Blinding, Expectancy, and the Active Placebo Paradox in MDMA Research.
Psychopharmacology (Berl) June 13, 2026 Mitch Earleywine, Quinn Allen
Blinding, Expectancy, and the Active Placebo Paradox in MDMA Research.
Mitch Earleywine
Albany State University, University at Albany, State University of New York
37 papers in the library · 456 citations · publishing 2001-2026
Papers
Intention-Setting Among Recreational Psychedelic Users: Associated Acute Effects and Changes in Well-Being.
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs May 22, 2026 Fiona Low, Mitch Earleywine
Limited research suggests that distinct intentions covary with acute experiences and subsequent outcomes. Nevertheless, data on the types of intentions set by users remain scarce, and their effects lack clarity. This study uses a retrospective, mixed-methods, cross-sectional approach to investigate intention-setting among psychedelic users. We establish a taxonomy of intentions in naturalistic...
Perceptions of Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy and Standard Interventions for Nicotine Cessation
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 2026 Philip Kamilar-Britt, Alyssa B. Oliva, Mitch Earleywine
Nicotine dependence remains a leading cause of preventable mortality worldwide. Pharmacotherapy and behavioral interventions offer modest efficacy with limited long-term success. Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) is an emerging approach to nicotine cessation with a growing evidence base. As PAP research expands, understanding how nicotine users' attitudes shape treatment engagement...
Questions and Concerns About MDMA-Assisted Therapy (MDMA-AT) in Veterans with PTSD Symptoms
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs October 10, 2025 Mitch Earleywine, Caitlin Holley, Henry A MacConnel et al.
MDMA-assisted therapy (MDMA-AT) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) shows promise, but attitudes and beliefs about this treatment, especially in symptomatic veterans, remain poorly understood. We sought to explore relevant attitudes in veterans receiving healthcare from Veterans Affairs as a step toward designing relevant surveys or psychoeducation materials for future work. We employed a...
Examining Volunteer Bias in Psychedelic Research.
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs October 8, 2025 Samantha G. Gomez, Fiona Low, Mitch Earleywine
Since its resurgence, psychedelic research has garnered considerable attention, especially in mental health. Preliminary findings have indicated positive results regarding psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Despite promising findings, various researchers have voiced concerns regarding psychedelic research and its potential for volunteer bias. Participants willing to participate in clinical...
A Perspective for Enhancing the Supervision of Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy: Motivational-Interviewing-Enhanced Integration Supervision (MIE-IS)
Psychoactives June 25, 2025 Mitch Earleywine, Alyssa B. Oliva
While research on psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) continues to show promise, challenges in its clinical application persist. One relevant domain includes how supervision might enhance both client and trainee outcomes. Current data suggest that, despite supervisor reports and the enthusiasm of trainees, supervision accounts for extraordinarily little variance in treatment outcome. We propose...
Rapid and sustained reduction of treatment-resistant PTSD symptoms after intravenous ketamine in a real-world, psychedelic paradigm.
Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) 2025 Henry A MacConnel, Mitch Earleywine, Steven Radowitz 5 citations
Traditional treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often show limited success with high dropout. Ketamine, an N-methyl-D-aspartate antagonist known for rapid antidepressant effects, has decreased PTSD symptoms in some studies but not in others. Administering ketamine in ways that parallel psychedelic-assisted treatments-including preparatory, integration, sensory immersion, and...
Acute Psychedelic Reactions, Post-Acute Changes in Dysfunctional Attitudes, and Psychedelic-Associated Changes in Wellbeing.
J Psychoactive Drugs October 30, 2024 Mitch Earleywine, Genevieve S. Falabella, Alyssa B. Oliva et al. 3 citations
Acute Psychedelic Reactions, Post-Acute Changes in Dysfunctional Attitudes, and Psychedelic-Associated Changes in Wellbeing.
Inhaled Dimethyltryptamine (DMT): Use Patterns and Predictors of Consumption Frequency.
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs October 15, 2024 Jamie E Parnes, Mitch Earleywine
Despite increasing interest in psychedelics and their potential therapeutic effects, research on inhaled N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) remains limited. Inhaled DMT has a reputation for rapid, dramatic onset and a brief duration, but correlates of use frequency remain poorly understood. A sample recruited from relevant internet sites, including nearly 400 people who had inhaled DMT, reported...
Is Personal Experience Essential for Effective Psychedelic Therapists?: The Challenges of Small, Accumulating Therapist Effects.
Psychedelic Med (New Rochelle) September 4, 2024 Mitch Earleywine, Samantha G. Gomez 5 citations
Is Personal Experience Essential for Effective Psychedelic Therapists?: The Challenges of Small, Accumulating Therapist Effects.
Client treatment preferences in psychedelic-assisted therapy for depression in participants with depressive symptoms
Journal of Psychedelic Studies July 11, 2024 Alyssa B. Oliva, Mitch Earleywine, Fiona Low et al.
AbstractBackground and AimsResearch on psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT), a promising treatment option for major depression, has not revealed if potential clients show preferences about the demographic characteristics of providers comparable to those common in other forms of psychotherapy. Previous work suggests that honoring comparable client preferences can enhance therapeutic outcomes. This...
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy Provides Lasting and Effective Results in the Treatment of Depression, Anxiety, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at 3 and 6 Months: Findings from a Large Retrospective Effectiveness Study.
Psychedelic medicine (New Rochelle, N.Y.) June 1, 2024 Ryan Yermus, John Bottos, Nathan Bryson et al. 13 citations
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) is an emerging treatment option to alleviate treatment-resistant affective disorders, but its long-term effectiveness remains unclear. To examine the treatment effects of KAP on anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at 1, 3, and 6 months post-treatment. This retrospective effectiveness study included self-reported outcomes from...
An examination of internal family systems interventions for trauma with implications for ethical psychedelic-assisted treatment
Journal of Psychedelic Studies March 5, 2024 Mitch Earleywine, Alyssa B. Oliva, Joseph A. de Leo et al. 6 citations
Though several treatments effectively address the pervasive impact of trauma, they do not achieve complete symptom resolution for all clients, inspiring the search for alternatives. Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy has grown popular, especially in informal psychedelic-assisted treatments (PAT). Compared to stereotypes of empirically validated, exposure-based treatments, IFS has novel...
Development of the Protective Strategies for Psychedelics Scale: A novel inventory to assess safety strategies in the context of psychedelics
Journal of Psychopharmacology December 4, 2023 Maha N. Mian, Brianna R. Altman, Fiona Low et al. 8 citations
Background: Individuals who use psychedelics take efforts to mitigate unintended consequences. Despite the demonstrated utility of analogous protective behavioral strategies (PBS) assessments for other substances, no standardized scale exists to capture these protective strategies for psychedelic use. Objective: The present study addresses a notable gap concerning the assessment of psychedelic...
Expectancies for Subjective and Antidepressant Effects in Psilocybin Users
Journal of Humanistic Psychology September 22, 2023 Mitch Earleywine, Maha N. Mian, Joseph A. de Leo 5 citations
Expectancy effects for many psychoactive substances appear to play a role in consumption, problematic use, subjective responses to acute administration, and subsequent effects. Expectancies of psychedelics have received little attention in published research despite their reputation for creating dramatic changes in subjective state. Psilocybin-assisted treatment (PAT) improves depression, but...
The Therapeutic Alliance in Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy: A Novel Target for Research and Interventions
Psychedelic Medicine August 18, 2023 Philip Kamilar-Britt, Elana B. Gordis, Mitch Earleywine 15 citations
Clinical trials support the promise of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) and reveal potential mechanisms underlying efficacy. Out of necessity, initial studies of PAT have focused on feasibility and impact with special attention to acute responses to the molecules, but investigations of the psychotherapy components of PAT have lagged other work. Years of research on other forms of...
Psychedelic Experiences After Bereavement Improve Symptoms of Grief: The Influence of Emotional Breakthroughs and Challenging Experiences
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs June 21, 2023 Fiona Low, Mitch Earleywine 15 citations
Grief, a common reaction to loss, can frequently become problematic or impairing. Available treatments for prolonged grief disorder are promising but leave room for considerable improvement. Qualitative accounts of psychedelic experiences after bereavement reveal themes that parallel core components of prolonged grief disorder therapy. However, few studies have investigated the therapeutic...
Educational Materials and Image Induction Increase Treatment Credibility
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs January 22, 2023 Fiona Low, Mitch Earleywine 3 citations
Patient-perceived treatment credibility is linked to important outcome measures including symptom reduction, therapeutic alliance, patient satisfaction, and attrition rates. However, few studies have tested strategies to enhance treatment credibility. The present study investigates the effect of brief, written educational materials and the use of an image induction prime on perceptions of...
Reasonable expectations for replications of psychedelic-assisted therapy: The case for prediction intervals rather than P-values
Journal of Psychedelic Studies January 16, 2023 Mitch Earleywine, Philip Kamilar-Britt
AbstractPsychedelic compounds hold promise for alleviating human suffering. Initial trials of psychedelic-assisted treatments have established feasibility and safety, generating calls for replications. Meanwhile, social and medical sciences have drawn criticism due to perceptions of replication failures and varying public trust in empiricism. Data suggest that researchers and the public...
Scoping Review of Experiential Measures from Psychedelic Research and Clinical Trials.
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 2023 Zachary Herrmann, Mitch Earleywine, Joseph A. de Leo et al. 19 citations
Subjective responses to psychoactive drugs have served as intriguing windows into consciousness as well as useful predictors. Subjective reactions to psychedelic molecules are particularly interesting given how they covary with subsequent improvements associated with psychedelic-assisted treatments. Although links between subjective reactions and decreases in treatment-resistant clinical...
Psychedelics for Psychiatric Disorders: Promise, Not Panacea
Psychiatric Annals September 1, 2022 Mitch Earleywine, Zachary Herrmann 5 citations
Initial promise and dire need have inspired the multiple research programs of the second psychedelic renaissance. Serotonergic psychedelics (psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide, and ayahuasca) have decreased end-of-life anxiety in cancer patients, treatment-resistant depression, alcohol dependence, social anxiety in autistic adults, and nicotine dependence when applied with supportive...
Expectancies for Cannabis-Induced Emotional Breakthrough, Mystical Experiences and Changes in Dysfunctional Attitudes: Perceptions of the Potential for Cannabis-Assisted Psychotherapy for Depression
Cannabis July 11, 2022 Mitch Earleywine, Maha N. Mian, Brianna R. Altman et al. 11 citations
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has established antidepressant effects. Cannabis users appear to expect high doses administered in a session much like psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to create comparable subjective effects. The current studies explored expectations of antidepressant effects of such cannabis-assisted sessions to replicate and extend previous work. Users not only expected a...
Cannabis’s Link to Schizotypy: Phenomenon, Measurement Bias, or Delusion?
Cannabis July 11, 2022 Brianna R. Altman, Mitch Earleywine, Maha N. Mian et al.
Links between cannabis use and psychosis generate research and media attention. Cannabis users have outscored non-users on the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief (SPQ-B) in multiple studies, but previous work suggests that groups do not differ if biased items are removed. The present study examined links between schizotypal personality and cannabis use in a large sample recruited from...
Integration in Psychedelic-Assisted Treatments: Recurring Themes in Current Providers’ Definitions, Challenges, and Concerns
Journal of Humanistic Psychology April 2, 2022 Mitch Earleywine, Fiona Low, Carmen Lau et al. 47 citations
Integration therapy, an integral part of psychedelic-assisted treatment, usually includes sessions devoted to making meaning of relevant psychedelic experiences after subjective effects have subsided. As the psychedelic renaissance continues, offers for this integration therapy have proliferated. In the present project, semi-structured interviews with 30 integration therapists focused on...
How Important Is a Guide Who Has Taken Psilocybin in Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy for Depression?
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs March 23, 2022 Mitch Earleywine, Fiona Low, Brianna R. Altman et al. 31 citations
Promising outcomes of Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy (PAT) for depression have generated concerted efforts to replicate, extend, and refine protocols to maximize efficacy. Psychotherapy research reveals that clients benefit most when important components of treatment align with their personal preferences. One open question related to PAT concerns the importance of the psilocybin experience of the...