We are now witnessing a radical revival in clinical research on the use of psychedelics (e.g. LSD and psilocybin), where ‘mystical’ experiences are at the centre. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 50 psychedelic drug users, we document how they draw on archetypical mystical narratives, comprising three key dimensions: (1) the transcendence of time and spac...
ABSTRACT Over the last three decades, the renaissance of interdisciplinary research into psychedelic drugs has challenged the Cartesian notions of subjectivity and identity that have endured throughout modernity. But as work in this field reaches new degrees of complexity, the limitations of verbal and textual language are presenting barriers to conventional...
Credit: Dassima Kathleen Murphy Nothing in Richard Alpert’s early life could have predicted that he would come to embody the spirit of the psychedelic 1960s. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the youngest of three sons, to George and Gertrude (Levin) Alpert. His father, a prominent lawyer in Boston, was a founder of Brandeis University and went on to bec...
Past research suggests that use of psychedelic substances such as LSD or psilocybin may have positive effects on mood and feelings of social connectedness. These psychological effects are thought to be highly sensitive to context, but robust and direct evidence for them in a naturalistic setting is scarce. In a series of field studies involving over 1,200 pa...
BACKGROUND: A recently published randomized controlled trial compared single-dose psilocybin with single-dose niacin in conjunction with psychotherapy in participants with cancer-related psychiatric distress. Results suggested that psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy facilitated improvements in psychiatric and existential distress, quality of life, and spiritu...
Is it possible to gain knowledge 1 by taking psychedelic 2 drugs?One influential answer is 'yes': according to this conception, by inducing mystical states of consciousness, psychedelics afford direct knowledge of supernatural, transcendent dimensions of reality.This is an entheogenic conception of the drugs as agents that "generate the divine within".A seco...
This introduction to the special issue reviews research that supports the hypothesis that psychedelics, particularly psilocybin, were central features in the development of religion. The greater response of the human serotonergic system to psychedelics than is the case for chimpanzees’ serotonergic receptors indicates that these substances were environmental...
During the 1950s and 1960s, there was a tremendous surge in research into the effects of psychedelic drugs. When discussing this period of research, the discovery of the psychoactive properties of LSD in 1943 is often presented as the main, and sometimes only, driving force of the boom in research. This "Great Person," or "Great Chemical," historiographical ...
Clinical research on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is rapidly advancing in the USA, with two drugs, psilocybin and MDMA, progressing through a structure of FDA-approved trials on a trajectory toward Drug Enforcement Agency rescheduling for therapeutic use. Researcher's and clinician's personal use of psychedelics was cited as a potential confound in psy...
A pressing philosophical problem is how to respond to the existential, anxiety and disenchantment resulting from a naturalistic worldview that eschews transcendent foundations for meaning and value. This problem is becoming more urgent as the popularization of neuroscientific findings renders a disenchanted conception of human beings ever more vivid, compell...
Presented at a conference titled “Psychedelic Science 2013,” highlighting the resumption of investigations with psychedelic substances (i.e., psilocybin, DMT, LSD, MMDA, etc.) in the United States and Europe after a dormant period of more than two decades, the author presents insights and perspectives gleaned from his 25 years of clinical research experience...
One recent development in epistemology, the philosophical study of knowledge, is the notion of 'epistemic innocence' introduced by Bortolotti and colleagues. This concept expresses the idea that certain suboptimal cognitive processes may nonetheless have epistemic (knowledge-related) benefits. The idea that delusion or confabulation may have psychological be...
Entheogens or psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin are associated with mystical states of experience. Drug laws currently limit research, but important new work is under way at major biomedical research facilities showing that entheogens reliably occasion mystical experiences and thereby allow research into brain states d...
This presentation will discuss Stan Grof’s impact on the resurgent field of psychedelic research, particularly in regard to the development of the psilocybin treatment of advanced-cancer anxiety studies that were conducted in the early 2000s. After decades of repression, we are on the threshold of demonstrating that the field Stan and his colleagues courageo...
Acknowledgments Introduction: Neuropsychopharmacology as Spiritual Technology 1. Psychedelic Revival 2. Swiss Psilocybin and US Dollars 3. The Varieties of Psychedelic Lab Experience 4. Enacting Experimental Psychoses 5. Between Animality and Divinity 6. Mystic Materialism Conclusion: Fieldwork in Perennial Philosophy Notes Bibliography Index
Human UDP-glucuronosyltransferases (UGTs) are important in the metabolic elimination of xenobiotics and endogenous compounds from the body. These enzymes transfer glucuronic acid moiety from the cosubstrate, UDP-glucuronic acid (UDPGA), to nucleophilic groups of small organic molecules, such as hydroxyl, carboxylic, or amino group. The conjugation of these m...
El autor presenta una perspectiva histórica y farmacológica de la psilocibina como introducción previa a un análisis de las investigaciones actuales en las que se ha autorizado la experimentación de esta substancia con seres humanos. Se incluyen investigaciones tanto en proyecto, en curso como terminadas. Se resumen los informes científicos publicados hasta ...
