OPEN Foundation

Author name: OPEN Foundation

Compassionate use of psychedelics

Abstract

In the present paper, we discuss the ethics of compassionate psychedelic psychotherapy and argue that it can be morally permissible. When talking about psychedelics, we mean specifically two substances: psilocybin and MDMA. When administered under supportive conditions and in conjunction with psychotherapy, therapies assisted by these substances show promising results. However, given the publicly controversial nature of psychedelics, compassionate psychedelic psychotherapy calls for ethical justification. We thus review the safety and efficacy of psilocybin- and MDMA-assisted therapies and claim that it can be rational for some patients to try psychedelic therapy. We think it can be rational despite the uncertainty of outcomes associated with compassionate use as an unproven treatment regime, as the expected value of psychedelic psychotherapy can be assessed and can outweigh the expected value of routine care, palliative care, or no care at all. Furthermore, we respond to the objection that psychedelic psychotherapy is morally impermissible because it is epistemically harmful. We argue that given the current level of understanding of psychedelics, this objection is unsubstantiated for a number of reasons, but mainly because there is no experimental evidence to suggest that epistemic harm actually takes place.
Greif, A., & Šurkala, M. (2020). Compassionate use of psychedelics. Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy.,
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Matthew Jonhson: psychedelics are brain plasticity-inducing

MatthewJohnson
Matthew Johnson is associate director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University – a center created last year. Johnson is one of the world’s leading researchers in psychedelic science. The Open Foundation asked him to reflect on some hot topics in psychedelic science today – like the mystical experience, business players entering psychedelic research and new avenues of clinical research.
In September of 2019, Johns Hopkins launched its Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. Just a few months earlier, Imperial College in London had started its own Centre for Psychedelic Research. The creation of the Hopkins center seemed like a ‘response’, in a way. Is there some rivalry we need to know about?
The seeds were being sown long before we were aware of the Imperial center, so I wouldn’t say so. There’s far more room for synergy and collaboration than for rivalry in this field. Of course, you always like to be the first to publish a paper on a given subject, that’s just human. But in the big picture, it’s really great that there are two large, very credible centers in the world, and the hope is that it’s going to keep growing. There’s even a third center in South Carolina now, with Michael Mithoefer and others.
What’s the added value of dedicated centers for psychedelic research?
The center is a term used in academics to mean a certain level of funding that allows for an increased concentration and focus on a research area. Functionally, the important thing is that it’s dramatically increasing the throughput of our work on psychedelics.
Your group at Hopkins seems to place a good deal of emphasis on the mystical experience and considers it the mechanism of action for therapeutic outcomes of psychedelic therapy, whereas Imperial focuses more on imagery and neuroscience. Where does this focus on the mystical experience come from?
I think there’s a focus on the biology and the neuroscience at both sites. I’m conducting a study with 80 people on smoking cessation where subjects are undergoing fMRI with a variety of tasks before and after the experience. Fred Barrett in our group is a neuroscientist, and he’s conducting a number of studies right now. In terms of the psychology, the Imperial group has used more of a Freudian model and we have focused more on the mystical experience, but I think empirically we’re likely talking about the same thing. The term ‘ego loss’ has a high correlation to the mystical experience of unity. The focus on mystical experience dates back to William James, and I see it as continuing a thread of interest in this kind of experience that human beings, around the world and throughout time, have consistently reported. It seems that psychedelics prompt those types of experiences, so that interest is far larger than the therapeutic use of psychedelics, which in itself is very important. It taps into the idea that these can be tools for understanding the biology and the very nature of these extraordinary human experiences, and their ability – however occasioned – to prompt behavior change.
The Hopkins Center is set to research interesting new indications: anorexia, distress associated with Alzheimer’s, and aftercare for Lyme disease.
We have started the first two. We’re actively recruiting for the anorexia treatment study, and we’ve actually run participants through that study, but not enough to discern any results yet. We’re also actively recruiting for the mood within Alzheimer’s disease study. We have the funding for the other study, on post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, as it’s come to be known, and we’re preparing the regulation to be able to conduct it. We should be starting it within a few months.
What exactly is the aim regarding Alzheimer’s?
The primary aim is clearly the mood of patients, through the lens of cancer research, where the focus is not on treating the disease, but the psychological suffering that so often comes with it, and the existential distress that is also there with dementia. But we’re also going to look at the cognitive outcomes, because there are some interesting animal studies that suggest that there are potential positive cognitive effects of these compounds. Also because having a profound psychological reorientation, where you have reductions in depression, might in itself lead to improved cognition and slow the disease process. We’re not holding our breath that we’ll see something there, but it’s worth a look.
Both the center in Baltimore and the one in London are funded by private donors: do you understand the concerns of people who are wary of the increasing interference of big business with psychedelic research?
There are many opinions out there, so I’m not sure what the concerns exactly are. The Center is funded through a non-profit model and it’s 100 % philanthropy, so I think it’s unrelated to any concerns about business involvement in this area.
Well, people like Tim Ferriss raise some questions. He’s an investor, and investors are known to seek some kind of return on their investments. Some people are quite suspicious of that.
At the surface level I can understand the concerns, if people don’t know the details. From knowing the details, I can say that if his goal was to have a financial return on investment, he’s done a very poor job at setting things up. However, he’s been very clear that the goal was to leverage the growth of an area and the advancement of science.
Humans are interested in leaving a legacy, and being known for having had an impact, so that may be relevant to anybody who makes an investment in an area with a hope for its growth. I think he wants to see this area take off, and a lot of people look to him as someone who sees what’s coming in the future. I also think this has already been an advantage in terms of people paying attention to this area.
Are you concerned that, once legal, psychedelic therapy might turn into big business? The business press is already touting psychedelic therapy as the next big cash cow.
If we’re on to something – and I think we are – then this will happen. There are niches to fill. So the real questions become: What are the actions of any particular entity? Are they operating ethically or unethically? The commercialization of psychedelics raises concerns about the potential for bad actors, but there can be bad actors in pure non-profit and in pure academia. The potential on the monetary side is obviously increased once you introduce a business model. So I think there’s a rationale for increased concern about bad actors. But the fact that business is jumping into this is not a bad thing in itself. It’s a 100 % expected outcome, and overall it’s a good thing. We just have to keep our eyes on the way people are operating.
The title of your ICPR talk will be: “Psychedelics as behavior change agents.” What can we expect?
I want this to be a big-picture presentation that draws from multiple lines of evidence. Not about the treatment of this or that disorder, or this or that effect, but really drawing across all that. The overall point is that psychedelics can occasion behavior change. They seem to be powerful ways to induce mental and behavioral plasticity. We have a whole lot more to figure out on the biology of that and how to most properly leverage psychedelics towards those aims. There’s also a lot to figure out about so-called ‘integration’, but it’s probably that people are left in a state of increased neuroplasticity, which can depend on many mechanisms. So I’d like to present the basic argument that, in the broadest sense, these are plasticity-inducing agents.

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Anonymous donation on Reddit ‘changed everything’ for MDMA research

When MAPS founder Rick Doblin was in Amsterdam for our event on MDMA research, he sat down with journalist Thijs Roes for a wide-ranging conversation. One of the topics they touched upon, was how recent MAPS funding had gotten off the ground.

In 2017, MAPS was a much smaller organisation. With no help from any government and no large funds available to them, MAPS had to get by on relatively small donations. Until an anonymous Reddit user called Pine suddenly announced that he had millions of dollars available to support causes that would otherwise be overlooked. She (or he) had bought bitcoins for an incredibly low price, and had had an epiphany while on Ketamine-therapy: the best way to live life was to help other people, and give as much the newly gained wealth away.

“MDMA-assisted psychotherapy will be a gift to the world from the psychedelic and cryptocurrency communities,” Rick Doblin wrote earlier. And in the interview he says the grant “changed everything for us”. Pine ended up giving $5 million dollars to make MDMA-assisted therapy a reality. MAPS is now in phase 3 studies to get MDMA approved and legal for clinical therapy.

Rick Doblin will be speaking at icpr-conference.com – the leading scientific psychedelic conference of Europe, held from September 22 until 24.

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Structure of a Hallucinogen-Activated Gq-Coupled 5-HT 2A Serotonin Receptor

Abstract

Hallucinogens like lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, and substituted N-benzyl phenylalkylamines are widely used recreationally with psilocybin being considered as a therapeutic for many neuropsychiatric disorders including depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. How psychedelics mediate their actions-both therapeutic and hallucinogenic-are not understood, although activation of the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor (HTR2A) is key. To gain molecular insights into psychedelic actions, we determined the active-state structure of HTR2A bound to 25-CN-NBOH-a prototypical hallucinogen-in complex with an engineered Gαq heterotrimer by cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM). We also obtained the X-ray crystal structures of HTR2A complexed with the arrestin-biased ligand LSD or the inverse agonist methiothepin. Comparisons of these structures reveal determinants responsible for HTR2A-Gαq protein interactions as well as the conformational rearrangements involved in active-state transitions. Given the potential therapeutic actions of hallucinogens, these findings could accelerate the discovery of more selective drugs for the treatment of a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Kim, K., Che, T., Panova, O., DiBerto, J. F., Lyu, J., Krumm, B. E., Wacker, D., Robertson, M. J., Seven, A. B., Nichols, D. E., Shoichet, B. K., Skiniotis, G., & Roth, B. L. (2020). Structure of a Hallucinogen-Activated Gq-Coupled 5-HT2A Serotonin Receptor. Cell, 182(6), 1574–1588.e19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.08.024

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Efficacy of Psychoactive Drugs for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review of MDMA, Ketamine, LSD and Psilocybin

Abstract

The aim of this systematic review was to examine the efficacy of MDMA, ketamine, LSD, and psilocybin for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A search of four databases for English language, peer-reviewed literature published from inception to 18th October 2019 yielded 2,959 records, 34 of which were screened on full-text. Observational studies and RCTs which tested the efficacy of MDMA, ketamine, LSD, or psilocybin for reducing PTSD symptoms in adults, and reported changes to PTSD diagnosis or symptomatology, were included. Nine trials (five ketamine and four MDMA) met inclusion criteria. Trials were rated on a quality and bias checklist and GRADE was used to rank the evidence. The evidence for ketamine as a stand-alone treatment for comorbid PTSD and depression was ranked “very low”, and the evidence for ketamine in combination with psychotherapy as a PTSD treatment was ranked “low”. The evidence for MDMA in combination with psychotherapy as a PTSD treatment was ranked “moderate”.

Varker, T., Watson, L., Gibson, K., Forbes, D., & O’Donnell, M. L. (2021). Efficacy of Psychoactive Drugs for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review of MDMA, Ketamine, LSD and Psilocybin. Journal of psychoactive drugs, 53(1), 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2020.1817639

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Psychedelic drugs: neurobiology and potential for treatment of psychiatric disorders

Abstract

Renewed interest in the use of psychedelics in the treatment of psychiatric disorders warrants a better understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the effects of these substances. After a hiatus of about 50 years, state-of-the art studies have recently begun to close important knowledge gaps by elucidating the mechanisms of action of psychedelics with regard to their effects on receptor subsystems, systems-level brain activity and connectivity, and cognitive and emotional processing. In addition, functional studies have shown that changes in self-experience, emotional processing and social cognition may contribute to the potential therapeutic effects of psychedelics. These discoveries provide a scientific road map for the investigation and application of psychedelic substances in psychiatry.

Vollenweider, F. X., & Preller, K. H. (2020). Psychedelic drugs: neurobiology and potential for treatment of psychiatric disorders. Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 21(11), 611–624. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-0367-2

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Whole-Brain Models to Explore Altered States of Consciousness from the Bottom Up

Abstract

The scope of human consciousness includes states departing from what most of us experience as ordinary wakefulness. These altered states of consciousness constitute a prime opportunity to study how global changes in brain activity relate to different varieties of subjective experience. We consider the problem of explaining how global signatures of altered consciousness arise from the interplay between large-scale connectivity and local dynamical rules that can be traced to known properties of neural tissue. For this purpose, we advocate a research program aimed at bridging the gap between bottom-up generative models of whole-brain activity and the top-down signatures proposed by theories of consciousness. Throughout this paper, we define altered states of consciousness, discuss relevant signatures of consciousness observed in brain activity, and introduce whole-brain models to explore the biophysics of altered consciousness from the bottom-up. We discuss the potential of our proposal in view of the current state of the art, give specific examples of how this research agenda might play out, and emphasize how a systematic investigation of altered states of consciousness via bottom-up modeling may help us better understand the biophysical, informational, and dynamical underpinnings of consciousness.

Cofré, R., Herzog, R., Mediano, P., Piccinini, J., Rosas, F. E., Sanz Perl, Y., & Tagliazucchi, E. (2020). Whole-Brain Models to Explore Altered States of Consciousness from the Bottom Up. Brain sciences, 10(9), 626. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10090626

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Beyond ecstasy: Alternative entactogens to 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine with potential applications in psychotherapy

Abstract

The last two decades have seen a revival of interest in the entactogen 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (MDMA) as an adjunct to psychotherapy, particularly for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. While clinical results are highly promising, and MDMA is expected to be approved as a treatment in the near future, it is currently the only compound in its class of action that is being actively investigated as a medicine. This lack of alternatives to MDMA may prove detrimental to patients who do not respond well to the particular mechanism of action of MDMA or whose treatment calls for a modification of MDMA’s effects. For instance, patients with existing cardiovascular conditions or with a prolonged history of stimulant drug use may not fit into the current model of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, and could benefit from alternative drugs. This review examines the existing literature on a host of entactogenic drugs, which may prove to be useful alternatives in the future, paying particularly close attention to any neurotoxic risks, neuropharmacological mechanism of action and entactogenic commonalities with MDMA. The substances examined derive from the 1,3-benzodioxole, cathinone, benzofuran, aminoindane, indole and amphetamine classes. Several compounds from these classes are identified as potential alternatives to MDMA.

Oeri H. E. (2021). Beyond ecstasy: Alternative entactogens to 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine with potential applications in psychotherapy. Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 35(5), 512–536. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881120920420

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Ido Hartogsohn on the influence of society on the psychedelic experience

collective set and setting
Ido Hartogsohn is one of the first and few researchers to focus on psychedelic research from a social technological perspective. The assistant professor from the Science, Technology and Society program at Bar Ilan University in Israel has just published a new book called American Trip, in which he explores how the social conditions of the 1960s shaped the American psychedelic experience itself. 
In his recently published book he inquires how the LSD experience was shaped by the social conditions and predominant values of the fifties and sixties, portraying LSD as a “psychopharmacological chameleon” dependent on culture. With this move, he expands the traditional meaning of set & setting in psychedelic therapy to include the broader contexts in which these substances are used. He calls this the “collective set and setting”: the broader cultural and social contexts in which these substances are used. 
His work brings a sociological perspective that invites us to rethink psychedelic drugs beyond their mere pharmacological properties.
How do your views challenge conventional understandings of drug effects in pharmacology?
One of the defining ideas of pharmacology is an often implicit notion which scholar Richard DeGrandpre termed pharmacologicalism: the assumption that a drug is exclusively defined by its inherent pharmacological qualities – that it has one type of discrete effect independent of any variables.
The closer we look at the effects of drugs, the more we see that they do not work like that at all. The effects of drugs, not just psychedelics, can change radically depending on the social and physical environment.
Think of the example of US soldiers returning from Vietnam in the 1970s. The American army tried numerous plots to help these soldiers kick their heroin habit while they were in Vietnam, but all of these ultimately failed. Then, as the soldiers returned home, suddenly 90% of them were able to kick the habit spontaneously, without going through any kind of treatment.
Once the setting changed we could see that – even in the case of the supposedly most rigid, inflexible and essentially physical drugs, effects were highly dependent on the set and setting of use.
This is something that pharmacological discourse has been reluctant to acknowledge over the years. It makes sense because once you acknowledge that, it complicates drug trials and discussions around drugs. It forces us to think about not only the very chemical product that we give to patients but how we give it to them and the whole clinical environment. It also forces us to forsake these very naive ideas of drugs as magic bullets that have one specific effect and one specific and highly discrete application.
The cultural malleability of psychedelic experiences has great implications for drug policy. How do you think that prohibitionism and anti-drug propaganda could have infiltrated the very experiences of psychedelic users?
There is this classic study by the sociologist Richard Bunce about the dramatic increase of bad trips at the end of the 1960s as authorities were pushing different scare theories such as the idea that LSD creates chromosome damage or that it will “fry your brain”. All of that stuff was completely debunked later on but once you have these ideas percolating inside the culture, they can easily penetrate people’s experiences. Given this type of ‘collective set and setting’, levels of paranoia shot up among users. Experiences that could be interpreted as quite benign and pleasant turned in a way that is very scary.
This kind of effect is something anthropological literature was predicting already a decade earlier. In the late 1950s, anthropologist Anthony Wallace argued that psychedelic users in the West were more liable to have negative experiences than those that had them in traditional or indigenous societies. Societies, like in the West, that conceive of hallucinations as something that is inherently dangerous and meaningless increase the chance for harmful experiences.
I believe that there have been so many psychedelic trips gone awry as a result of prohibition; so much mental energy that has been squandered; so many positive experiences of users over the years that took a bad turn when they for example encountered police during a trip or were somehow perturbed by the ideology, propaganda and policy of the war on drugs.
So, if we are to take a harm reduction approach to drug use, what can we do to improve the collective set & setting of psychedelic use today and in the future?
One of the most beautiful things that is happening today in the so-called “psychedelic renaissance” is this burgeoning culture of set and setting: the growing awareness of the importance of preparation, intention, and integration – of knowing your substance, your set and your setting.
Psychedelic users today are much more “psychedelically literate” than the ones in the 1960s, and that’s a result of a very rich culture of discourse and practice informed by the idea of set and setting. So we now have safezone organizations which provide for example psychedelic first aid or peer support in festivals like Burning Man or Boom; we have online trip-sitting services run by volunteers; books and websites guiding about the principles of safe and transformative psychedelic voyaging, and there are more and more studies that aim to study how set and setting work.
These are all very hopeful signs that the appreciation of the importance of set and setting is more and more widely recognized in the field of psychedelics, for the broader community as well as for the clinical community.
Governments that want to approach this subject from a progressive perspective need to realize that outmoded, ideologically rigid approaches to drug use fail their citizenry and ultimately the entire society. Governments are betraying their role when they prosecute users. What they should be doing is helping the general public get the know-how, the information and the resources that could help minimize harmful experiences and maximize the potential for safe, positive and meaningful experiences.
You argue that the placebo effect can be understood as a form of meaning response, in which clinical improvement follows from the mere manipulation of meaningful cues in the therapeutic process. Accordingly, the meaning-enhancing properties of psychedelics turn them into some kind of “super-placebo”. What would be the consequences of this reconceptualization for current clinical trials with psychedelics and their placebo-control methodologies?
Over the years the pharmaceutical industry has been invested in the attempt to minimize or eliminate placebo effects. If you are selling a drug like they are, you probably want to give a decisive answer about its effects. But once [the placebo-effect] enters the picture, it appears much more uncertain what the drug actually accomplishes by itself.
After clinical trials, we see that the efficacy of that same drug diminishes from year to year of use in the market, or from culture to culture, because of the changes in the placebo response and in the meaning attributed to the drug. We can therefore see that drug effects are much more fluid than we are led to believe.
Medical anthropologist Daniel Moerman draws our attention to the fact that placebo response can more intelligibly be conceived as just meaning response. When you bring this insight into contact with the field of psychedelics something quite interesting emerges, because one of the main effects of psychedelics is to enhance the perception of meaning.
This then raises the possibility that psychedelics may enhance the placebo response by enhancing our perception of meaning. This potential of psychedelics to enhance placebo really holds a valuable alternative to the classic pharmacological model and an opportunity to think about how meaning intervenes in therapeutic processes.
I don’t think that we are about to see the end of the blind trials paradigm anytime soon. But rather than looking for an objective response to a drug and leaving it at that, we would achieve better results if we focused our energy at examining the nexus between drug, set and setting, to optimize the overall therapeutic process in a way that transcends commonplace flat and impoverished conceptions of the drug responses.
You have approached psychedelics from a science and technology studies (STS) perspective. What has that taught you?
When you look at LSD and psychedelics in general, you have a technology whose effects are highly malleable. Depending on the set and setting, a hallucinogenic agent like LSD can be a psychotomimetic (psychosis mimicking) and it can be therapeutic. It can be anxiety-inducing and it can be mentally soothing.
The effects of LSD are so radically transformed in relation with user’s mindsets and settings that you could argue that LSD, as a technological artifact, is recreated every time it is used. This recognition leads to the concept of psychedelics as a technology that is culturally and socially constructed in a radical way.
One of the main takeaways that I am trying to convey in my book is the idea of a “psychedelic technology”. Going back to the very meaning of the word psychedelic as “mind-manifesting”, the category of “psychedelic technology” would then refer to technology that is shaped in accordance with the mind-set and the environment (hence the idea of an ecodelic) of the user. This is an interesting way to think about technology that is a radical extension of the social constructivist way to think about technologies in the field of STS.
My perspective on psychedelics later shifted to the STS idea of co-production, the question of how the effects of LSD and other psychedelics are shaped and formed by social values, norms and conditions, and how LSD and other psychedelics simultaneously bring about changes in social and cultural movements creating a kind of positive feedback loop, an idea that I explore in my book.
What will be the major takeaways that potential attendees of ICPR might expect from your talk or about your book?
One of the main things my book tries to do is to really expand our understanding of set and setting in order to transcend that more narrowly defined, individualized concept of set and setting. I think the book makes clear that no factor in the individual, specific or concrete set and setting of a psychedelic experience is independent of the larger social and cultural picture, and so I try to answer the question how our collective historical and social forces worked to shape the psychedelic experience in the West since the 1960s and to this day.
Ido Hartogsohn talk at ICPR 2020 will explore the relationship between set and setting, meaning-enhancement and placebo as a central axis on which the psychedelic experience can be interpreted and understood.

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Janis Phelps on training the first psychedelic therapists

Professor Janis Phelps PhD

Janis Phelps is the founder and director of the CIIS Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research, which conducts the first academically accredited, professional certificate training programme for psychedelic-assisted therapy and research. 
At ICPR 2020, Dr. Phelps will address her experience in setting up a licensed training program for people working in research and therapy with psychedelics. 

You founded the first licensed training program for psychedelic therapists. How did this come about ?
The genesis of this program came about in 2014 at a Heffter Research Institute board meeting, where one of the trustees of our college heard the dire need for psychedelic therapists to be trained.
Our university has been training about 250 therapists a year in 6 different programmes for over 30 years. Stan Grof, Ralph Metzner and other psychedelic researchers have been teaching at CIIS for decades. CIIS trustees gave us seed money for a 3-year grant. I was the founder and creator of the programme, and the opportunities for this were very rich.
We wanted to bring in indigenous ways of knowing as well as the approach typically used in the research protocols for both psilocybin and MDMA.
What are the challenges you faced in this process ?
Well, we were creating something in a vacuum. There were no guidelines yet for how to do this, because no-one had done it before. For a year, I consulted with researchers, underground and above-ground therapists, and in related areas such as hospice care centres and emergency rooms, on how to work with people in altered states.
To devise the programme, we drew from anthropology, clinical and transpersonal psychology, psychoanalysis and ceremonial uses. The challenge was to try to integrate all these in the best possible way.
However, we chose to emphasise the research approach for now, because of the need for therapists to be in FDA-approved clinics. This is a compromise we made, but the upside is that now our graduates get hired by these research entities and they’re opening clinics that will be ready to use MDMA and psilocybin in the next couple of years.
Things seem to be progressing quite fast these days. Are you sometimes concerned they may be going too fast?
I’m concerned about the decriminalisation movements in the US. They’re going quicker than I’m comfortable with. The general public is not sufficiently aware of the hazards and the benefits of the use of plant medicines. Even physicians and nurses don’t know enough, and neither do school teachers.
So we’re working on scaling up our programme to include the general public and give them information online for free: interactions with medications, incompatibilities with certain psychological difficulties, how parents can talk to their kids about psychedelics, etc. I’m concerned there might be another backlash like we had in the sixties if these medicines are not used responsibly.
My other concern is that we’re training only 75 people a year, about 300 so far. MAPS has only trained about 250. We need thousands of therapists trained. I’m concerned that when the medicines get rescheduled, there won’t be enough therapists, with resulting insufficient access to the medicines for patients. So we’re looking to scale it up and develop affiliations with other universities.
What have you taken away from this whole adventure so far?
I’ve been delighted to witness the integrity of the therapists and medical doctors wanting to come into this space. They want to see healing happen, they’re concerned about what’s happening on the planet in terms of politics, genocides and global warming.
They know that psychedelics are not the only way for people to heal, of course, but the kind of therapy we can do is augmented tremendously by the use of plant medicines. I see them changing psychiatry and psychology for nothing but the good.
On average, the professionals who apply for the programme have 15 years of licensed practice, so they’re quite experienced in their work. Some were retired medical doctors who reactivated their license in order to do this work. I also witnessed our students building community with each other, creating associations, building salons, and it’s very exciting to see this flourish across the United States, into Canada, South America and the EU. I realised once again how desperate people are for community. And finally, it’s been wonderful to meet the new generation, I’m very happy to pass the hat to younger people.
Dr. Phelps’ talk at ICPR 2020 will be titled: “Training future psychedelic therapists

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Psychedelics and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): A Process-Based Approach - September 15th