Is the Requirement for First-Person Experience of Psychedelic Drugs a Justified Component of a Psychedelic Therapist's Training?
Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees March 2, 2023 Nathan Emmerich, Bryce Humphries 27 citations
Psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, ayahuasca, ketamine, MDMA, and LSD show therapeutic potential for conditions like PTSD, depression, existential distress, and addiction. Unlike conventional psychoactive drugs, psychedelics are experiential therapies whose value lies in the subjective experiences they induce. Some argue that trainee psychedelic therapists should undergo firsthand psychedelic experience to fully understand these effects. The authors question this, finding the claimed epistemic benefits not uniquely compelling and the evidence for their contribution to training insufficient. They conclude that requiring trainees to take psychedelics is not ethically legitimate, though permitting voluntary experience may be acceptable given potential epistemic benefit cannot be ruled out.