Have you looked into the possibility of being a participant in one of these trials (though I'm not sure if there are any that are currently ongoing - it's been a while since I read this article and I don't have time to check this evening)?
This is something I've been reading about myself for quite some time. Am now retired but I used to teach Religious Studies A Level. The analysis and evaluation of mystical experiences is part of the syllabus, and the capacity for entheogens to induce this form of experience is directly relevant to it.
In fact, I started the book I provide a link to immediately below just before the BBC published the above piece. Then I subsequently noticed that you had referenced the same article here.
But anyway, here's the link:
Grof's book describes a much older study in which terminally ill patients were given hallucinogens in a controlled environment as a form of psychedelic therapy.
I found it fascinating. The transformative effect of this approach on the participants was profound. If you want to give the book a try but would rather cut to the chase, Chapter 5 is the one to read.
Fast-forward to more recent times, and as the article states, there has been a revival of interest in the potential medicinal uses of psychedelic medicine. This book brings a lot of that research together:
View attachment 181530
Here's what I wrote about it in a blog entry for sixth form students a while ago:
'In his latest book, Pollan draws attention to the revival and renaissance that is taking place when it comes to the potential deployment of ‘entheogens’ or psychedelic substances in the field of medicine. Specifically, ongoing clinical trials at institutions like New York University, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and Imperial College in London are yielding some dramatic findings, namely, that a one-off, carefully controlled drug-induced mystical experience can have entirely benevolent and profoundly transformative effects on patients who are struggling with addiction, anxiety, depression, and a diagnosis of terminal cancer. For example, in trials at NYU and Hopkins, 80 per cent of cancer patients exhibited clinically significant reductions in standard measures of anxiety and depression, an effect that was maintained for at least six months after having been given a dose of psilocybin.
Though the sample was small —fifteen smokers— another study found that twelve had gone without smoking six months after their ‘trip treatment’ . Twelve subjects, all of whom had tried to quit multiple times, using various methods, were verified as abstinent six months after ingesting psilocybin, a success rate of eighty per cent. Previously, these experimental subjects had tried to stop smoking unsuccessfully, using a variety of methods, on several prior occasions.
Additionally, the recreational use of psychedelics has been famously associated with instances of psychosis, flashback, and suicide. But these negative effects were not experienced by patients in the trials at NYU. and Johns Hopkins. After having administered nearly five hundred doses of psilocybin, the researchers have reported no serious negative effects, though it should be noted volunteers are carefully vetted prior to their experience, and are then guided through it by skilled therapists who are well-positioned to help those volunteers manage the episodes of fear and anxiety that many of them do report.'
Here is Pollan providing some historical context for this research and an overview of it.
The BBC article also cites Jules Evans, who argues for a more cautious approach following an experience of LSD that left him with PTSD.
As it happens, I've read two of Evans' books as well:
Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, and
The Art of Losing Control : A Philosopher's Search For Ecstatic Experience. Both are excellent and he's definitely a good guy. So if Evans has reservations, they are definitely worth taking seriously. Evans expands on the trauma that LSD induced in the first of those titles if I remember rightly.
Having said that, there is a world of difference between unsupervised self-experimentation and the very carefully controlled conditions under which psilocybin and other psychedelics are administered in the studies that Pollan and the BBC article both describe.
Will leave it there, except to add that I have no personal experience of psychedelics. So all of this is theoretical for me. But as someone who has struggled with my own mental health since retiring, this is an intriguing area of ongoing research that I am keeping tabs on.
