Freedman, Ethan
Colgate University
Psychology 300COA: Topics in Consciousness
Prof. Richard Braaten
December 6, 2023
Acknowledgements:
In introducing the following work, I would like to acknowledge all those who played a role in the development of this essay – primarily the class of PSYC 300COA at Colgate University facilitated by Prof. Richard Braaten. With the help of my Professor and Peers from this course, I was able to gather research, information, and expand conversations related to the subject of psychedelics and consciousness. From these settings, I was able to gather my ideas and bring to fruition the following work.
Moreover, I would like to acknowledge that a majority of the resources provided to me hinged on using Colgate University’s facilities. Colgate University is situated on the Oneida Nation’s land, one of the nations of the Haudenosaunee people.
Abstract
Psychedelic research is becoming more common in present Western academia as the desire to see if psychedelics can be used to treat maladaptive life patterns garners more attention. Psychedelics are substances commonly known to alter states of consciousness and awareness, however, research is often coming from perspectives that perpetuate negative stigmas. Adverse and positive narratives of psychedelics are necessary for future research in the field as they inform the patterns of results of experiences for psychedelics. Generally, the common implication of research is more information is required, however, this piece posits that research specifically related to the facilitation of psychedelic assisted therapies is crucial for the continuation of discovery in the field. With an understanding of consciousness, negative experiences, and positive experiences related to psychedelics, methodologies for psychedelic assisted therapies (PATs) can be refined to create better clinical conditions for research on psychedelics. When we address the user-therapist relationship, the true capacity for psychedelics is unveiled.
Key Words: psychedelics, consciousness, psychedelic assisted therapies, adverse experiences, positive experiences
Psychedelics and Consciousness:
Expanding the Conversation Necessitates Discussing Awareness Generated in Therapeutic Settings
Discussions on the topic of drugs is not a new concept in western society, but contextual specifications of the conversation will drastically have an effect on the kinds of discourse that results. Many propose that it is of the utmost importance to recognize all that have risen to the task of creating positive discourse around drugs, arguing this also requires contextual specification. In the present article, the operationalization of drugs is psychedelics and those that have come before Western academic researchers are indigenous cultures and underrepresented voices. This delineation is necessary as the discourse around the general topic of drugs materializes from historical frameworks like the war on drugs, general lack of education, the “set” (mindset) and “setting” (environment) of the experiences, and many more modes of thinking. However, one of the more prominent and backed discourses guiding discussions on substance usage is academic research within psychology and consciousness.
David Chalmers’ piece titled “The Hard Problem of Consciousness” alludes to some of the prevalent, pervasive, and frustrating conversations in consciousness academy, arguing that “there is not just one problem of consciousness,” but “Consciousness is an ambiguous term referring to many different phenomena” (Chalmers, 2017). As the field of consciousness expanded with the minds that pushed its boundaries, psychedelics have strongly emerged as a vehement topic within the domain. Drugs are a common and stark way of representing what altered consciousness via substances like psychedelics can look like. Whether there is specification of the kinds of drugs that span the domain of psychedelics in research, broad research on the experiences, or peer reviewed articles of clinical research, many thinkers are curious about furthering understandings of how psychedelics interact with consciousness via the body and mind (Presti, 2017; Yaden et al., 2021; Zaytseva et al., 2019; Liechti, 2017). Highlighting some of the mechanisms that are at play and the different frameworks for psychedelic substances that can be adopted in this realm of consciousness research – all thinkers are demanding deeper understandings be accumulated of psychedelics and the awareness they create.
That being said, what dictates the effects of this discourse is how negative adverse experiences with psychedelics can be pervasive. Whether it is the medical model and diagnostic systems like the DSM or adverse experiences with psychedelics, stories are capable of perpetuating notions of how individual agent’s trips will precede (Simonsson et al., 2023; Schlag et al., 2022; Breeksema et al., 2022; Puspanathan, 2017). For consciousness research, negative stigmas surrounding psychedelics must be unwritten, dissected, and in the end returned to structure and validated. When moving on in conversations, we must emphasize positive experiences generated by psychedelic usage despite the influence that adverse experiences have on adoption of positive attitudes. Whether it is a mystical experience that lead to positive affect as a result of psychedelic usage or changes in personality traits observed in agents who took psychedelics, centering positive experiences with adverse experiences (AEs) positions where research is next necessitated (Griffiths et al., 2018; Erritzo et al., 2028).
With the domain of consciousness academia expanding to make room for altered states of awareness induced via a multitude of psychedelics and substances, exploring how negative discourse is pervasive and perpetual compared to positive discourse situates understanding and suggestions for where the field can expand from this point onward. When we center the perspectives of those who have taken psychedelics and view psychedelics positively, we are left with tangible experiences from which therapeutic environments for facilitating substance induced journeys can learn. Users of psychedelics seem to have a desire to sit with the discomfort of adverse experiences related to psychedelics when the conditions of mediation and the context of the environment create safety (Gashi et al., 2021; Timmermann et al., 2022). While many psychological interventions can be frameworks for facilitating psychedelic assisted therapies (PAT), looking closely at the relationship between agents experiencing altered states of awareness and entrusted guides facilitating journeys with these patients firmly emphasizes the need for more research relating to empathic psychedelic treatment methodologies and the relationship they have to expanding consciousness and awareness for agents who partake (Cavarra et al., 2022; Schuitmaker, 2023).
The present article positions psychedelics within the academic field of consciousness as a means for garnering support of more psychedelic research. When negative and adverse understandings in tandem with positive experiences of psychedelics are analyzed alongside the understanding that altered states of consciousness can be induced via psychedelics and other substances, the need for deeper understandings of the relationship awareness has to psychedelics is wonderfully portrayed. With psychedelics beginning to be recognized in therapeutic settings, a concise understanding of negative and positive experiences alongside guided facilitation within positive and negative environments is incredibly relevant for where the field intends to progress. From literature around these topics, it is proposed that research must be conducted in more marginalized populations alongside the notion that psychedelic assisted therapies has the capacity to play a profoundly positive role in the lives of agents who choose to participate.
Drugs and Psychedelics as a Marker of Consciousness via Altered or Induced States
In David Presti’s piece titled “Altered States of Consciousness: Drug Induced States,” the orientating notion that “drugs are chemicals that in small amounts have significant impact on body function” assists the rest of this piece (Presti 2017). With there being a long relationship between humans and psychoactive plants and fungi, Presti (2017) thoroughly unpacks how the “mind sees all logical relations of being with an apparent subtlety and instantaneity to which its normal consciousness offers no parallel,” – anticipating that the reason people indulge in psychedelics is to alter their state of awareness slightly. There is something special to agents seeking the effects of drugs on consciousness – which are found to occur at cellular and molecular processes in the nervous system (Presti, 2017).
Presti (2017) in tandem with Yaden et al. (2021) position a number of psychedelics in the context of consciousness frameworks arguing that psychedelic substances produce unusual and compelling changes in awareness that relate to easy problems of subjectivity, brain function, and behavior. The easy problem of consciousness are things that are susceptible to cognitive models of understanding and meaning making processes, like how perception and deliberate control of behavior work to prescribe consciousness. Consciousness academia has a severe problem of not knowing whether it is possible to engineer awareness, or prove whether consciousness could have been created in that moment (Yaden et al., 2021). From the perspective of the REBUS theory, the effects of psychedelics can be explained by a decreased top down control of the default mode network (Yaden et al., 2021). In other words, the biological levels that psychedelics effect awareness on can be examined by looking at the heat and entropy levels of our brain's functional networks – but subjective effects are also an easy aspect of consciousness to measure. Yaden et al (2021) and Presti (2017) position subjective psychedelic experiences as attributable due to their capacity for altering the contents of consciousness in ways that are substantial. In being tools for investigating awareness, characteristics of consciousness are seen in the induced desires to reflect, perceive, and elicit imagery – highlighting that psychedelics are tools of inward production and attention to the present (Yaden et al., 2017).
Now Presti’s (2017) work explains that the process of ions, synaptic connections, and transmission are the root of the effect of psychedelics, as they influence neurotransmitters with receptors, to open and close channels initiating selective membranes to induce altered consciousness. Some drugs block action while others initiate action, and there are many that affect consciousness: caffeine, cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol, tobacco, cannabis (Presti, 2017). There are also many classified psychedelics that affect consciousness at the biological and subjective levels within the framework of consciousness: psilocybin, DMT, LSD, MDMA, salvia, Ketamine, and Nitrous Oxide (Presti, 2017; Yaden et al., 2021). In fact, it is the psychoactive states induced by all of these substances that can be attributed to increased senses of connection, complex imagery, synesthesia, and other changes in brain cognition – as well as mystical states (Yaden et al., 2021).
To observe the levels that psychedelics and drugs in general interact with consciousness, zeroing on specific substances might offer increased understanding for how the broader theme of psychedelics relates to the broadest domains of consciousness. In Liechti ‘s (2017) piece on “Modern Clinical Research on LSD,” consciousness as applied to Lysergic Acid Diethylamide uncovers more nuanced material for the idea that psychedelics inform consciousness. Providing a review of modern studies on LSD, Leichte (2017) found that the drug induced bliss, audiovisual synesthesia, altered meaning of perceptions, derealization, depersonalization, mystical experiences, as well as deficits in sensorimotor gating. Effects on consciousness are profound and the story of synthesis by Albert Homann in 1943 only adds to the lore. On the broadest of levels, LSD was found to have lowered maladaptive thoughts and behaviors while increasing productive behaviors when administered within therapeutic settings (Liechti et al., 2017). LSD when administered in positive settings is possibly beneficial to patients with severe illness, depression, addiction – but Liechti (2017) emphasizes more research needs to be done.
While there has since been plenty of LSD clinical studies, Zaytseva et al. (2017) offers analysis of drug induced altered states of consciousness via cannabis. Cannabis induced altered states are interesting because they are not classified as psychedelics, but emphasize further the “neural correlates of the transitory perceptual changes induced by marijuana” (Zaytseva et al., 2017). The article sought out to understand why marijuana smokers more frequently display specific connectivity states characterized by many networks of the brain. Altered states of consciousness were evident in brain connectivity patterns that were not chaotic, yet strongly connected (Zaytseve et al., 2019). The overall description of intense sensation and increased clarity of awareness could be explained by connection to the fusiform gyrus, subcortical structure connectivity, and thalamic deactivation leading to a decline in states of arousal (Zaytseva et al., 2019). Cannabis and other drugs act on many biological levels and networks, as well as subjective aspects of our life. Altered states of consciousness can be explained by looking closely and induced states of awareness. To have profound effects on one part of the brain, let alone a multitude, often generates anxiety – because what are drugs doing to the brain? However, assessing whether induced states of consciousness are maladaptive necessitates deeper understanding and modes of critical thinking.
We know that consciousness academia leaves room for psychedelic observations, but present day psychedelic research is booming and there are demands for deeper insights (Presti, 2017; Liechti, 2017; Zaytseva et al., 2019; Yaden et al., 2021). Academia is in limbo for there is a need to train more therapists on how to safely administer psychedelic experiences. I would like to argue that deeper understandings of altered states of consciousness can be achieved when we take the time to better understand the methodologies through which we facilitate the very experiences. For this reason, I find it important to discern between adverse and positive experiences with psychedelics as a means of facilitating a conversation about how to better psychedelic assisted therapies (PAT).
Adverse Psychedelic Experiences Inform Psychedelic Assisted Therapies
Before addressing therapies, it is important to recognize that language has the capacity to progress psychedelics with positive foundations. When it comes to psychedelic research being slow in its growth, a large reason is fear factors that surround the prevalence of negative experiences and usage – but studying these experiences will inevitably lead to better understandings for how to facilitate positive experiences in psychedelic assisted therapies (PAT).
That being said, Simonsson et al. (2023) investigated challenging, difficult, or distressing psychedelic experiences to find the prevalence of associations with these themes in a subset of lifetime classic psychedelic users. In order to inform harm reduction efforts, Simonsson measured for the psychedelics used, the severity of negativity in their experience, the severity of the effect, the length of the effect, and analyzed it all for the results (Simonsson et al., 2023). Out of over 600 classic psychedelic users, a majority never had a negative experience with functional and maladaptive impairments lasting for a day after in nine percent of the group (Simonsson et al., 2023). The maladaptive experiences were categorized as neurotic thoughts needing to be calmed down from within the mind. In LSD cases, distressing and difficult experiences were prevalent – but so were cases where patients were on medication simultaneously. Around two percent were eager to seek medical or psychiatric treatment, while seven percent reported general maladaptive frameworks post usage (Simonsson et al., 2023).
While Simonsson et al. (2022) opens up the conversation surrounding negative experiences with psychedelics, many researchers expand upon their understandings. Schlag et al. (2022) delves into psychedelic drugs as a controversial issue in the minds of politicians, and the capacity that politics has informed stigma on usage. Eager to address high level perspectives of psychological and psychiatric risk in abuse liability, potential for dependence, and medical harms, adverse effects were explored to elucidate which of the harms of psychedelic usage stems from anecdotes or scientific inquiry (Schlag et al., 2022). In other words, looking for negative experiences in real time was the motive of Schlag et al. (2022), and findings were far from scarce. However, the overall summary of research is that clinical and non clinical settings yield drastically different results on the prevalence of negative experiences with psychedelics as cultural contexts can induce narrow frameworks for conceptualizing psychedelic usage (Schlag et al., 2022; Simonsson et al., 2023).
Clinical settings were commonly: safe, reliable doses, quality assurance of substance, within controlled healthcare, fully screened, individual patients at a time, medical support available, pre and aftercare trained psychologists and psychotherapists, no repeated dosing, aim to heal underlying disorder, non daily use (Schlag et al., 2022). Non clinical settings were commonly: unknown doses, unknown quality, unknown setting, limited screening beforehand, usually group setting, medical support unavailable, no pre or after care, more frequent dosing, aim to heal attached to intoxicated fun, non daily use (Schlag et al., 2022). The study largely refutes that harmful use of psychedelics leads to addiction and is neurotoxic when administered in a safe clinical and non clinical setting and attached to guided therapists with integration, supervision, and preparation expertise (Schlag et al., 2022).
The study performed by Schlag et al. (2022) emphasizes that psychedelics have a negative stigma, while in tandem revealing a positive setting in which research can take place. Breeksema et al. (2022) is a prime example of a clinical setting with safe administration that was eager to address maladaptive and adverse events (AEs) of MDMA. From a systematic review of the presence of adverse events after the administration of serotonergic psychedelic MDMA, psychological effects related to measured blood pressure, body temperature, and heart rate showed muscles tightened, headaches induced, fatigue set on, and lack of appetite existed throughout trips compared to placebo groups (Breeksema et al., 2022). Breeksema et al. (2022) showed that the adverse events relevant during these journeys were depressive episodes, end of life anxiety, substance usage problems, migraine, and demoralization attached to post traumatic stress disorder. Specifically for MDMA, end of life anxiety and social anxiety were found (Breeksema et al., 2022). Overall, the article reveals MDMA and psychedelics in general appear to be well tolerated in treatment of a range of different mental disorders, but there are also late adverse experiences. Fatigue, headache, anxiety, and difficulty concentrating are all capable of setting in post administration. However, something that stands out through Breeksema et al. (2022) is interpreting adversity can be subjective, context dependent, and might cover a wide range of challenging events – yet is crucial for the psychedelic treatments that we want to discern.
Psychedelic research in Australia accentuates the necessity to discuss negative or adverse experiences because medical practitioners are severely ignorant on the subject due to lacking objective data (Puspanathan, 2017). Puspanathan (2017) emphasizes that psychedelic therapies have an incredible amount of potential and many therapeutic journeys are unregulated, clandestine, underground therapists with no certification and understanding of the safety of their substances being administered. For therapists to be ignorant to the field they take practice in is effectively malpractice, and moving forward – clinicians should focus on substances with therapeutic promise. Negative experience with psychedelics are as pervasive of stories as any other subject for they encompass some of the more visceral, uncomfortable, and challenging moments in agent’s lives; however, there is a need to focus in on negative affective moments for they are representative of the work that can be done during psychedelic experiences. In other words, the adverse moments induced by psychedelics were obstacles that agents enjoyed working through and coming to terms with – especially when a good therapist was by their side and the conditions were safe (Simonsson et al., 2023; Schlag et al., 2022; Breeksema et al., 2022; Puspanathan, 2017).
Positive Psychedelic Experiences Inform Psychedelic Assisted Therapies
Along with negative experiences that perpetuate a lot of stigma and influence over psychedelic usage, positive experiences with psychedelics generally get little attention (Griffiths et al., 2018; Erritzoe et al., 2018). Psilocybin has been known to induce mystical experiences of awe and increase wellbeing, and Griffiths et al. (2018) studied the effects in low, moderate, and high doses. Research in medically healthy participants recruited by flyers for the study revealed high doses produced continuing positive effects: interpersonal closeness, gratitude, life meaning, as well as forgiveness, death transcendence, daily spiritual experiences, community observation, mystical experiences, meditative experiences, and healthy psychological functioning (Griffiths et al., 2018). From measures of blood pressure, heart rate, questionnaires given in different frequencies, and variable groups of standard dose, high dose, and spiritual support groups – participants were guided through psilocybin journeys to generate a discussion. Affecting the visual, illusory, synesthetic, mood, and cognitive systems, psilocybin generated positive effects for up to six months in patients at the point of follow up – while increasing openness, spirituality, and general positive emotion (Griffiths et al., 2018).
In tandem with Erritzoe et al. (2018), positive experiences with psychedelics were revealed to play a role in altering big five personality traits when exploring how psilocybin mediates treatment resistant depression in twenty patients. Already diagnosed with treatment resistant depression, a marker of neuroticism being very high in agents partaking in the study, maladaptive thoughts post journey were lowered while insightfulness and openness increased. With clinical improvements being found in cases of significant personality measures, psychedelics are seemingly effective as serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) due to the fact that positive emotions were increased, conscientiousness was raised, neuroticism was decreased, and openness did not correlate with responses (Erritzoe et al., 2018). Openness to experience might have been a variable needing better operationalization as their study firmly sought out those who were interested in using psychedelics – a stigmatized marker in the present time for how open someone might be to experiences.
While briefly stated in this piece, positive experiences with psychedelics also position how therapeutic practices need to be refined as research continues (Griffiths et al., 2018; Erritzoe et al., 2018). To grow in the field is to become better listeners of unique narratives from other people, while simultaneously trying to find patterns in experiences. Despite patterns – psychedelic experiences being viewed as positive necessitates the conclusion that each individual has a one of a kind lens on this world that must be critically questioned and validated.
Progressing Research in Psychedelics: Centering Perspectives of the Experiencer and Facilitator Relationship
In order to truly engage with psychedelics in a positive way, we must emphasize how psychedelics as altered states of awareness are commonly viewed as substances with the capacity to induce negative experiences due to pervasive stigmas surrounding the subject (Presti, 2017; Yaden et al., 2021; Zaytseva et al., 2019; Liechti., 2017; Simonsson et al., 2023; Schlag et al., 2022; Breeksema et al., 2022; Puspanathan, 2017). Highlighting positive experiences (Griffiths et al., 2018; Erritzoe et al., 2018) emphasizes that there are many perspectives to view psychedelics from that generate positive discursive understandings of the experience, but no matter what side of the good bad binary viewpoint one is sitting on – every academic perspective requires more research.
For the best research to come to fruition, academics need to center perspectives of those who have taken psychedelics, view them positively, and have worked with psychedelic assisting therapists to better understand how an experiencer-facilitator relationship plays a role in generating positive experiences. Facilitators of psychedelic journeys are necessary for many reasons, and to sharpen understanding of why positive experiences are generated will bring to light areas of inquiry that can be refined, celebrated, or held accountable. In other words, a drawn out conclusion of my research on adverse and positive experiences with psychedelics reveals research on the therapeutic relationships between psychedelic administrators and their clients is the very next step to making sure we can create the best conditions for research to progress.
Gashi et al. (2021) postulates that making “bad trips” something positive entails therapists being grounded in narrative theory – a framework that can be used to guide journeys and was clinically studied on fifty Norwegian psychedelic users. With every participant highlighting frightening experiences they had, the label of a “bad trip” was correlated with the feeling of losing oneself and dissolution of the ego – but one could avoid this by practicing healthy psychedelic usage (Gashi et al., 2021). To possess knowledge on the set and setting necessary for symbolically safe boundaries of usage to be created eliminated agents' perceptions of the possibility that a bad trip would ensue at all. When they did occur in these settings, participants viewed bad trips as beneficial to providing deep existential insights (Gashi et al., 2021). Psychedelic perspectives are tying together the makings of storytelling with bad trip narratives to portray notions that psychedelic bad experiences being viewed in a story like fashion enables users to come to terms or generate meaning with the experience. Narrative work constitutes the past, present, and the future, and user frameworks are generally always narrow as biases are prevalent in our world (Gashi et al., 2021). Therapists utilizing narrative work can help users in safe settings come to terms positively with their experience by emphasizing the relationship an agent has to their own narrative.
While Gashi et al. (2021) introduces how storytelling is at the center of psychedelic experiences, they highlight that there is a metaphorical rule book to journeying. With frightening experiences being categorized by many of the adverse feelings addressed earlier, bad trips were a real marker of boundary work needing to be done by an agent (Gashi et al., 2021). In other words, avoiding certain mindsets and environmental settings were the boundaries between novice and open experiences with psychedelic usage – or ignorant and informed user cultures. From a systematic review of psychedelics and their ability to increase meaningfulness to particular insights and experiences, Timmermann et al. (2022) examined processes underlying meaning making that were similar to Gashi et al. (2022). With psychedelic experiences becoming more common in discursive conversational contexts, noetic feelings or visceral awareness of intellect is a common result often shared (Timmermann et al., 2022). Having a psychedelic therapist at mind’s length during journeys allows for noetic feelings to be deepened attached to nuanced forms of preparation, mindfulness in the present, and integration practices. Therapists guiding journeys is crucial to intersubjective mediation as there are many challenges to overcome before, during, and after the administration of a psychedelic that mitigate adverse experiences and allow for meaning making practices to be better embraced (Timmermann et al., 2022).
Psychedelic Assisted Therapies (PATs) are not a new concept and research by Cavarra et al., (2022) unveils a systematic review of known psychological interventions. Literature shows that psilocybin is integral in shaping therapeutic outcomes by creating highly personalized, meaningful, and significant experiences when attached to PATs. PAT contexts allow for the surrendering of challenging and uncomfortable experiences to be something positive when guides are there to help facilitate climbing out of these mental holes (Cavarra et al., 2022). Transcendental experiences being highly relevant in cases where psilocybin was administered showed that assistants in journeys firmly mitigated adverse moments and emphasized tools users could utilize to ground themselves. While there are many elements that play a role in PAT, when trip advisors are versed in empathetic and clinically researched approaches – psychedelic experiences are incredibly positive (Cavarra et al., 2022). Also looking closely at psilocybin assisted therapy, Schuitmaker (2023) reviewed modern clinical research on psychedelics to understand how individual contextual factors play a role in shaping psychedelic experiences. With an aim to construct a picture of models of psychedelic assisted therapy so clinicians would have a foundation from which to build, the understanding that therapists have been entrusted with the role of guiding psychedelic journeys has garnered attention due to an emphasis on guides needing to: build rapport, enable letting go, promote openness, generate reliance, and in real time discuss therapeutic models that could provide to their experience (Schuitmaker, 2023). Preparation related to setting intentions that are central to the experience an agent desires is an essential part of a guide's job as they are then tasked with making sure there is fulfillment to some capacity with what they strive to achieve (Schuitmaker, 2023). They must be versed in how to facilitate drug sessions lasting from from one hour to a couple days, mitigating settings, mindsets, and helping agents to remain receptive to the experience. Their last and most important role is to remain direct, informed, and actively intervene to promote healing, enhanced learning, and cognitive abilities as users begin their integration back into normal states of consciousness (Schuitmaker, 2023).
Conclusion and Future Directions for Research:
Psychedelic experiences are beyond powerful when guided by therapists knowledgeable in psychedelic assisted therapies, as the drugs themselves are powerful – and the mediation allows agents to harness comfort within discomfort (Gashi et al., 2021; Timmermann et al., 2022; Cavarra et al., 2022; Schuitmaker, 2023). While more research is demanded by academics in the consciousness field, psychedelic epistemologies are nothing new to discourse as conversations often center around solely adverse or positive experiences with classified substances. Therapists utilizing narratives of adverse and positive experiences with psychedelics will thoroughly add to psychedelic research yielding more significant findings (Simonsson et al., 2023; Schlag et al., 2022; Breeksema et al., 2022; Puspanathan, 2017; Griffiths et al., 2018; Erritzoe et al., 2018).
However, the overall theme for psychedelic research is that there must be more production. Research in psychedelic experiences being labeled as academic entails a bias to the sample that represents the general population. Because of the stigma of psychedelics and where it is easiest to unwrite, research has been biased as participants are already interested in using substances or coming from an environment where they feel safe to do so. Ortiz et al., (2022) affirms that therapists are a necessity for psychedelic therapies to be their most effective, but true measures can be assessed via analyzing vulnerable populations with disproportionate mental health rates. With the most vulnerable populations often being neglected in research capable of truly altering their life experiences, Ortiz et al. (2022) wanted to report challenging experiences of psychedelics among populations whose relationships with mind altered states were unwritten by the west. Whether it is indigenous peoples or modern domains of power hierarchies for identity, the ineffable descriptions of psychedelics could have a profound impact on those who are most subject to distressing, powerless, and vulnerable moments (Ortiz et al., 2022).
With psychedelic research ever growing in its production, centering populations that have been ignored historically in research provides real opportunities to see if there are truly positive effects attached to psychedelic trips. That being said, therapy practices must be honed in on for they are pivotal in creating positive discourse surrounding the work that can be done on psychedelics. With negative emotions and experiences being a marker of the effects on the psyche, therapists entrusted with guiding agents through experiences have a real capacity to help in the betterment of another’s life. While research is lacking due to some of the parameters through which altered mindsets induced by drugs can be measured, introducing clinical research to vulnerable populations will add monumentally to whether or not psychedelics are actually capable of altering consciousness for the better.
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