Psychedelics are resurging in the 21st century. The movement is frequently described as a psychedelic renaissance; Michael Pollan, author, journalist and psychedelics advocate, writes that ‘There has never been a more exciting – or bewildering – time in the world of psychedelics.’ Spanning numerous domains and branches of modern society – including medicine, psychotherapy, pharmaceutical drug development, self-improvement and spiritual transformation – individuals and communities worldwide are evolving with psychedelics as the conduit.

After a legally mandated, decades-long global arrest of research on psychedelic drugs, investigation of psychedelics in the context of psychiatric disorders is yielding exciting results. Outcomes of neuroscience and clinical research into 5-Hydroxytryptamine 2A (5-HT2A) receptor agonists, such as psilocybin, show promise for addressing a range of serious disorders, including depression and addiction.

When researchers recruit participants for studies involving psychedelic drugs, they are often looking for people who continue to suffer from mental health conditions even after trying current treatments—and there are many people who fall into that category.

An estimated 40%–60% of people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) do not respond to the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) that are first-line medications for the condition, and many do not respond to trauma-focused psychotherapies (Brady, K., et al., JAMA, Vol. 283, No. 14, 2000; Steenkamp, M. M., et al., JAMA, Vol. 314, No. 5, 2015). About a third of people diagnosed with major depressive disorder experience treatment-resistant depression (Zhdanava, M., et al., Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Vol. 82, No. 2, 2021).

Psychedelics might interact with the brain by turning off the brain’s default mode network and affecting a thin sheet of gray matter called the claustrum. This could shake up communication between different regions of the brain.

Could psychedelics help us heal from trauma and mental illnesses? Researcher Rick Doblin has spent the past three decades investigating this question, and the results are promising. In this fascinating dive into the science of psychedelics, he explains how drugs like LSD, psilocybin and MDMA affect your brain -- and shows how, when paired with psychotherapy, they could change the way we treat PTSD, depression, substance abuse and more.

Leading psychopharmacologist Roland Griffiths discloses the ways that psychedelic drugs can be used to create spiritually meaningful, personally transformative experiences for all patients, especially the terminally ill.

Once deemed dangerous and illegal, psychedelic compounds have been rediscovered by the scientific, medical and psychiatric communities as research reveals their capacity to help patients with a range of maladies. With investors beginning to flood this new market with capital, will Big Pharma join in, or try to squash a nascent revolution of the mind?

When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third.

Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists.

Depression. Addiction. Anxiety. OCD. Anorexia. Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, is being used to treat a wide range of mental-health disorders, with some very promising results. But what is the experience like in these sessions that can last as long as eight hours? And what exactly does it offer people? And why does a single dose help 80 per cent of people quit smoking or 60 per cent of people recover from severe depression? Producer Eric Bombicino visits "the most beautiful room" in Toronto General Hospital and finds out how this psychedelic is changing people's minds.

Depression. Addiction. Anxiety. OCD. Anorexia. Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, is being used to treat a wide range of mental-health disorders, with some very promising results. But what is the experience like in these sessions that can last as long as eight hours? And what exactly does it offer people? And why does a single dose help 80 per cent of people quit smoking or 60 per cent of people recover from severe depression? Producer Eric Bombicino visits "the most beautiful room" in Toronto General Hospital and finds out how this psychedelic is changing people's minds.

Plant-based psychedelics, such as psilocybin, have an ancient history of medicinal use. After the first English language report on LSD in 1950, psychedelics enjoyed a short-lived relationship with psychology and psychiatry. Used most notably as aids to psychotherapy for the treatment of mood disorders and alcohol dependence, drugs such as LSD showed initial therapeutic promise before prohibitive legislature in the mid-1960s effectively ended all major psychedelic research programs.

Since the early 1990s, there has been a steady revival of human psychedelic research: last year saw reports on the first modern brain imaging study with LSD and three separate clinical trials of psilocybin for depressive symptoms. In this circumspective piece, RLC-H and GMG share their opinions on the promises and pitfalls of renewed psychedelic research, with a focus on the development of psilocybin as a treatment for depression.

Decades after most hallucinogens were outlawed in the 1970s, scientists are researching their use in treating disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and addiction. How they work is still a mystery.  

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Across the Duke University School of Medicine, researchers are starting to understand their magic.  

When people use psychedelics, several processes are believed to be at play in the brain. The substances can change how certain mood-related chemicals including serotonin receptors work, potentially reduce inflammation, and increase communication between specific emotional and sensory processing networks.  

Tim Ferriss speaks with Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician who specializes in neurology, psychiatry, and psychology. He’s well known for studying and treating addiction. I’ve wanted to invite Dr. Maté to this podcast for a while because he is not only an expert in the pathologies of addiction, but he’s experimented with — and used successfully — tools that are perhaps outside the realm of traditional psychiatry.

He is also a co-founder, along with Vicky Dulai, of Compassion for Addiction, a group that advocates for a new way to understand and treat addiction.

Humans have been consuming psychedelic substances for millennia, but only in the past century have we made significant progress in understanding how they affect the brain and our psychology. We have learned, for example, that psychedelic drugs like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT cause psychedelic experiences primarily by affecting a particular type of serotonin receptor, while other drugs like ketamine and PCP primarily affect the glutamate system. But there remain open questions about how these biological effects contribute to profound psychological changes in people who take psychedelics. One answer seems to center on how the drugs spark communication between different brain regions. What’s more, psychedelics seem to encourage greater neuroplasticity, meaning the brain becomes primed to learn new things in the wake of a psychedelic experience. Check out this Big Think interview with Matthew Johnson, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University who explains how psychedelics work, and what researchers hope to uncover about the substances in the future.

Tim Ferriss speaks with Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician who specializes in neurology, psychiatry, and psychology. He’s well known for studying and treating addiction. I’ve wanted to invite Dr. Maté to this podcast for a while because he is not only an expert in the pathologies of addiction, but he’s experimented with — and used successfully — tools that are perhaps outside the realm of traditional psychiatry.

He is also a co-founder, along with Vicky Dulai, of Compassion for Addiction, a group that advocates for a new way to understand and treat addiction.

In this episode, my guest is Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD, distinguished professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He is one of leading researchers in the study of how psychedelics such as psilocybin, LSD and DMT can change the human brain and in doing so, be used to successfully treat various mental health challenges such as major depression, anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and addiction. He explains how psilocybin induces sustained changes in adaptive brain wiring and cognition. We discuss the key components of safe and effective psychedelic journeys, the role of hallucinations, the use of eye-masks to encourage people to “go internal,” and music, as well as what effective therapist support consists of before, during and after the session (also known as integration). We discuss micodosing vs. macrodosing and how researchers control for placebo effects in psychedelic research. We also discuss the current legal landscape around psychedelic therapies. Psychedelic therapies are fast emerging as powerful and soon-to-be mainstream treatments for medical health disorders, but they are not without their risks. As such, this episode ought to be of use to anyone interested in brain plasticity, mental health, psychology or neuroscience.

In 2015, the CENTURY published an advertisement with the headline “Seeking Clergy to Take Part in a Research Study of Psilocybin and Sacred Experience.” The notice from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine invited leaders from all religious traditions to volunteer for a study involving a psychedelic drug, psilocybin. Those who followed the link to the website learned that psilocybin is the active ingredient in what it called “sacred mushrooms.” Psilocybin, the website explained, has “been reported to occasion unitive and mystical experiences.”

Sixty years ago, on Good Friday 1962, Civil Rights leader and minister Howard Thurman preached in Marsh Chapel on Boston University’s campus. Full of striking verbal imagery about Jesus’ suffering and God’s glory, his 85-minute sermon shook the otherwise silent chapel and was enough to bring any listener to tears.

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For 10 seminarians just below him in an auxiliary chapel that day, there was more at work in their spiritual experience than a sermon. With Thurman’s knowledge, these seminarians listened to his sermon under the influence of the psychedelic drug psilocybin, more commonly known as the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms.”