience was brutal," she said. "It was like looking at myself and my life through a mirror, and I could see all the masks I wear, how Adderall had become this crutch, this source of false energy that was driving me through my life. I feel like it recalibrated my whole being."“

These stories are inspiring, but it's unclear how representative they are. Psychedelics aren't a magic elixir, and there are physical and psychological risks associated with taking them indiscriminately, especially if you're taking medication or have a psychiatric condition. But when used in a proper environment with a trained guide, they can be remarkably therapeutic. (As far as I know, there are no documented "bad trips" in the research literature.)

Kat believes this work could be more effective if it weren't forced underground. "If this were legal, I'd spend more time with people before and after the experience. I'd want to build my team and do this above ground like a normal business, taking care of people from start to finish. Because we're in this legal gray area, people often come into the ceremony and are immediately thrown back into the world, and that can be traumatic."“

I asked Kat if she's noticed a change in the type of people attending her ceremonies. She told me it used to be mostly psychonauts, but lately it's been people, both young and old, who want to make peace with mortality or work through deep trauma. She's working with a growing number of veterans struggling with PTSD, many of whom say they haven't found relief in traditional mental health services.

Yet, she hesitated when I asked her about legalization. "They absolutely should be legal, but I'm not sure they should be legal tomorrow," she said. "We need a solid foundation, a way to maintain respect for these medicines. If we lose that, if psychedelics become a different substance like marijuana, I worry we'll blow this up and burn it out like we did in the '60s.".

Kat's concern, shared by many in this room, is that the ceremonial aspects of psychedelics will be lost if they are legalized overnight. There's nothing inherently wrong with recreational use, but for those who regard psychedelics with a kind of sacred awe, there's a genuine fear that these substances will be trivialized if we don't make this transition wisely.

So how do we integrate psychedelics into culture?

Psychedelics, like all other medications, can be used for good or bad reasons outside the safe contexts of research facilities or private sessions with experienced guides. According to Geoff Bathje, a psychologist at Adler University who works with patients experiencing high levels of trauma, the question is: "What kind of harm reduction do we need to protect people?"“

Several people I spoke with pointed to the "harm reduction" model. Harm reduction focuses on reducing the risks associated with drug use, as opposed to punitive models that aim to eliminate use altogether. It's a practical and humane approach that has worked well in Portugal, where all drugs for personal use have been decriminalized.

Although the harm reduction model is not usually associated with psychedelics, the principles are all the same.

For Bathje, it's about providing good drug education to the general population, "making sure people understand the risks of psychedelics—how they can be abused, how people can be exploited when they're under the influence, etc." There are already national harm reduction groups like the Zendo Project, sponsored by MAPS, that focus on peer-to-peer counseling for people experimenting with psychedelics.

Bathje and some of his colleagues have founded a harm reduction group in Chicago, Psychedelic Safety Support and Integration. Its goal is to promote safety and help people process their psychedelic experiences. It serves as a critical resource that brings the community in, raises awareness of the risks associated with psychedelic drug use, and creates a space for connection.

There's currently a disconnect between the harm reduction movement and the psychedelic research community. "You go to a psychedelic conference, and it's focused on the science and therapeutic potential," said Bathje, "and the general assumption is that if we just produce good science, these drugs will be approved as medicines, and everything will just fall into place."“

“If you attend a harm reduction conference,” he added, “it’s all about cultural change and how politicians don’t care about science. The focus is much more on organizing and who has the power and how we can reduce risks and do things safely.“ This is partly why the harm reduction movement can be useful for psychedelics. Science can be crucial for legalization, but public health programs should help integrate these drugs into the broader culture.

Harm reduction groups like Bathje's and the Zendo Project are the best models we have for this kind of integration, and we should scale them up if psychedelics are legalized for medicinal use.

There are reasons to be cautious, but we should welcome the evolution of psychedelic research

After months of thinking about these issues and talking to people involved at almost every level, I'm convinced that the new culture of therapeutic psychedelics is evolving rapidly. Just this week, a group of citizens in Denver gathered enough signatures to pass a ballot measure decriminalizing magic mushrooms in the spring.

As Rick Doblin noted, the social and political environment today is very different from the 1960s, and there's no reason to suspect a similar reaction. The cultural containers and the knowledge exist, and they could increasingly be brought out of the shadows.

What this transition will look like on a larger scale and how long it will take is less clear. Advocates like Doblin seem wise to play the long game. Given the progress of research, it's possible that psilocybin will be reclassified from a Schedule 1 drug (drugs with no known medical value) to a Schedule 4 drug (drugs with a low risk of abuse and known medical value) within the next three or four years.

The drug rescheduling process is a bit confusing, however. Under federal law, the U.S. Attorney General can decide to reschedule drugs, but they must first obtain data and medical research from the Secretary of Health and Human Services before doing so. Congress can also pass laws to change drug scheduling and, if it so chooses, override an Attorney General.

It's unlikely we'll make much progress on this front under the current administration, but the political winds can shift quickly, especially if research continues apace. The fact that the Drug Enforcement Agency is already familiar with the possibility of rescheduling psychedelics is a very positive sign.

“"We're pleased that research is progressing at institutions like Johns Hopkins," DEA spokesman Rusty Payne told me in a phone interview. "If the scientific and medical community comes to the DEA and says, 'This should be a drug, this should be reclassified as Schedule 4 or 5 instead of Schedule 1,' then we will act accordingly."”

Support for psychedelics is also one of those rare issues that can, in some cases, cross conventional political lines. Rebekah Mercer, the billionaire Republican financier and co-owner of Breitbart, has donated $1 million to MAPS to fund their studies focusing on veterans with PTSD. As the research progresses, we may see more bipartisan support like this.

A major remaining issue concerns access. If you spend any time in the psychedelic subculture, you can't help but notice that it's predominantly comprised of privileged white people. This is largely a product of who holds these spaces, how much they cost (ranging from $600 to well over $1,000 per session), where they are held, and the networks of people who support them. The fact that many people simply don't know about the therapeutic potential of psychedelics is another barrier. All of this needs to change, and hopefully, it will happen when psychedelics aren't relegated to the underground.

Within the psychedelic community itself, there are concerns about commodification. Companies like Compass Pathways are trying to turn psilocybin into a pharmaceutical product. (Compass's psilocybin study is the one that received Breakthrough Therapy designation from the FDA in October.)

Compass began as a non-profit with an interest in establishing a psychedelic hospice center, but has since shifted its focus to a for-profit approach. With major investors like Peter Thiel behind it, Compass can dominate the psychedelic medical supply chain, from synthesis to therapy. It also hinders the research efforts of non-profit organizations like Usona that develop their own psychedelic medicines. If the market is monopolized, or if a few pharmaceutical companies hold critical patents, many people could be priced out of access.

Despite all these concerns, we should welcome the evolution of psychedelic research. We need larger studies and more diverse populations to learn as much as possible about how these drugs work. Richard Friedman, a clinical psychiatrist at Cornell University, told me, "I'm all for optimism, but show me the data. I embrace the enthusiasm for the therapeutic potential of psychedelics... but whether it's justified will depend on the answers. And nothing but the data."“

So far, the data is encouraging, but there's still much we don't understand. We do know enough to say that psychedelics are powerful tools for reducing suffering for some people. And we simply don't have enough of these tools to justify banning them.