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Substance Abuse during Pregnancy
Published in “Bert” Bertis Britt Little, Drugs and Pregnancy, 2022
Psychedelic drugs produce visual hallucinations through a disruption of higher central nervous system function. Most hallucinogens are actually functional analogs of neurotransmitters (e.g., LSD resembles serotonin). Some hallucinogens are assumed to exert their effect by displacing this or other neurotransmitters, but the molecular basis for the action of hallucinogens is not established. Tolerance of hallucinogens is rapidly developed and chronic users must increase doses rapidly over the course of the drug’s use to maintain desired effects (Carroll, 1990).
Mystical States achieved through Psychedelics: The Origins, Classical, and Contemporary Use of Psychedelics
Published in Andrew C. Papanicolaou, A Scientific Assessment of the Validity of Mystical Experiences, 2021
On the basis of their chemical structure, the classic psychedelics are divided into two classes. The one includes drugs with a chemical structure like that of tryptamine. Among the drugs in this class are the synthesized psychedelic LSD, psilocybin, and dimethyltryptamine or DMT, which is found in ayahuasca, a psychotropic concoction used ritually in South America. The second category includes substances with a chemical structure similar to phenethylamine. Mescaline, the main psychoactive agent in the peyote (Lophophora williamsii), and other cacti, is the best-known psychedelic of that class. This class includes also several synthesized compounds. The cactus Peyote has been used for millennia by several Mexican Indian tribes including the Chichimeca, Huichol, and Tarahumara tribes, for therapeutic and religious purposes9 and it continues to be used today as a sacrament by the Native American Church to be recounted below.
Missed Opportunities? Beneficial Uses of Illicit Drugs
Published in Ross Coomber, The Control of Drugs and Drug Users, 2020
Lester Grinspoon, James B. Bakalar
Ever since experimentation with these drugs began, some users and psychotherapists have maintained that psychedelic experiences can provide religious or emotional insight, heightened creative capacity, psychological insight, or relief from neurotic symptoms. From 1950 to the mid-1960s, psychedelic drugs — especially LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin — were used extensively in experimental psychiatry. They were first studied as chemical models for natural psychoses; little came of this line of inquiry and it was soon abandoned. But psychedelics were also used extensively in psychotherapy. More than a thousand clinical papers were published discussing forty thousand patients; there were several dozen books and six international conferences on psychedelic drug therapy. It was recommended for a wide variety of problems, including alcoholism, obsessional neurosis, and childhood autism. Beginning in the mid-1960s, with the increase of illicit use, it became difficult to obtain the drugs or get funding for research, and professional interest declined. There is now a growing interest in the therapeutic potential of this class of drugs, particularly some of the new phenethylamines. But because they are all in Schedule I, it is difficult to conduct clinical research with them.
Journeying to Ixtlan: Ethics of Psychedelic Medicine and Research for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2023
Andrew Peterson, Emily A. Largent, Holly Fernandez Lynch, Jason Karlawish, Dominic Sisti
A second line of psychedelic research for persons living with AD/ADRD aims to intervene on the disease mechanism. Neuroimaging studies demonstrate that psychedelics induce plasticity changes at the neuronal level, which could counteract some disease processes (Carhart-Harris et al. 2014). Psychedelics, for instance, have been shown to modulate two intrinsic cortical networks associated with AD/ADRD pathology: the default mode and salience networks (Badhwar et al. 2017). Impaired deactivation of the default mode network in older adults with or without AD/ADRD is linked to amyloid accumulation (Palop and Mucke 2016). Alterations in the salience network are linked to neuropsychiatric symptoms (Balthazar et al. 2014). Researchers hypothesize that psychedelic-induced neuroplasticity could mitigate network abnormalities in these and other neurodegenerative diseases (Vann Jones and O’Kelly 2020).
Validation of a French Version of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire with Retrospective Reports of the Most Significant Psychedelic Experience among French Users
Published in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2023
Baptiste Fauvel, Samuli Kangaslampi, Lana Strika-Bruneau, Bruno Roméo, Pascale Piolino
Psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, and dimethyltryptamine (DMT), are a class of substances that act primarily as agonists of serotonin receptors (Vollenweider and Preller 2020), producing drastic transitory changes in sensory perception, emotion, and sense of self (Preller and Vollenweider 2018; Swanson 2018). Natural psychedelic compounds have been used in ceremonial settings to facilitate the occurrence of mystical experiences for centuries (Barrett and Griffiths 2018; Johnson et al. 2019). Recently, it has been proposed that mystical experiences triggered by psychedelics could be an important determinant of persisting therapeutic or beneficial effects. For instance, mystical experiences on psychedelics have been shown to correlate with reduction of addictive behavior (Bogenschutz et al. 2015; Garcia-Romeu, Griffiths, and Johnson 2014; Garcia-Romeu et al. 2019, 2020; Johnson, Garcia-Romeu, and Griffiths 2017; Johnson et al. 2017), and depression and anxiety in patients with major depressive disorder (Davis et al. 2021). Mystical experiences on psychedelics also predict long-term increases in general well-being and life satisfaction in healthy individuals (Schmid and Liechti 2018).
The Psychedelic Renaissance in Clinical Research: A Bibliometric Analysis of Three Decades of Human Studies with Psychedelics
Published in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2023
Aviad Hadar, Jonathan David, Nadav Shalit, Leor Roseman, Raz Gross, Ben Sessa, Shaul Lev-Ran
This observed trend has several clinical implications. First, pairing minority participants with clinicians of the same ethnoracial backgrounds has been shown to improve research outcomes (Erkoreka et al. 2020; Sue et al. 1991). This might be especially true in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy of trauma where a direct understanding of cultural and racial aspects of trauma are essential. Thus, fostering collaboration and including psychedelic researchers from different ethno-racial and cultural background is likely to improve access to treatment and improve the prognosis of many future patients. Secondly, critical elements of psychedelic therapy are the appropriate use of set and setting frequently described as “the psychological, social, and cultural parameters which shape the response to psychedelic drugs” (Hartogsohn 2017). The concept of set and setting have emerged early in the first wave of psychedelic research in the 1960s and has been since repeatedly shown to determine the quality of the psychedelic experience and in turn its capacity for therapeutic intervention (Hartogsohn 2017). The predominance of a relatively narrow set of cultural backgrounds in the arena of psychedelic research groups may therefore be a limitation for the implementation of culturally appropriate and personalized set and setting.