Research on psychedelics has generated renewed interest over the past decade. Recent pilot studies have shown safety and feasibility of psilocybin, a naturally occurring psychedelic, as a therapeutic tool for treating mood and substance use disorders, including tobacco and alcohol addiction. Findings from laboratory research indicate that psychedelics, when ...
Psilocybin-occasioned mystical experiences have been linked to persisting effects in healthy volunteers including positive changes in behavior, attitudes, and values, and increases in the personality domain of openness. In an open-label pilot-study of psilocybin-facilitated smoking addiction treatment, 15 smokers received 2 or 3 doses of psilocybin in the co...
After completing an undergraduate degree in Psychology in 2003, Robin studied psychoanalysis at Masters level, receiving his MA in 2004. In 2005, Robin began a four year PhD in Psychopharmacology at the University of Bristol. Working for Professor David Nutt and Dr Sue Wilson, Robin9s thesis focused on sleep and serotonin function in ecstasy users. Robin con...
Responses to hallucinogenic drugs, such as psilocybin, are believed to be critically dependent on the user's personality, current mood state, drug pre-experiences, expectancies, and social and environmental variables. However, little is known about the order of importance of these variables and their effect sizes in comparison to drug dose. Hence, this study...
Even if ingesting the hallucinogen psilocybin can increase positive feelings of bliss or oneness with the universe, it is questionable whether such feelings represent authentic mystical experience or spiritual growth.
A large body of evidence, including longitudinal analyses of personality change, suggests that core personality traits are predominantly stable after age 30. To our knowledge, no study has demonstrated changes in personality in healthy adults after an experimentally manipulated discrete event. Intriguingly, double-blind controlled studies have shown that the...
ContextResearchers conducted extensive investigations of hallucinogens in the 1950s and 1960s. By the early 1970s, however, political and cultural pressures forced the cessation of all projects. This investigation reexamines a potentially promising clinical application of hallucinogens in the treatment of anxiety reactive to advanced-stage cancer.ObjectiveTo...
IntroductionThe use of illicit drugs by students and the possible psychological repercussions in this population of young adults is an important public health issue. While some data in the literature suggest a relationship between cannabis and the occurrence of mental health disorders, and in particular psychotic illnesses, epidemiologic surveys have shown t...
Psilocybin has been used for centuries for religious purposes; however, little is known scientifically about its long-term effects. We previously reported the effects of a double-blind study evaluating the psychological effects of a high psilocybin dose. This report presents the 14-month follow-up and examines the relationship of the follow-up results to dat...
UnlabelledVery recently, after a long-lasting, worldwide moratorium on research of hallucinogenic agents, a good number of advanced countries have been revising their position, and start to approve testing the physiological and therapeutic effects of hallucinogens in human subjects. The purpose of this article is to review safety information available in the...
ABSTRACT A comparison of personality factors on scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A) was conducted with a sample of adolescents referred to a residential substance abuse treatment program. A total of sixty adolescents identified with hallucinogen (n = 20), cannabis (n = 20), or methamphetamine (n = 20) as their drug o...
The goal of this paper is to draw conclusions about the usefulness of the standard EEG in psychiatry. In general, two thirds of psychiatric referrals for an EEG are expected to provide useful information. The emphasis in schizophrenia is placed on left-sided abnormalities, especially on the left temporal area. In mood disorders the emphasis is on right-sided...
The influence of personality structure on the stability of perceptual performance, specifically the degree of reproducibility under hypnotic induction of the psilocybinproduced lowering of spatial distortion thresholds, was investigated in two “variable” and two “stable” psilocybin reactors, that is, subjects who displayed variable and stable MMPI profiles u...
Autonomic, perceptual, and behavioral changes induced by 160 µg/kg psilocybin were studied in a homogenous sample of 15 self-selected College educated male and female volunteers. The subjects were rank ordered as to the extent of drug-induced psychopathology using their Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory pre-drug to drug peak differences scores. Ext...
