Psychedelics in psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy

What are your thoughts on using Psychedelics within the field of psychology?
I was just listening to some lectures by Stanislav Grof, who is pretty much considered one of the heavyweights in personality psychology—basically the face of transpersonal psychology—and he brought up some truly incredible stuff. I ended up watching a documentary on LSD afterward, featuring several psychologists who were actually involved in those research projects back in the day.

For the most part, there were massive amounts of positive results in psychotherapy, whether you were looking at treating addiction, alcoholism, or PTSD...
It seemed like the perfect tool for deep psychoanalysis, too. From what I can gather, LSD was being used in psychological practice for a solid decade... I have no idea why it was so abruptly "forgotten." The whole shift away from working with LSD happened basically the moment the government banned it.
Generally speaking, not a single shred of evidence was ever found to suggest that LSD is harmful, and when things are done under controlled conditions, the chance of having a "bad trip" is minimal.

There’s also this book about DMT, which is arguably the most potent tryptamine-based Psychedelic out there, and it's something our own brains naturally produce. It’s the only official study conducted on DMT, which, incidentally, is released during birth, orgasm, REM sleep, near-death experiences, and dying.

And more recently, there was research done with psilocybin—the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms—to treat people with chronic OCD, and the results they got were exceptionally positive.

Then there’s another controversial substance I saw a documentary on, which is MDMA (or what people call ecstasy today). Back in the 80s, it was used as a therapeutic aid for people suffering from PTSD. Psychotherapists claimed MDMA was the ultimate tool for analyzing and treating individuals with deep-seated trauma, and when it was banned, hundreds of American therapists voiced their frustration...
This last one might be a bit more contentious because it's widely documented that it can damage the serotonin system, but if you were to administer pure MDMA synthesized in, say, a Pfizer lab, paired with some antioxidants and a tiny bit of diazepam afterward, the harm would be reduced to almost nothing.

Essentially, the main theory is that almost all Psychedelics are banned in psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy simply because if people can actually "heal" themselves in a single session, pharmaceutical companies won't have anyone left to sell their drugs to—drugs that mostly just mask symptoms.

Anyway, what’s your take on using Psychedelics for healing or exploring the mind?

Oh, and one little quote: a psychologist once said that psychology without Psychedelics is like astronomy without a telescope.🙂

People have been chewing this over quite a bit in the "LSD" thread over on the spirituality subforum. If you want to dive in, go ahead, though you'll have to dig through a lot of pages.

Stanislav Grof is actually a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, not a psychologist, though his work obviously overlaps heavily with psychology.

In academic psychology—and pretty much everywhere else globally—using psychedelics is strictly prohibited for any reason, and even conducting research requires special permits.

Within academic psychology and psychiatry, Grof’s influence on personality theory is so massive that he’s often overlooked entirely, much like how people rarely mention transpersonal psychology, despite him being one of its founders. That's about the level of recognition he gets.

These days, Grof doesn't use psychedelics for therapy anymore; he uses a technique called "holothropic breathwork™."

Research into using psychedelics for therapy is usually wrapped in controversy. You've got a tiny handful of psychiatrists and psychologists who swear by their effectiveness, but they mostly rely on clinical observations and anecdotal evidence rather than rigorous experiments. Most of them have been kicked out of the institutions where they worked; the institutes claim it was due to professional misconduct, while they argue it's just a massive conspiracy against human freedom and psychedelic use.

Alex Cooper8 said:What are your thoughts on using Psychedelics within the field of psychology?
I was just listening to some lectures by Stanislav Grof, who is pretty much considered one of the heavyweights in personality psychology—basically the face of transpersonal psychology—and he brought up some truly incredible stuff. I ended up watching a documentary on LSD afterward, featuring several psychologists who were actually involved in those research projects back in the day.

For the most part, there were massive amounts of positive results in psychotherapy, whether you were looking at treating addiction, alcoholism, or PTSD...
It seemed like the perfect tool for deep psychoanalysis, too. From what I can gather, LSD was being used in psychological practice for a solid decade... I have no idea why it was so abruptly "forgotten." The whole shift away from working with LSD happened basically the moment the government banned it.
Generally speaking, not a single shred of evidence was ever found to suggest that LSD is harmful, and when things are done under controlled conditions, the chance of having a "bad trip" is minimal.

There’s also this book about DMT, which is arguably the most potent tryptamine-based Psychedelic out there, and it's something our own brains naturally produce. It’s the only official study conducted on DMT, which, incidentally, is released during birth, orgasm, REM sleep, near-death experiences, and dying.

And more recently, there was research done with psilocybin—the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms—to treat people with chronic OCD, and the results they got were exceptionally positive.

Then there’s another controversial substance I saw a documentary on, which is MDMA (or what people call ecstasy today). Back in the 80s, it was used as a therapeutic aid for people suffering from PTSD. Psychotherapists claimed MDMA was the ultimate tool for analyzing and treating individuals with deep-seated trauma, and when it was banned, hundreds of American therapists voiced their frustration...
This last one might be a bit more contentious because it's widely documented that it can damage the serotonin system, but if you were to administer pure MDMA synthesized in, say, a Pfizer lab, paired with some antioxidants and a tiny bit of diazepam afterward, the harm would be reduced to almost nothing.

Essentially, the main theory is that almost all Psychedelics are banned in psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy simply because if people can actually "heal" themselves in a single session, pharmaceutical companies won't have anyone left to sell their drugs to—drugs that mostly just mask symptoms.

Anyway, what’s your take on using Psychedelics for healing or exploring the mind?

Oh, and one little quote: a psychologist once said that psychology without Psychedelics is like astronomy without a telescope.🙂

Back around 1967 here in the USA, psychedelics were slapped with a ban by executive decree before anyone could even do any decent research into how they affect consciousness. They just got lumped in with heroin and all kinds of other garbage, branded as "drugs." Before that whole mess, people actually called them "mind-altering drugs."
The fact that stuff like psilocybin or ayahuasca has been used for thousands of years by various indigenous cultures and tribes—for religious rituals, for healing, whatever—this whole "establishment" doesn't give a single damn about that.

So, based on everything I know about psychedelics (and trust me, I know a fair amount), I am absolutely FOR it—provided, of course, we have some serious, rigorous research done first. 🙂

Gary James88 said:People have been chewing this over quite a bit in the "LSD" thread over on the spirituality subforum. If you want to dive in, go ahead, though you'll have to dig through a lot of pages.

Stanislav Grof is actually a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, not a psychologist, though his work obviously overlaps heavily with psychology.

In academic psychology—and pretty much everywhere else globally—using psychedelics is strictly prohibited for any reason, and even conducting research requires special permits.

Within academic psychology and psychiatry, Grof’s influence on personality theory is so massive that he’s often overlooked entirely, much like how people rarely mention transpersonal psychology, despite him being one of its founders. That's about the level of recognition he gets.

These days, Grof doesn't use psychedelics for therapy anymore; he uses a technique called "holothropic breathwork™."

Research into using psychedelics for therapy is usually wrapped in controversy. You've got a tiny handful of psychiatrists and psychologists who swear by their effectiveness, but they mostly rely on clinical observations and anecdotal evidence rather than rigorous experiments. Most of them have been kicked out of the institutions where they worked; the institutes claim it was due to professional misconduct, while they argue it's just a massive conspiracy against human freedom and psychedelic use.

It’s funny how you never hear Stanislav Grof mentioned around here, and I certainly never heard any of my professors bring him up back in college, much like how they act like geniuses like Carl Jung don't exist either. It seems there’s always this subset of people—the so-called "official" scientific community—who cling to this ridiculous reductionism regardless of how many times it's been proven wrong. It isn't that transpersonal psychology is being ignored entirely; it's just that the scientific establishment refuses to acknowledge it because it threatens the status quo of their current paradigm. We’re slowly crawling out of that outdated way of thinking, which is built on the absurdity of Darwinian evolution and a purely mechanistic view of the universe. I suppose that perspective might have held some weight in the natural sciences for a while since it offered easy answers, but applying it to psychology is honestly just laughable. I will say, though, that transpersonal psychology does crop up occasionally in other places. I’m currently studying over in Europe, and one professor—who is actually a pretty big deal in the field of psychology and psychotherapy there—brought up transpersonal approaches several times during his lectures. There are even entire schools of psychotherapy based on shamanic practices, which, when you look at it through the lens of quantum theory, is starting to make more and more sense. As we continue to move away from strict Darwinian evolution and Newtonian physics, I’m convinced that transpersonal psychology is only going to become more vital. But hey, who knows, time will tell, and in the meantime, I’ll just keep drifting along. 🙂

I mean, I don't know... the statistics suggest that using LSD can actually help heal as many as 30% of the most chronic alcoholics out there, which is an absolutely massive number if you really stop to think about it. But then again, I can't help but wonder how someone struggling with PTSD would even react when they're forced to relive those moments during an analysis—like being locked in a closet by their parents or something even more harrowing. I’m a bit skeptical about that part because you're dealing with an experience that feels almost identical in intensity to the actual trauma itself, and once you dive into that kind of thing while on psychedelics, there isn't exactly an easy way to just pull back. It seems to me like a therapist would have to play a pretty vital role here, just to judge whether a person is actually ready to go head-to-head with the skeletons in their own closet.

I’ve been thinking that there is massive potential in studying what we might call "healthy" personalities—assuming such a thing even exists—and just dissecting the general mechanics of how the psyche operates. I know this because I actually went through it once, and I have to say, the sheer volume of things I experienced ended up being documented later in standard psychology textbooks; it was one of those moments where you realize, "Oh, wow, I actually lived through that." It feels like we could really flesh out our map of the human mind if we integrated these experiences. From the perspective of mainstream science, everything seems perfectly fine as long as you keep it strictly on a personal level, but that’s where the disconnect happens. The reality is that most people, following a womb regression, report these intense transpersonal experiences—descending into the realm of archetypes, as Carl Jung described them, or encountering cosmic unity and this sense of transcendental love. To some, that sounds ridiculous, but from what I’ve gathered reading up and watching documentaries on new science—the kind rooted in quantum theory and intelligent evolution—it all fits together into a perfectly coherent model.

And just one more thing for those who might not be aware, Francis Crick—the man who actually discovered the structure of DNA—had previously envisioned the DNA molecule as a twisted chain while under the influence of LSD... though, of course, that was all neatly swept under the rug and only came to light after he passed away. There’s also that book out there about how Amazonian shamans have been seeing DNA strands during Ayahuasca (DMT) trips, titled Cosmic Serpent, which you can find downloading somewhere online if you look hard enough.

But regarding MDMA, which isn't technically classified as a psychedelic, I truly believe it could have legitimate uses in treating PTSD because there isn't really a risk of a "bad trip," and it proves effective in the vast majority of cases... I remember a woman in a documentary I watched, a survivor of sexual assault, speaking about it. Just imagine how much human suffering could be averted—not to mention the massive reduction in the production of antidepressants and anxiolytics.

On a broader note, I feel like a fundamental human right should include the consumption of any plant, fungus, or cactus, especially since we constantly whine about being such a deeply religious nation—and yes, in this century, when people are literally planning to colonize Mars, we’re still clinging to these old identities with pride, which is both sad and true. Where do we get the authority to claim that something God created is forbidden to us humans because it's "not good"? If we follow that logic, then His creation isn't good, which means He isn't good either, and then everything just collapses into total chaos, haha. But seriously, I think people should have the right to explore their own consciousness; sure, there would be abuse, and it certainly wouldn't be insignificant... but education is the key, though how can we realistically expect objective education in a society that is still preoccupied with infantile nonsense—debating which nation is superior, which religion is truer, whose skin color is more valuable, whether to introduce sex education in schools, or if homosexuality is a disease and other such trivialities.

Greetings to everyone on the forum; I'm new here, but I have to admit you guys are pretty cool.👍

It’s nice to run into someone interested in transpersonal psychology. I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading up on it and even sat in on some lectures by psychiatrists who leaned into those theories. Reading these critiques regarding the flaws of reductionism and the standard Western scientific paradigm—and the supposed need to overhaul the entire psychological establishment—feels like looking at my younger self from a few years back 🙂. Eventually, I cooled off on all that transpersonal theory, Psychedelic research, Carl Jung, and that whole "left-field" school of thought.

What strikes me is that everyone I’ve met who gets obsessed with a specific theory always insists it’s going to be the next big breakthrough in psychology. But transpersonal psychology isn't exactly new; it’s been around for over 40 years and still hasn't made any real dent in the mainstream. You’ll hear transpersonalists, like Stanislav Grof, claiming that reductionism is on its deathbed, but I suspect the psychological establishment has just successfully pushed them to the fringes, keeping them relegated to a handful of enthusiasts gathered around a few niche institutes.

Take evolutionary psychology, for example. It’s having a massive moment right now because it’s built on objective scientific research and, frankly, a fairly reductionist way of thinking. I don't think we should take the critics of reductionism at their word when they claim it's failing, especially when disciplines like cognitive neuroscience and behavioral genetics are absolutely dominating the field while the transpersonal approach remains stuck on the margins.

For there to be real substance in psychedelic studies or concepts like those proposed by Stanislav Grof, there needs to be more cohesion. To me, the fundamental disagreements regarding human personality among the heavyweights of transpersonal psychology suggest the field is pretty disorganized. Carl Jung said one thing, Stanislav Grof agreed with parts of it but rejected others and added his own spin, and then Ken Wilber abandoned transpersonal psychology entirely to build his own Integral approach. Essentially, there's plenty of lofty philosophy and good intentions, but very little concrete results or unified theory. They constantly bring up spirituality, the soul, or metaphysical constructs like good and evil, yet many researchers in this field can't even define these terms clearly—some aren't even sure if they exist as real entities or are just constructs of the human psyche.

I should also mention that Francis Crick lost almost all credibility recently when he came out with those eugenicist theories about intelligence that most people dismissed as scientifically baseless and racist. 😲, plus you have physicists working in quantum theory who largely reject attempts to apply quantum mechanics to the human psyche and behavior—something some psychologists try to do, which looks highly dubious from a scientific standpoint.

You’re right about quite a few things.

It’s true that behavioral genetics and cognitive neuroscience currently grab the lion's share of the funding and attention, but I honestly don't see them stumbling upon any profound truths no matter how many times they try. The issue is pretty straightforward: they’re attempting to explain the human condition through the lens of conventional science—a field that, until just a century ago, was mostly preoccupied with studying the physical world and the reality we inhabit. The fundamental problem is that we, as sentient beings, are far more complex than the objective reality we live in. That's why I suspect we’ll eventually see the mainstream rise of a transpersonal approach; I actually just read somewhere that by mid-2008, some researchers in Scandinavia—I can't be entirely sure if it was Denmark specifically—were planning to start conducting studies involving LSD.

But hey, only time will tell.🙂

It’ll happen, one step at a time. Science moves slowly, but it gets there. Transpersonal psychology deals with concepts that are still miles away from being validated by scientific rigor, and science only advances as fast as its own methodology allows. I’ve lost count of how many "mainstream" psychology researchers have told me that while holism isn't a bad idea in theory, we just don't have the reliable methods or technology yet 🙂—because philosophizing doesn't exactly count as a rigorous metric. Psychology already struggles when trying to track three or four interacting variables; trying to account for a human being in their entirety is an absolute nightmare of infinite variables and unpredictable effects.

Most people have probably heard those stories about using LSD to help folks kick an alcohol addiction
I saw this one documentary on YouTube claiming a 50% success rate, but honestly, as far as I can tell, none of that is actually verified—it could just be someone talking nonsense, as the old saying goes...

But what does the actual medical establishment say? What’s the consensus regarding psychedelic substances in general? How do they view the states they induce, what are the potential risks, and has anyone actually documented any real benefits?

Back in the States, during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, there was this small circle of psychiatrists and psychologists who were actually pretty keen on using psychedelics in patient treatment. But once most of those substances were slapped with Schedule I status—meaning they were deemed to have high abuse potential and zero medical utility—research and treatment basically vanished. Trying to navigate the federal red tape and strict oversight required for that kind of work became an absolute nightmare.
It was much the same in other countries.

Plus, a huge chunk of mainstream psychology and psychiatry never saw psychedelic experiences as anything more than hallucinatory or delirious states caused by brain chemistry shifts; they just dismissed it all as "psychedelic poisoning." The minority who disagreed believed these were actually profound shifts in consciousness that, if handled correctly, could lead to genuine symptom relief and personal growth.

I haven't heard of that school of thought ever gaining any traction here in America. Given how our legal system and research institutions operate, I doubt anyone could even secure the necessary permits; they'd probably just look at you like you're crazy for trying. That said, some research is being done now in places like Switzerland or the US, and likely a few other spots too.

And on top of that, there’s always that looming risk for anyone with a genetic predisposition—they could end up stuck in a permanent psychotic state after just one single use.

So, are you suggesting that the actual purity or quality of the LSD doesn't even factor into the equation?

Not primarily.

Rebecca Bennett41 said:So, are you suggesting that the actual purity or quality of the LSD doesn't even factor into the equation?

No, but dosage definitely plays a role.

And what would one even consider a standard dosage in this context?

Honestly, LSD was hands down the worst thing I've dealt with in the last decade. The last time I touched it was five years ago back when we were still hitting those massive warehouse raves. You dive deep into your own subconscious and suddenly you think you’ve cracked the code on how everything works. But there's a catch—it creates this weird sense of authority that just pushes people away from you. After the trip wears off, it’s just you and your own isolated beliefs left standing. People say it's not for everyone for a reason. It’s really for the "loners" and the "freaks"—those types who want to exist on the fringes of society and don't need anything in life except a massive high. Personally? I much prefer being grounded on this side of things. But hey, to each their own.👍

I personally have zero experience with LSD. I haven't ventured into any of the heavier substances, though I’ll admit the temptation hits me quite frequently. I constantly find myself fighting the urge, yet somehow
I manage to stay on track(:-))) and steer clear. For me, the absolute worst thing out there is alcohol.

LSD isn't actually a bad drug—it’s just dangerous because it isn't for everyone. The whole thing is that LSD forces you to see stuff that most people completely miss during their everyday lives. At that point, it's really just down to whether you can handle those realizations without losing your mind, or if you can actually turn them into some kind of incredible experience.

I know people who have tried doing mental math during a trip just to see if they could still function. For them, it was a fun little challenge, but eventually, someone is going to run into a wall and get absolutely wrecked because they aren't mentally equipped for that kind of nonsense. That's exactly where that infamous "trigger" comes from—that spark that sets off all sorts of psychological issues down the road.

That sounds absolutely fascinating...

Rebecca Bennett41 said:And what would one even consider a standard dosage in this context?

There isn't really a clear line here, and "normal" is a pretty vague term—normal for whom? You're looking at roughly 0-30 micrograms to feel anything at all, while anything over 150 micrograms could be considered a massive dose.
I suppose there are some people who might spiral into a psychotic break just thinking about taking LSD, regardless of the amount. Maybe we should just listen to our parents when they say drugs are bad news.

I find myself in total agreement; there is certainly a subset of people who operate that way. It’s just like those folks who have one single beer at a local pub and immediately start shouting, "Man, I am absolutely wasted!!"