PurposeThis paper aims to examine evolving practices and discourses surrounding psilocybin mushrooms on an online drug forum. Situating use within hybrid digital and ecological contexts, it traces shifts in user engagement before and after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic to contextualize localized realities of the contemporary psychedelic renaissance.Design/metho...
While the limitations of existing treatment options have spurred investigations into the applicability of psychedelic therapies for chronic and treatment-resistant psychological disorders, there remain significant unresolved issues pertaining to how these treatments should be regulated and the implementation of an ethical framework for their widespread deliv...
Tobacco use remains a leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality worldwide, and current smoking cessation treatments are limited by low long-term efficacy. An interplay between positive and negative reinforcement drives high relapse rates. Psychedelic compounds, particularly psilocybin, have shown promising clinical outcomes for smoking cessation, ...
Healthcare providers' (HCPs) perspectives on psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) are critical to clinical integration but remain underexplored in Canadian palliative and oncology contexts. This study examines HCP attitudes toward ketamine, psilocybin, and MDMA, and the systemic and ethical factors influencing implementation. An exploratory qualitative study u...
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has demonstrated efficacy in treating individual mental health conditions such as addiction, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, current research predominantly focuses on individual experiences, overlooking the relational and systemic factors that influence healing and long-term therapeutic out...
Over a decade after the first edition of "Behavioral Neurobiology of Alcohol Addiction," this chapter revisits the field at a critical juncture, marked by both persistent challenges and emerging opportunities. We reflect on the translational gap that has stalled the development of new treatments for alcohol use disorder (AUD), despite decades of promising pr...
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) has emerged as a potential treatment for a variety of mental health conditions, including substance use disorders and depression. Current models of PAP emphasize the importance of psychotherapeutic support before, during, and after ingestion of a psychedelic to maximize safety and clinical benefit. Despite this ubiqui...
OBJECTIVE: The primary aim of this qualitative study was to delineate psychological mechanisms of change in the first randomized controlled trial of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy to treat alcohol use disorder (AUD). Theories regarding psychological processes involved in psychedelic therapy remain underdeveloped. METHOD: Participants (N = 13) mostly ident...
Self or ego dissolution (SED) is a recurring, yet vaguely defined phenomenon often associated with positive therapeutic outcomes within clinical research on classic psychedelic substances. The aim of this thesis is to achieve a deeper understanding and improve terminological clarity of SED in a psychedelic context, here defined as research settings in which ...
Self or ego dissolution (SED) is a recurring, yet vaguely defined phenomenon often associated with positive therapeutic outcomes within clinical research on classic psychedelic substances. The aim of this thesis is to achieve a deeper understanding and improve terminological clarity of SED in a psychedelic context, here defined as research settings in which ...
Standards are useful in the development of medicine because they enable communication and consistency in experimentation. Standards, however, often require expensive tools like laboratories and clinical trials. How, then, might citizen scientists develop standards given the difficulty of obtaining these tools? This article provides one answer, by describing ...
Treatments for addressing psychiatric mental health issues in vulnerable patients with cancer are established. Yet, many patients persist with unrelenting psychological difficulties despite intervention. There is growing interest in the role of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for managing treatment-resistant mental health challenges in patients with cancer...
In this manuscript, I reflect on how Critical Indigenous theory offers white historians like myself powerful conceptual tools to combat the underlying, historically-rooted colonial assumptions prevalent in their work, specifically within the subfield of psychedelic history. Histories of compounds like lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, ayahuasca, ...
Psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin and LSD, represent unique tools for researchers in-vestigating the neural origins of consciousness. Currently, the most compelling theories of how psychedelics exert their effects is by increasing the complexity of brain activity and moving the system towards a critical point between order and disorder, creating more dyn...
It has often been suggested in the popular and academic literature that the psychedelic state qualifies as a higher state of consciousness relative to the state of normal waking awareness. This article subjects this proposal to critical scrutiny, focusing on the question of what it would mean for a state of consciousness to be 'higher'. We begin by consideri...
Serotonin is a key neuromodulator known to be involved in brain development, perception, cognition, and mood. However, unlike as with dopamine for example, a compelling unified theory of brain serotonin function has not yet been established. This is likely due to the exceptional complexity of the serotonin system, with its 14+ receptors, over twice the numbe...
BackgroundThe ceremonial use of psychoactive/hallucinogenic plant based drugs, such as ayahuasca, psilocybin and others, is a growing trend in the United States (US) and globally. To date, there has been little research documenting how many people are using psychoactive substances in this context, who the users are, what benefits/risks exist in the use of th...
Entropy is a dimensionless quantity that is used for measuring uncertainty about the state of a system but it can also imply physical qualities, where high entropy is synonymous with high disorder. Entropy is applied here in the context of states of consciousness and their associated neurodynamics, with a particular focus on the psychedelic state. The psyche...
