the PSYCHEDELIA issue
PSYCHONAUTS
42
how the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research nwlEAF.COM
is evolving our knowledge on the beneficial uses of psychedelics
THE MIND is a universe unto itself. At once nebulous and ordered. Chaotic and principled. Bordered and seemingly infinite. Those who attempt to traverse and map the universe of the mind via psychedelics go by an informal name: psychonauts. If those who experiment with psychedelics are astronauts of the psyche, then the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research is the NASA of innerspace. In the year 2000, this small but dedicated group of scientists - led by Dr. Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland - became the first group to gain regulatory approval from the federal government to conduct psychedelic experiments on volunteers. Since then, they have administered hundreds of doses of psilocybin - yes, the ‘magic’ in magic mushrooms - to willing subjects in order to measure the therapeutic efficacy of hallucinogens in treating several disorders and issues faced by patients. We connected with Dr. Albert Garcia-Romeu and Dr. Matthew Johnson with Johns Hopkins’ Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit in February to learn what life is like on the leading edge of psychedelic psychotherapy.
MAR. 2020
