With the Proper Setting, Women May Respond Better to MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy Than Men
MDMA’s been getting some bad press lately. In the last three years, MDMA-related deaths have increased in the US and around the world. The number of deaths in 2014 was six times higher than the year before, and the numbers have remained high. Authorities blame this...
When Treating Bipolar Disorder with Cannabis, Research Suggests the Amount of CBD May Be Key
Earlier this year, a contributor to the United Patients Group blog wrote about his son’s struggle to find an effective treatment for bipolar disorder. After four years of nearly annual hospitalization, cannabis was the only option that seemed to help. “From his first...
Integrating a Psychedelic Experience Through Personal and Spiritual Practices
The first time I ate psilocybin mushrooms, I was eighteen years old, walking around a public art museum. I had no idea what psychedelic integration was, let alone what psychedelics could do for my personal development and spirituality. My experimenting came from sheer...
When Headaches Won’t Stop: Why Some People Are Choosing DMT and Ayahuasca to Treat Migraines
My friend Lydia has never forgotten her first migraine. It was July 1999 and she was 11. Her family was leaving on a trip to Australia in just two days, but the pain was so overwhelming that she could barely pack. After that first memorable experience, she continued...
Psilocybin Helps Sufferers of Body Dysmorphic Disorder See Themselves Again
We’ve all had moments when we’ve looked in the mirror and hated what’s looking back. Our hair won’t do what we want or maybe our skin just looks terrible today. But for people suffering from body dysmorphic disorder, looking in the mirror is a daily exercise in...
Did Psychedelics Create the Search for Meaning in Western Civilization?
The history of the 20th, and the nascent 21st century, has been trying to reconcile our species with the suddenly-modern condition. This jarring transition has involved the most destructive and inhuman wars in history, but also, out of that wreckage, a search for...
DEA Opens the Door to Cannabis Research with Clinical PTSD Trials
The pop culture image of PTSD is one of physical hyperactivity and hyperviolence: the Vietnam vet shooting up a small town or someone hearing a popping noise and screaming. And while there can be an element (or at least an anecdote) of truth in those, the...
Doors of Perception: How Aldous Huxley Brought LSD Therapy to His Readers
Aldous Huxley was, perhaps, the definition of a “mid-century British intellectual”; he was the Platonic ideal you’d conjure up if someone used that phrase. Tall, thin, spectacled (he struggled with sight his whole life), Huxley could effortlessly quote thousands of...
How to Become an Addiction Recovery Coach Who Incorporates Psychedelic Integration
The world of addiction recovery is undergoing a sea change in light of emerging psychedelic addiction treatments, and the old playbook for traditional detox programs and recovery coaching is in need of a major upgrade. Traditional recovery coaching is a vital and...
The Taxonomy of Magic Mushrooms: A Guide to 4 Psilocybin Mushrooms and Their Varied Effects
There are few things as seemingly static but containing such varietal vastness as taxonomic categories. Consider the mushroom: it’s in the kingdom of Fungi, and as you narrow down you can get into Basidiomycota, and then Agaricomycetes, which is where they start to...
