Common Trends, Practices, and Foundations in the Field.
Now that millions of dollars are being invested in psychedelics and platforms ranging from Fox News to Bloomberg are reporting positively on them, it’s safe to say that psychedelic therapy has entered the mainstream. But mainstream news tends to highlight catchy elements while glossing over other details, often resulting in an unbalanced portrait of the whole. For psychedelic therapy, you’re way more likely to hear about the “psychedelic” than the “therapy.”
No surprise there. Reports on people healing complex PTSD by taking the “party drug ecstasy” while wearing eyeshades and listening to music in a cozy office are more gripping than reports on the months of talk therapy that follow (ecstacy is not always MDMA, it sometimes contains other dangerous compounds). So, perhaps this article on the therapy side will not be as gripping as an Anderson Cooper 60 Minutes special, but I hope it will prove informative for anyone who desires to learn more about how psychedelic therapy is currently being practiced, and the complex elements beyond the administration of a substance that go into achieving the astounding improvements in depression, addiction, and PTSD that have now been so broadly reported.