BACKGROUND: Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) affects approximately one-third of patients with major depressive disorder and represents a critical clinical challenge. Esketamine (S-ketamine, Spravato), approved by FDA and EMA since 2019, and psychedelic-assisted therapies (psilocybin, MDMA) share a pharmacological feature unique among approved psychiatric treatments: they induce altered...
This paper examines how psychedelic therapy reflects metamodern sensibilities – navigating between scepticism, hope, science and subjectivity. Rather than prescribing outcomes, it explores how patients engage psychedelic experiences as meaning-making processes within complex cultural and psychological landscapes, inviting new perspectives on healing, integration and the role of consciousness in...
Importance Psilocybin simultaneously holds contradictory legal classifications across seven overlapping governance systems—Schedule I under U.S. federal law, FDA Breakthrough Therapy designation, authorized therapeutic use in Oregon and Colorado, operational state-level medical access in New Mexico, national medical rescheduling in Australia, and an active petition for DEA rescheduling. As...
As the psychedelic-medicine sector expands from a fringe area into a substantial commercial industry, stakeholders are increasingly investing in lobbying and public-comment campaigns to shape the regulatory frameworks that will govern psychedelic therapies. This essay revisits the classical concept of "regulatory capture"-as articulated by George Stigler-and applies it to the contemporary...
Serotonergic psychedelics produce therapeutic effects in clinical trials of diverse neuropsychiatric disorders, and preclinical models of inflammatory, cardiometabolic, and neuropsychiatric diseases. These effects appear largely mediated by the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor (5-HT2AR). How could psychedelics elicit transdiagnostic therapeutic effects through a single receptor across tissues as...
Microdosing psychedelics has attracted growing attention from public commentators, scientists, investors and user communities across the globe. Microdosing is the use of small doses of psychedelic substances such as psilocybin mushrooms and LSD. Its proponents speak of microdosing as a use modality that improves various human abilities and life areas, including cognitive function, mood,...
This scoping review aims to systematically map the neurobiological evidence for psychological and pharmacologically-assisted interventions for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) published between 2020 and 2025. Grounded in the triple-network model (default mode network, salience network, and central executive network), the review will synthesize findings across a range of intervention types,...
Mystical dynamics-the notion that mystical oneness may unfold involving ego disintegration, renewal, and luminous light-has been discussed anecdotally by psychedelic researchers and therapists but has not yet been empirically examined in controlled settings. This study investigated the occurrence and dose-dependency of mystical dynamics in healthy participants after administration of...
This thesis is the record of a novelist in the process of not being able to write a novel. What began as an attempt to complete a draft of a novel became instead a multi-genre text and an autocriticism in which a fiction writer’s process becomes the subject of study at the same time it generates a novel work of creative writing. This took what was once to have been a two-part thesis comprising...
Empathy is a core neurobiological capacity that enables humans to perceive, understand, and respond to others' experiences, yet its deliberate modulation as a therapeutic target is still in its early stages of scientific development. This manuscript presents a hybrid narrative-scoping review synthesizing evidence across pharmacological, neurostimulation, and behavioral approaches aimed at...