healing ways
The Healing Potential of Psychedelic Medicines
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California, nonprofit is currently backing research into psychoactive methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), also referred to as ecstasy, which produces effects resembling stimulants and psychedelics, as well as a feeling of connectedness. It plans to publish the full results of phase three Promising Studies on Stress Disorder, clinical trials for MDMA-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Depression and Addiction in 2022, the final stage before seeking U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval for by Linda Sechrist its use as a prescription treatment. MAPS founder and Executive Director For more than 30 years, Rick Doblin, Ph.D., who spent 30 years intersections of the hustudying how psychedelics might help heal man and natural world— trauma and mental illness, was trained our plates, farms and and mentored by Stanislav Grof, M.D. A gardens—have been of renowned psychiatrist with more than 60 interest to author Michael years of experience researching non-ordiPollan, who recently add- nary states of consciousness, Grof proposes ed the mind as another that psychedelics are to the study of the significant association in mind what microscopes are to biology and his latest book, How to the telescope is to astronomy. When used Change Your Mind: What wisely, he suggests, they can heal, inspire the New Science of Psycheand perhaps save us. delics Teaches Us About Researchers have found that psychedelics Consciousness, Dying, reduce activity in the brain’s default mode Addiction, Depression and network that creates our sense of self—the Transcendence. equivalent of our ego—filtering all incoming Pollan’s interest was information according to personal needs and sparked by two articles. priorities. When activity is reduced in the The first, a New York default mode network, the ego shifts from Times story, “Hallucinothe foreground to the background, allowing gens Have Doctors Tuning us to see that we’re part of a larger field of In Again,” details how awareness. This can be among an individual’s researchers from Johns most important experiences, allowing for Hopkins, the University feelings of connectedness, altruism and acof Arizona, Harvard, New ceptance of death. York University (NYU), PSYCHEDELICS AS TREATMENT the University of CaliSince 2010, in addition to treating PTSD, fornia/Los Angeles and MDMA has shown positive results for other institutions had been giving doses of psilocybin—the psychoactive compound in depression, social anxiety in autistic adults certain mushrooms—to terminal cancer patients as a way to help them deal with their and anxiety associated with a life-threat“existential distress” at the approach of death. The second, a peer-reviewed article in the ening illness. Johns Hopkins and NYU Journal of Psychopharmacology by Johns Hopkins researchers, was entitled “Psilocybin research has demonstrated how psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal can help with treatment-resistant depresMeaning and Spiritual Significance.” Pollan turned his journalistic skills to researching sion, obsessive-compulsive disorder, the potential of psychedelics to actually heal the mind and treat mental and behavioral anxiety and addiction. Both MDMA and disorders, and the book that resulted became a number one New York Times bestseller. psilocybin have been studied as adjuncts or catalysts to psychotherapy rather than as RESEARCH BREAKS NEW GROUND standalone treatments. Much of the research for studying psychedelic medicine has been supported by the MulJennifer Phelps, M.D., who teaches for tidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). The 35-year-old Santa Cruz, the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, in
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March 2021 | New York City – Long Island
