Psychedelic experiences can be weird – sometimes extremely weird. Yet, the notion of weirdness is often not the primary focus in the psychedelic renaissance or psychedelic culture. Instead, the focus is often around the therapeutic or spiritual aspects of psychedelic experiences – themes like healing, mental health, personal growth, mystical experiences, etc. This isn’t to…
View Post
The Brain in a Vat podcast, one of my favourite podcasts – hosted by Dr Jason Werbeloff and Mark Oppenheimer – had as a guest Brad Duchaine, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth. (Brain in a Vat is a philosophy podcast, but this particular episode – a rebroadcast – was more psychology-focused.) The…
View Post
One of the main motivations for creating designer psychedelics – or analogues of existing compounds – is to evade bans. LSD is illegal, so an analogue can be created (typically a purported prodrug of LSD), allowing people to have an LSD experience without worrying about arrest. And when the analogue is banned, a different one…
View Post
Time distortion is one of the classic effects of psychedelics (although I rarely see this mentioned as an expected effect of psychedelics on educational, retreat, and therapy sites). I think that time distortion needs to be discussed more from a harm reduction point of view: many challenging experiences are related to alterations to one’s perception…
View Post
The climate crisis has seen, in response to it, a worsening of many people’s mental health. Climate anxiety (distress related to climate change and its effects) and eco-grief (mourning the damage and loss seen in the natural world) are on the rise, and mental health professionals are noticing that more clients are experiencing these forms…
View Post