AbstractChapter 8 concludes the book with a reflection on the intense and meaningful journey of providing psychedelic-assisted therapy. It acknowledges the book’s aim to provide a comprehensive guide to practicing psychedelic therapy, rooted in the best available evidence and ethical considerations. The chapter points to future opportunities in the field, including a shift from a...
AbstractChapter 2 provides a rationale for the EMBARK approach, a therapeutic framework for administering psychedelic medicines. The authors assess previous PAT models, highlighting their strengths and shortcomings. They identify gaps in areas such as attentiveness to the body, attending to the therapeutic relationship, counseling for spiritual experiences, and ethical considerations. The...
AbstractChapter 7 underscores the pivotal role of integration sessions in psychedelic therapy, where insights from medicine sessions are woven into the fabric of daily life. It presents the EMBARK model’s flexible, participant-centric approach to integration, focusing adaptively on the clinical domains that emerged for the participant. It provides guidelines and goals for the practitioner in...
AbstractChapter 6 focuses on the medicine sessions of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT), where the psychedelic medicine is administered. The chapter outlines the therapist’s role in these sessions, emphasizing the importance of support, responsiveness, and skillful following, ensuring the participant’s physical well-being, maintaining appropriate boundaries, and providing mindful,...
AbstractChapter 5 outlines a preparation phase consisting of three 90-minute nondrug sessions. Preparation lays the groundwork for potential benefits across the six EMBARK domains. The therapist’s aims in this phase include building trust, understanding the participant’s experience of depression, identifying participant intentions, and providing psychoeducation about psychedelic therapy. The...
Rythmia Life Advancement Center is the first and currently only medically licensed Ayahuasca center in the world. Rythmia is helping to bridge the gap between the Western medical model of health care with the indigenous healing modalities of Latin America. The “Rythmia Way” program uses a variety of modalities, in addition to Ayahuasca, to help individuals find meaning in their lives and...
Psychedelics (serotonergic hallucinogens) are psychoactive substances that can alter perception and mood, and affect cognitive functions. These substances activate 5-HT2A receptors and may exert therapeutic effects. Some of the disorders for which psychedelic-assisted therapy have been studied include depression, addiction, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite the increasing...
Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has over the last decade emerged as a promising treatment strategy for mental health disease, and the therapeutic potential in classical psychedelics such as psilocybin, LSD and 5-MeO-DMT is presently being pursued in a plethora of clinical trials. However, the resurgent interest in the drugs as therapeutics has also prompted a search for novel agents with...
Several phase II studies have demonstrated that psilocybin-assisted therapy shows therapeutic potential across a spectrum of neuropsychiatric conditions, including major depressive disorder (MDD). However, the mechanisms underlying its often persisting beneficial effects remain unclear. Observational research suggests that improvements in psychological flexibility may mediate therapeutic...
Existing neurocognitive theories have mainly concentrated on the disruptive aspects of psychedelics, such as cognitive disruption, cortical-thalamic filtering disturbances, and disordered/entropic brain states, but they fail to fully account for the emergence of new beneficial behaviors, responses, and insights. This paper proposes a novel framework that shifts the focus from the disruptive...