Journal of Psychedelic Studies最新文献

{"title":"TESCREAL hallucinations: Psychedelic and AI hype as inequality engines","authors":"Neşe Devenot","doi":"10.1556/2054.2023.00292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2023.00292","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Background and Aims While many scholars have called attention to similarities between the earlier SSRI hype and the ongoing hype for psychedelic medications, the rhetoric of psychedelic hype is tinged with utopian and esoteric aspirations that have no parallel in the discourse surrounding SSRIs or other antidepressants. This utopian discourse provides insight into the ways that global tech elites are instrumentalizing both psychedelics and artificial intelligence (AI) as tools in a broader world-building project that justifies increasing material inequality. If realized, this project would undermine the use of both tools for prosocial and pro-environmental outcomes. Methods My argument develops through rhetorical analysis of the ways that industry leaders envision the future of medicalized psychedelics in their public communications. I draw on examples from media interviews, blog posts, podcasts, and press releases to underscore the persuasive strategies and ideological commitments that are driving the movement to transform psychedelics into pharmaceutical medications. Results Counterfactual efforts to improve mental health by increasing inequality are widespread in the psychedelics industry. These efforts have been propelled by an elitist worldview that is widely-held in Silicon Valley. The backbone of this worldview is the TESCREAL bundle of ideologies, which describes an interrelated cluster of belief systems: transhumanism, Extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and longtermism. Conclusions This article demonstrates that TESCREALism is a driving force in major segments of the psychedelic pharmaceutical industry, where it is influencing the design of extractive systems that directly contradict the field's world-healing aspirations. These findings contribute to a developing subfield of critical psychedelic studies, which interrogates the political and economic implications of psychedelic medicalization.","PeriodicalId":34732,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychedelic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135814905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Psychedelics and critical theory","authors":"Julien Tempone-Wiltshire, Tra-ill Dowie","doi":"10.1556/2054.2023.00270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2023.00270","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the monograph Philosophy and Psychedelics: Frameworks for Exceptional Experience, Hauskeller raises the important subject of individualization and alienation in psychedelic psychotherapy. Under the prevailing conditions of neoliberalism, Hauskeller contends that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy appropriates Indigenous knowledges in an oppressive fashion, may be instrumentalised to the ends of productivity gain and symptom suppression, and may be utilised to mask societal systems of alienation. Whilst offering a valuable socio-political critique of psychedelics' clinical uptake, we suggest that Hauskeller's view does not adequately acknowledge the ways in which psychedelics offer a challenge to the Western reductive bio-medical understanding of healing and wellbeing. It is contended herein that Indigenous knowledges, in alliance with a range of emerging sciences, offer both an engagement with ethnomedicines in a less harmfully appropriative fashion, and a renewed understanding of the means by which psychedelics achieve therapeutic change. With this understanding, what becomes apparent are the potential ways in which psychedelic medical usage may produce positive feedback upon the oppressive systems in which we are embedded. That is, transpersonal experience through encounters with the ineffable may offer a revisioning of Western psychology and cognitive science. Indeed, if psychedelics are approached with an understanding of the actual means by which they produce therapeutic outcomes—changing mental representations of the self, or self-insight derived through non-ordinary states of consciousness—then psychedelic psychotherapy offers a reimagining of psychiatric nosology, challenging conventional understandings of both pathology and wellbeing through an overturning of specified and discrete deficit models of psychopathology. This may provide both a critique of the prevailing categories used to describe madness and an expansion of our understanding of the mind-body relation, as well as an increased recognition of positive psychology grounded in cross-cultural contemplative traditions. This provides an implicit challenge to the pharmaceutical industrial-complex and its profit motives; and the corresponding neoliberalist, globalising tendencies which Hauskeller seeks to address.","PeriodicalId":34732,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychedelic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136136073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond the psychedelic hype: Exploring the persistence of the neoliberal paradigm","authors":"James Davies, Brian A. Pace, Neşe Devenot","doi":"10.1556/2054.2023.00273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2023.00273","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Background and Aims Advocates of psychedelic medicine have positioned psychedelics as a novel therapeutic intervention that will solve the mental health crisis by liberating individuals from their entrenched habits and limiting beliefs. Despite claims for novelty, the psychedelics industry is engaging in the same profit-oriented approaches that contributed to poor clinical outcomes with SSRIs and other earlier pharmaceuticals, which threatens to undermine their purported clinical benefits. Methods We present evidence that the liberatory rhetoric of psychedelic medicalization promotes neoliberal, individualised treatments for distress, which distracts from collective efforts to address root causes of suffering through systemic change. Drawing examples from the psychedelics industry, we illustrate how the discourse of psychedelic medicalisation subjects socially-determined distress to psychotropic intervention through the mechanisms of depoliticisation, productivisation, pathologisation, commodification, and de-collectivisation. Results Rather than disrupting or subverting the psychopharmaceutical status quo, the psychedelic industry's current instantiation aligns with and upholds key facets of neoliberal ideology by adhering to the same facilitative mechanisms that scholars identified in the antidepressant industry. We identify these common mechanisms in examples unique to the psychedelics industry, including the search for psychedelic analogues and political lobbying to reschedule psychedelics. Conclusion We demonstrate how a neoliberal mental health paradigm that individualises and interiorizes mental distress cannot meaningfully resolve suffering with ubiquitous origins in the current sociopolitical environment, which is characterised by inequality, precarity, exploitation, and ecological collapse. As a result, psychedelics must decouple from neoliberal incentives, and demonstrate efficacy, if they are to facilitate durable improvements in well-being and prosocial outcomes.","PeriodicalId":34732,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychedelic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136136093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Negative mystical experiences","authors":"Dax Oliver","doi":"10.1556/2054.2023.00286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2023.00286","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract I propose that positive mood should not be among the criteria for determining when or if psychedelic experiences are mystical. My primary reasons are: 1) unlike rare proposed mystical criteria such as feelings of self-dissolution and time-transcendence, positive mood does not clearly separate mystical experiences from other emotionally powerful experiences like being in love; 2) other proposed mystical criteria can occur with non-positive moods; and 3) it is not true that framing all mystical experiences with only positive mood is more pragmatic.","PeriodicalId":34732,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychedelic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135980217","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring the relationship between mental health, drug use, personality, and attitudes towards psilocybin-assisted therapy","authors":"Benjamin M. Ross, J. Neill","doi":"10.1556/2054.2023.00264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2023.00264","url":null,"abstract":"Psilocybin, the psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms, is increasingly discussed in terms of its psychotherapeutic potential; however, little is known about community attitudes towards psilocybin assisted therapy (PAT).To address the question: What are the public's attitudes towards psilocybin and psilocybin-assisted therapy? And what factors explain these attitudes?This study investigated the attitudes of 118 young adults in the Australian Capital Territory through an online survey.Participants who were more open to experience and who had used recreational drugs were more likely to have positive attitudes towards all aspects of PAT. Additionally, psychedelic drug use and agreeableness was positively associated with attitudes towards psilocybin safety, legality, and research; and psilocybin use was positively associated with attitudes towards psilocybin knowledge and acceptability.This convenience sample of young adults was generally positively disposed towards PAT. People who were more open to experience and who had used recreational or psychedelic drugs had more favourable attitudes towards PAT.","PeriodicalId":34732,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychedelic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41438875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Differences in attitudes and beliefs about psychedelic-assisted therapy among social workers, psychiatrists, and psychologists in the United States","authors":"Stacey B. Armstrong, Adam W. Levin, Yitong Xin, Jordan C. Horan, J. Luoma, Paul B Nagib, Brian Pilecki, A. K. Davis","doi":"10.1556/2054.2023.00245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2023.00245","url":null,"abstract":"Because psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) is likely to be provided by interdisciplinary professional teams comprised of social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists, understanding the acceptability of this treatment approach among these professional disciplines is essential as the treatment advances through approval processes at the Food and Drug Administration.The study includes data from three separate survey studies investigating the attitudes and beliefs about PAT among national samples of social workers (n = 309), psychiatrists (n = 181), and psychologists (n = 366). The combined sample (n = 856) was predominantly female (64.3%), with a mean age of 49 (SD = 16.13), and 17 (SD = 13.56) years of professional experience.There were no significant differences between groups in confidence that PAT would be effective. However, there were significant between-group differences in psychiatrists' understanding of PAT compared to social workers. Next, psychologists' mean ratings of the acceptability of PAT were significantly greater than social workers' ratings. Mean ratings about believing that PAT was a reasonable treatment approach were higher among psychologists compared to social workers and psychiatrists. Additionally, mean ratings regarding the disadvantages of PAT were significantly greater among social workers compared to psychologists and psychiatrists. Lastly, social workers' ratings that PAT could permanently improve clients' lives were significantly lower than psychiatrists and psychologists.Findings help elucidate overall impressions of PAT among disciplines likely involved in providing this treatment should it be approved and suggest the need for education and training across professions. However, given the inconsistencies across disciplines, more research is needed to inform successful interdisciplinary training programs and better understand potential barriers to dissemination of this new treatment.","PeriodicalId":34732,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychedelic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46249136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mescaline, Peyote and San Pedro: Is sustainability important for cacti consumers?","authors":"Liam B. Engel, M. Barratt, J. Ferris, Cheneal Puljević, A. Winstock","doi":"10.1556/2054.2023.00252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2023.00252","url":null,"abstract":"Both Peyote and San Pedro cacti contain mescaline, a classical psychedelic eliciting mystical and visual effects, but only Peyote is a vulnerable species. We sought to address the questions 1; do people who use Peyote substitute with San Pedro, and vice versa, and; 2. how popular is the use of wild harvested mescaline cactus compared with the use of cultivated plants?Data were collected as part of the 2022 Global Drug Survey, a self-report survey distributed internationally in 11 languages. We asked mescaline cacti consumers about consumption practices, preferences and conservation and conducted chi square tests of associations comparing all motivations by preferred mescaline source.Of participants who reported using mescaline in the last 12 months (N = 284; 73.2% male, 21.8% female, 5.0% other gender; mean age 36.3, SD 12.5), 20.0% reported consuming Peyote collected from native habitats. Of participants specifying Peyote as their preferred source of mescaline, 82.2% had consumed Peyote in the past 12 months. Indigenous cultural traditions (57.8%), availability (40.0%) and environmental sustainability (33.3%) were the most commonly reported motivations for Peyote preference (n = 45), whereas for San Pedro (n = 86), availability (54.7%), potency (45.3%) and indigenous cultural traditions (44.2%) were most the commonly reported San Pedro preference motivations. Price and potency were significantly more likely to be chosen by those preferring San Pedro compared with Peyote. Less than 7% of participants who consumed San Pedro in the past 12 months had consumed San Pedro from native habitats. Of the participants who specified San Pedro as their preferred source of mescaline, 96.5% had consumed San Pedro in past 12 months. San Pedro was the most commonly reported source of mescaline product consumed (56.1%) with Trichocereus bridgesii being the most reported preferred San Pedro species. Mescaline cacti consumed in the last 12 months rarely deviated from mescaline cacti of preference.Wild Peyote is not the most popular mescaline source, but consumption of related products remains unsustainable. Promoting San Pedro as a Peyote substitute may act as an intervention to reduce Peyote consumption.","PeriodicalId":34732,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychedelic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47166458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On microdosing with the Mario mushroom","authors":"K. Feeney","doi":"10.1556/2054.2023.00303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2023.00303","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34732,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychedelic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46150841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Psychedelics, embodiment, and intersubjectivity","authors":"Kai River Blevins","doi":"10.1556/2054.2023.00257","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2023.00257","url":null,"abstract":"Research into the social aspects of set and setting have demonstrated that race is a significant factor in psychedelic experiences for racially marginalized populations. Yet, many studies of psychedelic-induced experiences continue to proceed without collecting data on or considering the influence of race or other social categories. These approaches abstract subjectivity from its embodied and historical conditions, isolating consciousness in ways that do not accord with lived experience.This article draws on critical phenomenology, anthropology, and treatments of race in the field of psychedelic studies to outline how social categories mediate subjective experience in historically specific ways through the framework of embodiment.I argue that consciousness is fundamentally intersubjective, including during psychedelic-induced experiences. Intersubjectivity is an existential condition that makes possible meaning, communication, and socialization, processes which rely on and are perpetually (re)enacted through social categories. Therefore, studies of psychedelic-induced experiences must account for the foundational role that social categories play in constituting such embodied experiences and their effects.This approach makes embodied differences matter to the study of psychedelic-induced experiences, opening new avenues of inquiry that foreground identity, power, and context in both clinical and naturalistic research.","PeriodicalId":34732,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychedelic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46598845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In naturalistic psychedelic use, group use is common and acceptable","authors":"K. Byrne, S. Lindsay, Nicholas M. Baker, C. Schmutz, Ben Lewis","doi":"10.1556/2054.2023.00261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1556/2054.2023.00261","url":null,"abstract":"Most modern modalities of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) aim to minimize harm and maximize support by utilizing close, formalized supervision for a single participant per session. However, these substances are used naturalistically in a wide variety of settings. Our goal was to evaluate the perceived benefits and harms of naturalistic psychedelic use in diverse settings, with and without guidance/supervision.An anonymous survey was distributed over Internet forums to solicit responses from English-speaking adults, with questions regarding the setting and perceived mental health-related outcomes of classic psychedelics. Data were analyzed to compare effects of group versus solo setting on perceived outcomes.For the goal of improving mental health, use in a solo setting was more common than in a group setting (COR 0.37 (0.20–0.68), p = 0.03) and was associated with more subjective symptom improvement (COR 0.22 (0.11–0.42), p = 0.0002). However, there was no significant difference in perceived overall mental health benefit between use in group and solo settings (p = 1). Subjective negative outcomes on mental health were rare and not associated more so with psychedelic use in any particular setting. A majority of naturalistic psychedelic use took place in an informal setting, with no significant difference between solo or group users (95% vs 91%, p = 0.3).Naturalistic psychedelic users are as likely to report an overall positive outcome and no more likely to report adverse events in group settings than in solo settings. This supports further research into PAP in group settings.","PeriodicalId":34732,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychedelic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44591904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}