Recent psychedelic research: re-mining personal experience
9th January 2019
"Qualitative research has a rich tradition in the study of human social behaviour and cultures. Its general aim is to develop concepts which help us to understand social phenomena ... Qualitative approaches have particular potential in psychiatry research, singularly and in combination with quantitative methods." Stephen Agius "The brains of …
Recent psychedelic research: their use in the general population
7th January 2019
"If you teach someone to meditate or to do yoga or to go on pilgrimage to some holy mountain, nothing is guaranteed to happen. Yet if you are given 5 dried grams of magic mushrooms or DMT or some other potent psychedelic, whoever you are, a freight train of significance …
Recent psychedelic research: what are the risks?
6th January 2019
"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking." J. K. Galbraith "Although a bad LSD trip can be extremely frightening and distressing, psychedelics overall are among the safest drugs we know of. When the ISCD expert panel were rating LSD and mushrooms (which contain psilocybin) …
Recent psychedelic research: how do they work?
5th January 2019
Blake quotation? How do psychedelics work? This is a complex topic Carhart-Harris, R. L. (2019). "How do psychedelics work?" Current Opinion in Psychiatry 32(1): 16-21. Purpose of review Psychedelics are reawakening interest from psychiatry, cognitive neuroscience and the general public with impressive outcomes in small-scale clinical trials, intriguing human brain …
Recent psychedelic research: their use in psychotherapy (2nd post)
20th December 2018
This post is still under construction! This is the third in a series of blog posts about psychedelics. The two earlier posts are "Recent psychedelic research: an introduction" and "Their use in psychotherapy (1st post)", while the five later posts are "Recent psychedelic research: how do they work?", "What are …
Recent psychedelic research: their use in psychotherapy (1st post)
18th December 2018
"And, my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you." Nicholas Klein "Those who do not have the power over the …
Recent psychedelic research: an introduction
17th December 2018
"The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder." Ralph Sockman "It's important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out." Recent research suggests that psychedelics, when combined with psychotherapy, may be very helpful for a number of difficult-to-treat psychological disorders. …
How to live well: 10th meeting - review & next steps
17th November 2018
"When I get to heaven, they will not ask me 'Why were you not Moses?'. They will ask 'Why were you not Susya? Why did you not become what only you could become?'" Susya, a Hasidic rabbi "Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, …
Recent research: articles from summer/autumn journals
13th November 2018
I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - Endnote - which currently contains well over 26,500 abstracts. I also regularly tweet about emerging research, so following me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ (click on the relevant …
How to live well: 9th meeting - social identity theory, strength of weak ties & Fredrickson's emotional resonance
30th October 2018
"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." John Donne This is the third in a triad of sessions in the "How to live well: a shared exploration" course which has focused on the crucial area of …