Journal of Psychedelic Studies
December 15, 2021
Malin V. Uthaug, Natasha L. Mason, Martha N. Havenith et al.
15 citations
A naturalistic observational study of 58 Czech-speaking adults found that a single session of Holotropic Breathwork (a breathing technique intended to produce altered states of consciousness) was associated with lasting improvements in non-judgment, satisfaction with life, and reductions in stress-related symptoms. Although participants reported only low levels of psychedelic-like experience (averaging 0–34% on a 100% scale), the increase in non-judgment appeared sub-acutely and persisted for four weeks. Satisfaction with life increased and stress symptoms decreased at the four-week follow-up.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
September 1, 2019
Kelley C. O’donnell, Sarah E. Mennenga, Michael P. Bogenschutz
15 citations
Designing rigorous clinical trials of psilocybin for major depressive disorder requires careful attention to participant selection, placebo control, blinding, dosing, non-pharmacological support, outcome measures, and safety. Transparent methods and analysis maximize the chance of obtaining meaningful, reproducible results and help gain broader scientific acceptance for psychedelic research.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
April 1, 2017
Clare Wilkins, Rafael G. Dos Santos, Jordi Solà et al.
15 citations
A woman on methadone maintenance treatment for 17 years self-treated with several low and cumulative doses of ibogaine over 6 weeks. Each dose attenuated withdrawal symptoms for hours and reduced tolerance to methadone until all withdrawal signs disappeared. No serious adverse effects occurred, and QTc measures never reached clinically significant scores. Twelve months after treatment, she was no longer on methadone maintenance. This first case report suggests that low and cumulative ibogaine doses may reduce withdrawal symptoms in patients on methadone maintenance treatment, though clinical trials are lacking.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
October 9, 2024
Jarrett Robert Rose
13 citations
Psilocybin may help people with treatment-resistant PTSD from sexual abuse by enabling retrieval of repressed traumatic memories, allowing conscious awareness and reconciliation. Analysis of two individuals' narratives after a weeklong group psychedelic retreat showed that recovering unresolved memories led to re-narration of identity and life story. The findings suggest memory and self-narrative are crucial in psychedelic-assisted therapy for trauma, beyond the drugs' commonly acknowledged therapeutic effects. Continued research into these dynamics is advocated.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
September 17, 2021
Riccardo Miceli Mcmillan
13 citations
The re-medicalisation of psychedelics risks turning their ecological sources, cultural contexts, and therapeutic experiences into exploitable resources, endangering ecosystems, appropriating traditional knowledge, and reducing therapeutic effects. Applying Martin Heidegger's critique of modern technology and Fredrik Svenaeus' extension reveals these normative issues. Preserving non-reductionist, non-instrumentalising traditional understandings of psychedelic compounds is essential to mitigate these consequences. Bioethicists have remained silent on this topic, and more discussion is needed to address these global challenges for the psychedelic renaissance.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
April 16, 2021
Anna Lutkajtis
13 citations
Four healthy individuals who attended a legal psilocybin truffle retreat in the Netherlands reported experiences that included mystical-type features, changes to their sense of self, and a generalized feeling of connectedness. Participants described moments of key insight related to connection with self, others, and a broader relational worldview. Embodiment emerged as a notable but understudied theme. The case studies suggest that, in a well-controlled and supportive retreat setting, a high dose of psilocybin can lead to enduring positive after-effects lasting up to twelve months.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
February 12, 2019
Genís Ona, Sebastián Troncoso
13 citations
A case report describes a long-lasting analgesic effect after use of changa, a psychedelic drug containing N,N-dimethyltryptamine and β-carboline-rich seeds of Peganum harmala. The authors suggest both pharmacological and non-pharmacological factors may be involved, but due to changa's complex actions on multiple neurotransmitter systems, further research is needed to establish specific mechanisms. This provides preliminary evidence of an analgesic effect from changa.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
August 21, 2023
Stacey B. Armstrong, Adam W. Levin, Yitong Xin et al.
12 citations
Among 856 U.S. mental health professionals—social workers, psychiatrists, and psychologists—there were no differences in confidence that psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) would be effective. However, psychiatrists showed a better understanding of PAT than social workers. Psychologists rated PAT as more acceptable than social workers did, and psychologists also rated it as a more reasonable treatment approach than both social workers and psychiatrists. Social workers perceived greater disadvantages of PAT than psychologists and psychiatrists, and they were less likely than both other groups to believe PAT could permanently improve clients' lives. The findings indicate a need for education and training across professions as PAT moves toward approval.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
October 24, 2022
Elizabeth Wolfson
12 citations
A renaissance in psychedelic medicine research is confirming therapeutic benefits and advancing legalization, yet trained psychotherapists remain largely blocked from applying their expertise. Many clients are already using psychedelics outside therapy and need support processing those experiences, but practitioners lack guidelines. The proposed model, 'Psychedelic-Supportive Psychotherapy,' allows qualified therapists to work with clients adjacent to, but not during, a medicine experience without ethical or legal risk. It balances harm reduction with support for emotional, psychological, and spiritual gains, centering the therapeutic relationship as a change agent even when the therapist is not present during the client's medicine journey. The model provides a foundational structure with criteria, parameters, and recommendations for practitioners.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
March 26, 2021
Hannah Marie Dressler, Stephen Bright, Vince Polito
12 citations
Microdosing—taking very small, sub-perceptual doses of psychedelic drugs—is associated with increases in conscientiousness and decreases in neuroticism over a 31-day period. Among 24 participants who completed both surveys, neuroticism was linked to alexithymia (difficulty identifying emotions) at baseline, and longer prior microdosing experience correlated with lower neuroticism and higher extraversion. The findings suggest that microdosing may alter typically stable personality traits.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
June 1, 2020
Edward Jacobs
12 citations
Psilocybin may be useful for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), not just mood disorders and addiction. This review outlines how psilocybin acts on brain function in ways that could reduce OCD symptoms. Current evidence is limited, but multiple signals point in directions consistent with treatment potential. The psychological and physiological safety of clinically administered psilocybin supports expanded research, including animal models and randomized controlled trials, to properly investigate this potential.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
June 1, 2020
Mitch Earleywine, Joseph De Leo
12 citations
Antidepressant medications alone help only one in four patients and rarely outperform placebos, while psychotherapies yield better outcomes and combining both helps only 65% of clients who complete treatment. Psychedelics may improve depression through mechanisms overlapping with psychotherapy and some novel ones, suggesting their combination could work very well. Subjective experiences during psychedelic sessions correlate with improvement, so guiding clients to focus on targeted thoughts and feelings could enhance outcomes. Clinical trials of psychedelic-assisted, empirically supported treatment with guided sessions are needed, including preparatory, administration, integration, and follow-up components for maximum impact.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
December 8, 2023
Brandon Weiss, Chelsea Sleep, Nicholas M. Beller et al.
11 citations
People who use psychedelics tend to be more open and extraverted and less neurotic than non-users, and non-users interested in trying psychedelics are more open and neurotic than uninterested non-users. An online survey of 218 psychedelic users, 104 interested non-users, and 104 uninterested non-users identified 52 themes of perceived personality change attributed to the most intense psychedelic experience, which clustered into eight factors: Unitive Spiritual, Gratitude Absorption, Purpose Freedom, Compassion Understanding, Emotional Stability, Openness Perspective, Connection to Self, and Neuroticism Caution. The findings suggest that personality traits influence who uses psychedelics, and that setting and drug type moderate different types of personality changes.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
September 25, 2023
Julien Tempone-Wiltshire, Floren Matthews
11 citations
Psychedelics may help generate the perceptual shifts needed to imagine and pursue social transformation under alienating conditions, but their revolutionary potential risks being co-opted by economic structures. They could be instrumentalized to regulate individuals into unjust systems, redirect usage toward productivity, distract from systemic control, turn non-ordinary states into self-care, or commodify psychedelic experience. However, psychedelics also resist co-option by challenging industrial society's assumptions, provoking alternative epistemologies, expanding selfhood to ecological constructions, and offering enriched phenomenological insight into self, other, and world—potentially sparking the desire for collective emancipation.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
August 16, 2024
William M. Campo, Ann Marie Yali
10 citations
In a survey of 114 people who had used classic psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, ayahuasca, or 5MeO-DMT), having a meaningful intention before the experience and the ability to decenter—to observe thoughts and feelings as temporary events in the mind—were each independently linked to greater psychological flexibility, even after accounting for age, income, religious salience, and number of past psychedelic uses. Psychological flexibility means being consciously aware of thoughts and behaviors and adapting to new situations by considering multiple explanations or solutions. The findings suggest that the mindset and cognitive skills brought to a psychedelic session matter for later well-being.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
November 29, 2023
Lennart Wiepking, Eduard J. de Bruin, Alexandra Ghiţă
10 citations
A scoping review of psilocybin's effects on well-being in healthy individuals found that psilocybin use led to positive well-being-related outcomes for most participants. The facets of well-being positively affected were self-acceptance, positive relationships, and meaning or purpose in life. Ego-dissolution, unity, connectedness, and mystical-type experiences appear crucial for explaining these effects. Under conducive conditions, psilocybin may contribute to healthy functioning through broad and sustained improvements in well-being concepts. However, studies were heterogeneous in objectives, design, sample size, and dosage, so more definite conclusions require further rigorous and homogeneous research.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
September 21, 2023
Julien Tempone-Wiltshire, Tra-Ill Dowie
10 citations
A critical response to Hauskeller's monograph argues that while his socio-political critique of psychedelic psychotherapy under neoliberalism is valuable, it underestimates how psychedelics challenge reductive biomedical models. Indigenous knowledges, combined with emerging sciences, can engage ethnomedicines less harmfully and reveal how psychedelics achieve therapeutic change through transpersonal experience. This offers a revisioning of Western psychology and cognitive science, overturning deficit models of psychopathology and expanding understanding of mind-body relations. Such an approach implicitly challenges the pharmaceutical industry and neoliberal globalization.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
April 27, 2023
Mateo Sanchez Petrement
10 citations
A growing crisis in psychiatry's individualist approaches, which treat patients as separate from their social and material contexts, has coincided with rising evidence for psychedelic drugs' therapeutic potential. While researchers note that psychedelic therapy works by producing a sense of connectedness to self, world, and others, neurological and psychological perspectives remain trapped in individualist thinking. This essay uses phenomenological psychiatry to examine psychedelic therapy for depression, arguing that depression is a bodily detunement or disconnection. Through a process called immersive reflection, psychedelic therapy transforms not only the self but patients' sense of reality, explaining its lasting effects and paradigm-shifting potential for mental health.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
June 8, 2022
Bradley Armour Garb, Mitchell Earleywine
10 citations
Mystical experiences often precede decreases in suffering or increased functioning, and therapies using psychoactive substances in supportive environments yield improvements that correlate with the magnitude of such experiences. This creates a philosophical quandary for empiricists: arguing against the reality of mystical experiences can be awkward, yet ignoring them would dismiss compelling replicated empirical work. The authors propose a version of philosophical fictionalism, drawing on logic and linguistics, to treat reports of mystical experiences as true without implying the mystical is veridical. This approach offers an expressive advantage for researchers refining psychedelic-assisted treatments and may inspire novel models that sidestep the need for fictionalism.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
April 16, 2021
Henrik Børsting Jacobsen, Audun Stubhaug, Bjørn Holmøy et al.
10 citations
In a representative sample of the Norwegian population (1,078 respondents), 8% reported having tried psilocybin, and 51% were willing to try it as part of medical treatment. These findings suggest that psilocybin use is more common in Norway than hypothesized, and the public is relatively open to its medical use, which is promising for conducting rigorous clinical trials on psilocybin-assisted treatment in the country.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
March 7, 2019
Danny Nemu
10 citations
Evidence from psychopharmacology, scripture, and archaeology suggests that several preparations described in the Old Testament—Manna, Showbread, the Holy Ointment, and the Tabernacle Incense—contained psychoactive components, including GABA-receptor agonists and modulators, opioid receptor agonists, and other agents. The Holy Ointment included enzyme inhibitors that prevented the breakdown of these compounds, making them orally active. The preparations indicate that the ancient Israelites had a profound understanding of synergism, and the way they were consumed, along with associated taboos, suggests their use as psychoactive agents to facilitate a direct experience of the Israelite God.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
March 1, 2019
Giordano Novak Rossi, Eduardo José Crevelin, Gabriela de Oliveira Silveira et al.
10 citations
All five organic solvents tested—n-hexane, ethyl acetate, n-butanol, dichloromethane, and chloroform—successfully extracted non-purified N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) from Mimosa hostilis roots using a common Internet-based extraction method. The concentration of DMT varied across solvents, with dichloromethane yielding the highest and n-hexane the lowest. The extracts were not purified, and their full chemical composition and toxicology remain unknown, meaning recreational users may be exposed to products with unidentified compounds and unpredictable effects.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
November 9, 2018
Tom Wolff, Torsten Passie
10 citations
Western ayahuasca drinkers who are active in online forums are typically 28–50 years old, hold higher education degrees, have prior experience with other psychedelic drugs and psychospiritual methods, and are motivated to drink ayahuasca again, usually in organized events like shamanic ceremonies or retreats. Their motivation is composed of four main elements: self-exploration, spiritual purposes, physical health issues, and sensation seeking. Self-exploration and spiritual purposes are the dominant reasons, while physical health and sensation seeking are minor. This motivational structure differs from that of local ayahuasca shaman clients in the upper Amazonas region.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
February 26, 2025
Emilia Sanabria, Luís Fernando Tófoli
9 citations
Integration, the process of making sense of psychedelic experiences, is increasingly being reduced to formulaic checklists and sold as a marketable service, which risks stripping it of its potential for context-dependent personal change. This critical review traces the genealogy of integration in psychedelic medicine, contrasting contemporary Western practices with traditional Indigenous ones. The authors argue that the divergence stems from how continuous psychedelic experiences are with everyday social life and cosmology. Offering a Global South perspective, they warn against individualized, technological approaches prevalent in the US and Western Europe, and urge critical examination of assumptions behind digital psychedelia and app-based integration.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
April 5, 2024
Brian Pilecki, Jason B. Luoma, Kati M. Lear
9 citations
Psychological flexibility may be a core process behind the therapeutic benefits of psilocybin. In a pilot study, nine participants attended a 7-day psilocybin retreat and completed measures at baseline, 2 months, and 6 months. They showed significant improvements in cognitive defusion, valued living, and self-compassion, along with a trend toward increased overall psychological flexibility. Other measures included acute drug effects, belief in oneness, social safeness, mental health, burnout, and emotion expressivity. These results offer preliminary evidence that psilocybin experiences may improve psychological flexibility.