Day 276 of 365 - Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy - Part 1
An extremely interesting podcast interview fueled inspiration for what will be a two part post on the topic of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. What the heck am I talking about? It's about the use of plant or other natural substances in conjunction with professional psychological treatment.
There is a universal desire to change consciousness. Every culture has used substances for this purpose and to relieve pain for thousands of years. In shamanic cultures, it has been considered a spiritual experience. From the North American perspective it is considered more from a psychodynamic perspective.
Research in the use of psychedelics was very active in the 1950's and 1960's in the U.S. It was even a form of therapy used by some psychiatrists. In fact, Bill W., of AA origin fame, had LSD psychiatric therapy in the 1950's after he first quit drinking. He wanted to recommend it as part of the program that was developing but was discouraged from doing so. Apparently, LSD therapy had about a 50% success rate in treating alcoholism, which is phenomenal compared to any current approach.
In the 1960's there was a huge backlash to psychedelic therapy in response to the widespread media coverage of the antics of Timothy Leary and resultant pressure on politicians to protect society from ravaging the minds of youth. Leary and Richard Alpert (now known as Ram Dass) among others, were actually doing research on psychedelic drugs and psychology and having some interesting findings. Unfortunately, excessive personal use lead to them being fired from Harvard. New drug laws placed severe restrictions on further research.
Alpert and other well known Americans like Jack Kornfield and Joan Halifax, who later went off to India to find themselves and came back as yogis, Buddhists and meditation proponents in the 1970's, all started out with psychedelics and then switched to meditation.
There is now a renaissance into research of psychedelic use in psychiatric conditions, at least in a limited way, with some very fascinating findings occurring. It used to be thought that these drugs would make people crazy. Now there is some thinking that they could make crazy people sane.
From a spiritual perspective experience, such as people having an ayahuasca journey, there is a mystical experience during which there is a sense of ego dissolving, a sense of merging into something larger than oneself and defenses being completely down. The person feels very connected to nature, all other people and the universe.
Interestingly, it turns out that those who are very experienced in meditation are able to achieve the very same effect, which perhaps explains the appeal of Buddhism and yoga to people like the Americans who brought those teachings back to the U.S. There is actually a change in the brain, which can be seen on an fMRI, which has been studied, for example with Tibetan Buddhists who have been meditating for years. They have the same effect as someone who has taken psylocibin or LSD. Psylocibin comes from various species of mushroom.
What current research, with selected populations, which will be described a bit more later, shows, is that rather than generally activating the whole brain more, these types of psychedelics actually deactivate what is called the 'default mode network'. The default mode network, or DMN, is considered the 'ego' part of the brain. It is a group of tightly linked structures, next to the prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex to deeper older structures involved in memory and emotion.
According to author Michael Pollan, 'the default mode network is involved in self reflection, theory of mind, ability to impute mental states to others, time travel and ability to think about the future or past (for identity) and the autobiographical self'. This is the part of the brain where suffering caused by ruminating exists, where we can become very stuck in our patterns. Psychedelics seem to allow the flexibility to break out of destructive patterns of thought and to gain insight.
In the next post, I'll talk more about the current kinds of research and the types of scenarios that seem most promising in this field.
There is a universal desire to change consciousness. Every culture has used substances for this purpose and to relieve pain for thousands of years. In shamanic cultures, it has been considered a spiritual experience. From the North American perspective it is considered more from a psychodynamic perspective.
Research in the use of psychedelics was very active in the 1950's and 1960's in the U.S. It was even a form of therapy used by some psychiatrists. In fact, Bill W., of AA origin fame, had LSD psychiatric therapy in the 1950's after he first quit drinking. He wanted to recommend it as part of the program that was developing but was discouraged from doing so. Apparently, LSD therapy had about a 50% success rate in treating alcoholism, which is phenomenal compared to any current approach.
In the 1960's there was a huge backlash to psychedelic therapy in response to the widespread media coverage of the antics of Timothy Leary and resultant pressure on politicians to protect society from ravaging the minds of youth. Leary and Richard Alpert (now known as Ram Dass) among others, were actually doing research on psychedelic drugs and psychology and having some interesting findings. Unfortunately, excessive personal use lead to them being fired from Harvard. New drug laws placed severe restrictions on further research.
Alpert and other well known Americans like Jack Kornfield and Joan Halifax, who later went off to India to find themselves and came back as yogis, Buddhists and meditation proponents in the 1970's, all started out with psychedelics and then switched to meditation.
There is now a renaissance into research of psychedelic use in psychiatric conditions, at least in a limited way, with some very fascinating findings occurring. It used to be thought that these drugs would make people crazy. Now there is some thinking that they could make crazy people sane.
From a spiritual perspective experience, such as people having an ayahuasca journey, there is a mystical experience during which there is a sense of ego dissolving, a sense of merging into something larger than oneself and defenses being completely down. The person feels very connected to nature, all other people and the universe.
Interestingly, it turns out that those who are very experienced in meditation are able to achieve the very same effect, which perhaps explains the appeal of Buddhism and yoga to people like the Americans who brought those teachings back to the U.S. There is actually a change in the brain, which can be seen on an fMRI, which has been studied, for example with Tibetan Buddhists who have been meditating for years. They have the same effect as someone who has taken psylocibin or LSD. Psylocibin comes from various species of mushroom.
What current research, with selected populations, which will be described a bit more later, shows, is that rather than generally activating the whole brain more, these types of psychedelics actually deactivate what is called the 'default mode network'. The default mode network, or DMN, is considered the 'ego' part of the brain. It is a group of tightly linked structures, next to the prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex to deeper older structures involved in memory and emotion.
According to author Michael Pollan, 'the default mode network is involved in self reflection, theory of mind, ability to impute mental states to others, time travel and ability to think about the future or past (for identity) and the autobiographical self'. This is the part of the brain where suffering caused by ruminating exists, where we can become very stuck in our patterns. Psychedelics seem to allow the flexibility to break out of destructive patterns of thought and to gain insight.
In the next post, I'll talk more about the current kinds of research and the types of scenarios that seem most promising in this field.
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