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| Using Psychedelics (and Meditation) to Study the Brain |
G. The recent Psychedemia, or psychedelics in academia meeting, was held at the University of Pennsylvania; the first such meeting in 40 years. i was invited by two folk i work with, Rich Doyle and Katherine MacLean, who were making major presentations.
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| Rich Doyle, Katherine MacLean and old what's his name @ Psychedemia - not photoshopped |
Katherine's presentation on "The Effects of Psilocybin and Meditation on Personality Change And Well Being" was done as a post-doc @ Johns Hopkins in the major psilocybin research program in the United States. This program, initiated by Roland Griffiths about 12 years ago has resulted in many "seminal" papers on psilocybin effects.
Roland presented a key paper @ Psychedemia and was a keynote presenter at the recent Science and NonDuality (SAND) conference in San Rafael, CA. my talk at SAND, "Exploring the Self Scientifically - Magic Mushrooms or Meditation - The Same Route?", discussed the many similarities between long-term meditation and psilocybin (covered in the blogpost "magic mushrooms work like meditation? the latest science") and gave an overview of Roland's work. A video of my talk is now available.
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| Roland Griffiths Johns Hopkins |
Roland and i had many discussions @ the two conferences. IMHO, he is the perfect person to perform this work and Hopkins is the right institution. His talk @ SAND was met with loud clapping and enthusiasm from a large crowd. In the Q&A on why psilocybin, rather than another entheogen, was used in his studies, he responded...1) it is well understood with a controlled chemistry and composition (unlike ayahuasca), 2) its effects consistently last about 8 hours so it lends itself to reasonable study times (unlike LSD), and 3) "nobody can spell it" (the public and government haven't developed an opinion on it) unlike LSD.
Roland's and his team's most recent major paper, "Psilocybin occasioned mystical-type experiences: immediate and persisting dose-related effects", published in Psychopharmacology, Dec. 2011. This paper focused on levels of psilocybin from 0 to 30 mg per 70kg of body weight w/18 folk, 17 of which were hallucinogenic-naive (like me). Thirty mg is a high dose, so i am told. Each folk had 5 randomized sessions at one month intervals of 8 hours duration; one was a placebo. Questionnaires were filled out immediately, one month and 14 months after.
At 20 and 30mg dose levels, there were "acute perceptual and subjective effects" including "extreme anxiety/fear" in 39% and/or "mystical-type experiences" in 72% of folk. One month later, they rated the experience as having sustained personal and spiritual significance and positive changes in attitudes, mood and behavior. These ratings were the same at 14 months and were confirmed by interviews of their "community", i.e. friends and associates. At lower doses there were also significant effects.
An earlier paper, "Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance 14 months later" by Griffiths, R., et al. was published in Journal of Psychopharmacology in 2008. Protocols were similar to the 2011 study, but for 36 "hallucinogic-naive" folk who reported regular participation in religious/spiritual activites. Only the highest dose, 30mg/70 kg of body weight, was used. There was also a comparison to methylphenidate (Ridalin) @ 40mg/70 kg.
At the 14 month follow-up, using the Hood Mysticism Scale, covered in the blogpost "Seeing everything as "One"? What is "mystical"? What is "real"? - the science", those who had received psilocybin scored significantly higher than at screening, and significantly higher than scores for college students in two studies by Hood, et al. in 2001 and 2007.
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These participants ranked their psilocybin experiences as "among the top 5" personally-meaningful experiences, and "among the top 5" spiritually-significant experiences of their lifetimes. This was true even for those who had "bad trips".
These experiments were done under the most supportive and controlled conditions possible by trained facilitators. Two of them stay with every subject throughout their entire experience, in a cozy room, on a nice couch, etc. Every imaginable concern was addressed. i met several of the facilitators at Psychedemia and they were experienced, knowledgeable, caring...great folk.
The Hopkins work has gotten much attention. Dr. Jerome Jaffe, the first White House "Drug Czar" in the Nixon administration, in discussing the 2011 paper, said he saw potential psychotherapeutic value in psilocybin. Dr. Jaffee stated "The Hopkins psilocybin studies clearly demonstrate that this route to the mystical is not to be walked alone. But they have also demonstrated significant and lasting benefits."
Katherine's paper @ Psychedemia, "The Effects of Psilocybin and Meditation on Personality Change in Healthy Volunteers", incorporated her "Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness" in the Journal of Psychopharmacology in Nov. 2011, by McClean, K.A., Johnson, M, and Griffiths, R.
This paper challenged the large body of evidence suggesting that core personality traits are stable after age 30. Work w/psilocybin demonstrated that personally and spiritually-significant mystical experiences produce significant changes in "Openness", one of the five broad domains of personality. High-dose psilocybin produces increases in aesthetic appreciation, imagination and creativity, leading to persistently higher "Openness" one year after a session.
Katherine's Psychedemia paper incorporated two meditation studies; a) the Shamatha Project w/three month retreats of focusing and mindfulness, and b) the Spirit Rock project w/one month retreats using vipassana mindfulness and insight approaches. Meditators had experience levels from 100 to 15,000 hours; changes were tracked in cognitive, emotional, and brain functioning. These are discussed in "Intensive Meditation Training Improves Perceptual Discrimination and Sustained Attention" in Psychological Science, May, 2010, by MacLean, et al., and in "Enhanced Response Inhibition During Intensive Meditation Training Predicts Improvements in Self-Reported Adaptive Socioemotional Functioning" in Emotion, 2011, by Sahdra, M, Maclean, K., et al.
Katherine's work demonstrated the complementary nature of meditation and psilocybin and is leading to two studies on this phenomena @ Hopkins focusing on the linkages discussed in the blogpost "magic mushrooms work like meditation? the latest science" mentioned above. There is a current study ongoing @ Hopkins with meditation training + psilocybin with 75 healthy adults and a new study is in its early stages on psilocybin effects in about 50 experienced meditators. If you live close to Baltimore and are interested in the new study, contact Katherine.
If psilocybin and meditation operate similarly, this gives science a great tool to investigate how meditation and the mind operate. Meditation takes long, is imprecise, and change is often irregular and uncertain, so it is difficult to study cognitive neuroscientifically. Just as marijuana provided a critical tool to understand how chemical neurotransmitters work on our synapses, so too, psilocybin may unlock the secrets of meditation.
Rich Doyle's paper @ Psychedemia on "Ecodelics: Information Technologies for the Mind Beyond Thought" was extempore. Rich and i discussed the "no-thought" approach in which he gave his "tour de force" paper in our recent youTube dialogue "Higher Functioning Without Thoughts". It is really amazing how much better one functions w/o ongoing narrative thoughts.
BTW, this topic is capturing much serious attention and discussion. Roland's talks were full at both conferences and were well received. my talk @ SAND had folk turned away at the door and drew James Austin, Roland, Alan Combs, John Hagelin, etc. and many discussions afterwards.
Hi Gary,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Tom and I life in Belgium so forgive me my broken English.
I've been using Mushrooms 4 times now and in 3 of the 4 times I had a total mystical experience as they described in the studies at Hopkins. First I couldn't place it but after discovering Ramana Maharshi and others everything made sense! Oneness, no free will, emptiness as source of everything, no good or bad, no karma or reincarnation,....
Although it changed me a lot I'm not in a permanent state of no bla bla bla and/or oneness. Do you know if mushrooms can give you this permanent state?
Thanks a lot and keep up the good work!
Tom
Hi Tom,
ReplyDeleteAs you read on this post and in the links in it on psychedelics and nonduality, the mystical states produced by both are basically the same; as far as our research has gone, they also operate on the default mode network in very similar ways to produce those effects. However, as you and everyone else has seen, the experiences in psychedelics are "experiences" and are "impermanent".
Making the "no blah-blah" state permanent, easy and natural appears to only be possible w/Ramana's Direct Path or similar approaches. As you probably read, i have no personal experience w/psychedelics; i had a big nondual experience reading a Zen poem in the 70s and went that way when everyone else was going into psychedelics.
That is no judgment against psychedelics, that is just how it worked out; i work w/many folk and have many friends who have used them. Some completely left psychedelics and cannabis for nonduality as it is more pleasurable, has no bad side effects, is legal, and most importantly, can be made persistent, even to the point of being continuous.
There are some studies starting @ Johns Hopkins (i collaborate w/them) on psilocybin +/- meditation of various types and durations (but not including nonduality - i couldn't convince them to do that.) It may answer some questions, but not yours.
BTW, my anecdotal work w/folk has shown that it appears to be somewhat easier for folk who have done psychedelics to move on into nonduality. i suspect that may be because the terrain, which is similar in many respects, is not as frightening if you've seen it before. we don't know yet if there is some chemical or structural change produced by the psychedelics as well. As i did it w/o, it clearly isn't necessary.
There's a lot of excellent research in this area now, in the US and in the UK, and much interest. Am presenting an invited talk @ SAND Europe in The Netherlands and meeting w/some folk in Bruges on this very topic later this month.
stillness