The potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs. What's the fuss?

Описание: Psychedelics (meaning soul-manifesting) are traditionally known as hallucinogens and are usually associated with 70s hippies. Due to the societal issues with recreational drug use such substances have largely become illegal, been driven underground and developed negative connotations.

Due to rise of the internet, people can now communicate their experiences freely and anonymously with their use of these illegal (and legal in some countries) substances. This led to a huge increase in ‘psychonauts’ reporting experiences that described all sorts of visual, physical, and cognitive altering effects. Thanks to in-depth ‘trip reports ‘provided by people describing their ‘journeys’, it has been found that there is a common theme with people finding reductions in anxiety, depression, trauma, and sometimes an increase in the quality of their lives. Most interestingly, these cognitive effects have gained the interest of neuroscientists and psychologists as a way of being able to potentially help individuals.

Leading universities around the world (for example Imperial College and King’s College in London and Johns Hopkins in the States) have set up research centres to look at how psychedelic drugs could be used in controlled conditions for therapeutic benefit.

In this talk, I review the background to the development of some of these drugs, the rise of their attempted use in therapy and what researchers are beginning to find out.

#neuroscience #psychedelics #therapy