In April 2025, New Mexico enacted the Medical Psilocybin Act, establishing the first legislated statewide medical psilocybin program and becoming the third state to authorize supervised psilocybin use. The Act directs the New Mexico Department of Health to build a regulated system where licensed clinicians provide psilocybin to qualified patients in approved settings for treatment-resistant...
Background Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) has demonstrated great promise for a variety of mental health problems. Many clinicians and researchers who are engaged in providing PAP report personal experiences with psychedelics; these experiences are often positive. Still, there are ongoing questions regarding the relevance of therapists personal experience with psychedelic drugs for the...
Objective In 2024, the United States had the highest prevalence of psychedelic use recorded, but reliability of self-report data in surveys has not been rigorously assessed. Our objective was to quantify the reliability of self-report across 17 psychedelic and dissociative substances in an adult population sampled from the National Survey Investigating Hallucinogenic Trends (NSIHT). Methods In...
Central nervous system (CNS) injuries remain challenging to treat due to limited neurogenesis, inhibitory extracellular environments, and maladaptive neuroimmune responses. Psychedelic compounds, including classical serotonergic psychedelics, dissociative anesthetics, and empathogens, have re-emerged as mechanistically distinctive “psychoplastogens” capable of rapidly and persistently enhancing...
Recent interdisciplinary scholarship has demonstrated how systemic racism, racialized mental health disparities, and histories of colonial and biomedical violence shape psychedelic experiences, therapeutic outcomes, and processes of integration. Emerging literature has foregrounded concerns including racial underrepresentation in research, the violent legacy of the War on Drugs, systemic racism...
PsychedelicsAugust 14, 2026Robert McGrath, Everett B. Sackett
Artificial intelligence is entering psychedelic-assisted therapy (PaT) through at least two channels, pre-licensure facilitator training simulators and in-session administrative tools. This arrival is occurring in a context where relational factors, those interpersonal considerations between patients and providers, are not incidental but highly impactful. A 2025 international Delphi consensus...
Psychedelics have been researched for decades, yet clinical investigations represent only a small fraction of their use. Some states have launched supervised psychedelic wellness services, outpacing controlled trials in the numbers of participants served. Veterans are key advocates for legal therapeutic access to psychedelics, seeking options through grassroots veteran-run organizations that...
Background In natural product psilocybin retreats, "dose" is commonly defined by grams of dried mushrooms, despite substantial batch-to-batch variability in psilocybin content. This limits safety predictability and undermines reproducibility and between-study comparability. We report an observational field evaluation of an existing, ICH Q2(R1)-validated rapid colorimetric/photometric assay...
In this paper, which is in part intended as a speculative provocation and which combines philosophy of science, clinical practice and psychedelic therapy in a novel manner, we examine ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) through the lens of an expanded model of enactive cognition. While much work within both KAP and psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) in general has relied upon broadly...
The psychedelic renaissance has now lasted longer than the first wave of medical research in the 1950s and 60 s. Despite growing scientific and cultural interest, fundamental questions remain regarding the nature of subjective experience and its role in therapeutic outcomes. This article revisits a neglected yet significant aspect of psychedelic phenomenology: birth—or rebirth—experiences....
Background Integration — the ongoing process of revisiting, making sense of, and incorporating the content of a psychedelic experience into daily life — is a core component of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT), but is variably operationalised and poorly reported in clinical research. Objective To map how integration is described, delivered, and reported in clinical studies of classic...
Despite promising outcomes for mental health conditions, psychedelic-assisted interventions yield variable post-experience outcomes. Existing preparation and integration models emphasize insight and meaning-making but give insufficient attention to the role of internal guidance in sustaining therapeutic gains. For individuals shaped by trauma or performance-based environments, emotional...
Background Racism and discrimination are pervasive social determinants of health, yet mainstream mental health care often fails to address the psychological sequelae of racial trauma, or race-based traumatic stress (RBTS). While psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) has re-entered the scientific mainstream, empirical guidance for culturally attuned, integrative care is limited. This study explores...
The research, understanding, and implementation of psychedelic therapies is characterised by a layered complexity that arises from the dynamic interactions between pharmacological and extra-pharmacological factors, and the embeddedness of psychedelics within broader societal, legal, and regulatory systems ill-equipped to accommodate them. This complexity is compounded by an epistemic...
This article liberates discussion of the politics of psychedelics from its present impasse. Across ten theses, it asserts that psychedelics are interruptive deautomating political technologies, which makes them conducive to democratic politics, in the radical sense: rather than consolidating liberal-democratic systems of representative or managed democracy, psychedelic experience tends to open...
PsychedelicsMay 30, 2026Vinicius Ryu Kami, Beatriz Borges Bueno Salle, Giovanni Porto et al.
Background Contemporary psychiatry is associated with several challenges, including limited remission rates in complex and severe psychiatric disorders. In this context, psychedelics have re-emerged globally as a promising therapeutic paradigm. Brazil occupies a unique position in this scenario, mainly due to the legal protection and cultural integration of Ayahuasca, which fosters a distinct...
PsychedelicsMay 16, 2026Nádia Valéria Moreira Santos, Cristiane Ferreira Silveira, Camila Gutieres Dos Santos Soares Costa et al.
Aim This study aimed to explore the experiences and perceived effects of ayahuasca ceremonies on suicidality. Method We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with nine participants from the North and Southeast regions of Brazil. These participants were part of a larger cohort and were selected to explore their perspectives on how ceremonial experiences with ayahuasca in neoshamanic contexts...
We take a wide view across the emerging research into psychedelics and psychosis/madness, to emphasize the need for not just more but also wise research at these intersections. We note the growing rate of publications on the use of psychedelics by people who have had experiences of psychosis/madness, and make our arguments around a narrative report of the lead author, who experienced a...
This paper presents qualitative data reported by individuals with histories of psychotic symptoms and experiences who engaged in naturalistic psychedelic use compiled as a case series. Through detailed first-person narratives, we explore how both classic and non-classic psychedelic experiences were subjectively experienced and integrated by individuals in this population, which is usually...
PsychedelicsMay 1, 2026Madeleine Cluck, Alison B. Purcell, Zuzana Kazan et al.
There is currently an ongoing resurgence in research on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics for psychiatric conditions. Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) differs from most current forms of psychiatric treatment in two primary domains: its requirement for fewer doses (often just one), and its documented ability to promote profound insights, introspection, and cognitive shifts. Autism...
Over the past 25 years, the use of 5-MeO-DMT in informal and underground settings has contributed a substantial, yet underrecognized, body of knowledge relating to the efficacy of 5-MeO-DMT in alleviating depressive symptoms. Traditional models of drug development, typically characterized by structured trials and regulatory milestones, rarely consider findings from these alternative routes. The...
The Symmetrical Global Mental Health (Sym-GMH) paradigm proposes a reciprocal integration between traditional and Western medical systems. This prospective, longitudinal study evaluates the psychological outcomes of 264 Western participants who engaged in Shipibo-led ayahuasca retreats at the Temple of the Way of Light in the Peruvian Amazon. Over a 12-month period, participants completed...
Despite the existence of current treatments for major depressive disorder (MDD), depression symptoms and burdens often persist, prompting the need for novel therapies, including psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT), with promising potential for early and durable antidepressant responses. Objectives: This research aims to compare pharmacist opinions regarding logistical and ethical considerations...
Psychiatric symptoms and existential distress are common at the end of life and associated with poor outcomes. Psychedelic therapies are an emerging option for managing such patients, but their testing and application depends, inter alia , on prescribers’ perspectives. However, no published data exist on the opinions of Australasian palliative care medical staff regarding psychedelic safety and...
PsychedelicsApril 2, 2026Dalia N. Balsamo, Prachi Garodia, Nima Fayazmanesh et al.
The integration of music into psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) has emerged as a key aspect of therapeutic psychedelic experiences, providing a significant enhancement in emotional processing and insight generation. This review examines the interplay between music and psychedelics, and explores how this integration can enhance therapeutic outcomes in various conditions with a broader emphasis...