Psychopharmacology
July 17, 2026
Richard Saville-Smith, Sharday Mosurinjohn
This paper critiques the use of the term "mysticism" in psychedelic research, arguing its continued use is outdated and misleading. It highlights the confusion stemming from the historical context of "mysticism," particularly through the works of Walter Stace and Walter Pahnke, whose ideas have shaped the psychedelic discourse despite being flawed and largely unexamined. The paper is divided...
Psychedelic Medicine
March 1, 2026
Sharday Mosurinjohn, Richard S. Ascough
5 citations
This article corrects an idea in psychedelic science and culture that the ancient Eleusynian Mysteries used psychedelics, as claimed by Carl Ruck and co-authors in The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (1978), revitalized by Brian Muraresku's The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (2020), and popularized by social media heavyweights such as Joe...
January 14, 2025
Sharday Mosurinjohn
Biomedicine is insufficiently able to address “bad trips” and specifically negative entity encounters that psychedelic users regularly aver. To address the inadequacy of biomedicine to address this question, this essay proposes a turn toward other ontologies better equipped to understand these experiences and support patients. This paper presents a model/framework for contextualizing...
American Religion
September 1, 2023
Sharday Mosurinjohn, Jordan Loewen-Colón
2 citations
American Religion 5:1 138Around the time when Jacob Boss approached us with the invitation to contribute to this American Religion roundtable on AI and algorithms, I (Sharday Mosurinjohn) had just been introduced to the esoteric algorithm called "Human Design" 1 by a friend in the psychedelic space, which is where the bulk of my research now takes place. 2 As I delved deeper into the world of...
Frontiers in Psychiatry
April 5, 2023
Sharday Mosurinjohn, Leor Roseman, Manesh Girn
54 citations
Contemporary research on serotonergic psychedelic compounds has been rife with references to so-called ‘mystical’ subjective effects. Several psychometric assessments have been used to assess such effects, and clinical studies have found quantitative associations between ‘mystical experiences’ and positive mental health outcomes. The nascent study of psychedelic-induced mystical experiences,...