Psychedelic Researcher: How Drugs Like LSD Can Change Your Life | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/drugs/psychedelic-researcher-how-drugs-lsd-can-change-your-life?akid=12803.10880
The most cynical response I’ve received is: why would you pursue an area of research that doesn’t yet have federal funding? That’s a common response I get given the grant-focused nature of our positions. I understand that concern. … But I think there’s a sense among people doing this line of work that this could be such a game-changer that we owe it to ourselves, to humanity, to the field to pursue this kind of work whether that federal funding is there or not. … Obviously we would like to see that funding in the future because it’s necessary to run the sort of large-scale studies necessary to determine the efficacy of these substances. But I think for many of us this is a labor of love, and we’ll pursue this work without it.
The idea here is that psychedelic-occasioned mystical experience can be life changing or transformative. You can use these substances just one time and experience what one of my favorite psychologists William Miller calls “quantum change”: the idea that someone can change very suddenly, very dramatically—and permanently. So the question is: could using these substances just one time have put you on the path to better mental health?
AK: So this is a unique feature of psychedelics compared to other kinds of drugs? Nothing else has that kind of life-changing effect on people?
PH: To the best of my knowledge, that’s correct. It is a unique characteristic of psychedelics, classic psychedelics in particular, to provide these sorts of experiences. There are examples of these transformative mystical experiences across the world’s great religions and in fiction. …The metaphysics of it are beyond my ability to comment on, but we know that these sort of life-changing experiences happen to people and they happen organically. And here we have a class of substances that can occasion this sort of transformative experience in a good percentage of those who use them. … What we found in our study is that those who’d used them were less likely to report psychological distress in the past month, and less likely to report suicidal thoughts, planning and attempts in the past year.
PH: I think a key part of what were trying to do is change public opinion. It’s important for people to know that those of us who are working in this area are dispassionate scientists who are trying to study this in an objective manner. …We’re not interested in legalization or widespread use.
If you really think about it, there’s nothing provocative about what we’re doing. We’re clinical scientists who would like to see the interventions we have be more effective. We’d like to see an alleviation of human suffering, and the scientific data would suggest that these substances might be very effective in that regard. It’s that simple. Were just pursuing a line of work that might make a real difference in terms of the pain that people have to endure. I would hope that everyone would agree with us in that regard, right? We’re trying to make the world a better place.
