Drug Science Policy and Law
September 1, 2025
David Nutt, David Erritzøe, Anne Katrin Schlag et al.
9 citations
The field of psychedelic research lacks standardized terminology for clinical development, dosing, safety monitoring, and regulatory classification. A comprehensive framework is proposed that classifies psychedelics by pharmacology (serotonergic, glutamatergic, kappaergic, GABAergic, and atypical), introduces dose-dependent categories (microdose, minidose, mididose, macrodose), and standardizes terms like “short-acting” with specific pharmacokinetic parameters. Safety considerations include cardiovascular and psychological effects, with risk mitigation protocols for higher-risk compounds like ibogaine. A three-phase treatment model—preparation, dosing, and integration—is recommended as a minimum standard. The lack of comparative research on psychotherapy modalities is identified as a critical gap.
November 30, 2022
Oliver Davis
8 citations
Psychedelically assisted psychotherapy (PAP) is becoming a common treatment for serious mental health problems, and the market for therapist training and credentialing is expanding rapidly. Concerns about potential abuse in PAP have been framed as failures to respect patient autonomy, but such concerns require a fundamental reconsideration of autonomy's role in psychotherapy. This chapter begins with practitioner-focused guidance, reviews the history of autonomy in geopolitics and ethics, and examines its place in psychotherapy generally and PAP specifically. It concludes that while protecting autonomy is central to medical ethics, autonomy does not capture the phenomenology of the psychedelic experience, which is better described as 'autoheteronomy'. The chapter shows that PAP exposes longstanding cultural uncertainties about how psychotherapy has fostered patient autonomy.
Front Psychol
August 21, 2024
Tehseen Noorani, Oliver Davis, Alex Dymock et al.
5 citations
The article argues that the humanities and social sciences are essential for understanding psychedelic experiences, because these experiences are shaped by context, culture, and personal history—factors often overlooked by biomedical research. It introduces the concept of "anthropotechnics" to analyze how cultural practices and settings influence the outcomes of psychedelic use. The authors contend that integrating humanistic perspectives can provide a more complete picture of how set and setting affect psychedelic experiences, moving beyond purely neurobiological explanations.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 16, 2023
Oliver Davis
4 citations
The French poet, writer, and artist Henri Michaux produced an extensive body of work—five books, dozens of drawings, and a film—documenting his experiences with mescaline, psilocybin, LSD, and cannabis over roughly a decade from the mid-1950s. His aesthetic reconstruction of psychedelics' effects on his creative brain can be read as a program for the emerging field of psychedelic humanities. Michaux's work addresses three core concerns: psychedelics' role in enhancing creativity, the politics of psychedelics, and the meaning of psychedelic mysticism. Though less known than Huxley's writings, Michaux's exploration is more extensive, complex, and demanding, and deserves wider recognition.
Contemporary Drug Problems
July 10, 2026
Oliver Davis, Sophie Casey
This article offers a skeptical appraisal of Psymposia, a U.S.-based psychedelics watchdog group that helped block FDA approval of MDMA for PTSD in 2024. Close analysis of its "Power Trip" podcast, FDA hearing interventions, and allegations of a "Psychedelic Syndicate" portrays the group as an effective "entrepreneur of psychedelic negativity." The authors argue that Psymposia's sensationalist approach to trauma and narrow view of iatrogenic harm presents its activism as harm-reduction while conspiring to produce "Prohibition 2.0" through "distributed anxiogenesis." The authors claim the group received over $400,000 USD in funding, mostly undisclosed, possibly used for consultancy and media access. They reject the group's position as incoherent and damaging to substantive Left politics, aiming to bring balance to conversations about psychedelic medicalization and decriminalization.
Psychedelics
June 24, 2026
Oliver Davis
Psychedelics are interruptive, deautomating political technologies that can foster radical democracy rather than reinforce liberal-democratic systems. The article argues that understanding the political implications of psychedelics requires reconceiving psychedelic mysticism and phenomenology to recognize their embodied, agential, and politically potentiating dimensions, correcting neuro-centric views and incomplete phenomenologies. It also links the deautomating aspects of psychedelic experience to an analysis of anti-democratic forces like automation, administrative reason, and computationalist abstraction.