- Every psychological experience has a biological correlate:
these are two sides of the same coin.
You see the color green,
there's something happening in your brain
that's coding that experience of the color green.
So, with psychedelics,
the biggest divide is whether we're talking about
on the psychological side or the biological side.
Does it work by hitting these brain receptors
and then having other effects?
Or does it work because of the experience?
Clearly, there's this very real biological effect.
Something dramatic happens to the brain
when you put the psychedelic in the system,
but then someone has this experience,
and when they change their life because of that,
that ends up sounding more like
they went through a really good course of psychotherapy.
So, psychedelics are really interesting
at that bridge between the biological and the psychological.
What 'psychedelic' means from its linguistic roots
is "mind manifesting."
The idea that these are mind manifesting-
that's consistent with this other notion
that these are non-specific amplifiers.
In other words,
you could have a euphoric experience.
You could have a hellish experience.
Also, terminology is so difficult in this area.
Psychedelic can be used to refer
to what are called the "classic psychedelic compounds":
psilocybin, which is in magic mushrooms,
LSD,
DMT, which is in ayahuasca,
mescaline, which is in peyote.
Those are the classic psychedelics.
They affect a particular type of serotonin receptor
and that's their primary mechanism of action.
But then you have other drugs
that I think it's appropriate to call them psychedelic;
other scientists will disagree.
So for example, MDMA will work by releasing serotonin.
So, that's a different mechanism.
And you have other drugs such as ketamine and PCP.
So, that affects the glutamate system
in the brain primarily rather than the serotonin system.
So, what does psychedelic mean then
if it refers to multiple pharmacological classes of drugs
that work in different ways?
And the answer for me is that these are all drugs
that can have a profound effect on one's sense of reality,
including one's sense of self.
The huge question that's always thrown out is:
'How do these psychedelics work?'
And you can just come at that from so many different angles.
Now to go down that biological path,
what's happening?
There's a lot going on.
For example, psilocybin,
which people may know is the active agent
in so-called "magic mushrooms."
Once it's circulating through your blood,
after you've eaten some of it,
it actually converts to a related compound called psilocin,
which is the thing that's actually hitting
the brain receptors.
And it activates a subtype of serotonin receptor.
So, we have lots
of different types of serotonin receptors in our brain.
One is called the 'serotonin 2A' receptor,
and psilocybin and the other classic psychedelics,
can latch onto that
the same way that our serotonin latches
onto these brain receptors.
So, psilocybin affects serotonin,
but then serotonin affects the glutamate system.
And then at another level,
you have this massive increase in communication,
across these different silos in the brain.
That is probably an important level of analysis
that is underlying at the psychological level:
patients who have claims of insight viewing themselves
from a radically different perspective,
from a different lens,
and based on animal research,
there also seems like there may be
increased 'neuroplasticity'
in the system so that in the days following
the psychedelic experience,
people are more primed to learn new things.
There's a greater ability to establish a new
and more optimal normal state.
So, there's seemed
to really be something important about
'the nature of the experience'
that people have during these sessions.
It's not just about hitting a certain type
of serotonin receptor in the brain.
There's something about the psychology
of the experience that unfolds
during that session that tends to be important-
which is in some sense
what makes the psilocybin treatments,
a bit more like psychotherapy
than traditional psychiatric medications
where you just take the pill and you forget it.
There's some interacting reasons
why the psychedelic renaissance is happening now.
Our society has been in a mental health crisis,
and it's been stagnating.
Pharmaceutical companies don't make the investments
in new mental healthcare treatments,
like they did decades ago.
I mean, the best medical treatments
that we have for many addictions,
are substitution treatments,
also known as 'agonist treatments.'
And I think these are good,
but when you don't see success,
I would say it's probably 'cause they fail
to get to the roots of these mental disorders,
including addiction.
That's why I think psychedelics have been so successful.
Nothing is gonna be a miracle cure for everyone-
nonetheless, they have so much promise,
and we have to have that balance.
I think that's more possible today.
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