Hallucinogens for Depression Work Like Magic

(New York Times) “All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating. Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water’s gone. And then you’re gone.” 


That's how Clark Martin, a clinical psychologist himself, with lifelong, seemingly intractable depression described the experience of taking psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient better known as the "magic" in magic mushrooms, as research subject in a study at Johns Hopkins. 


To  those familiar with mindfulness, a practice imported from Eastern meditation to Western psychology with great, empirically documented success, this could be described as mindfulness squared. Or more like mindfulness cubed. Where mindfulness involves slowly training patients to learn to fully experience their present with full acceptance,  


“Under the influences of hallucinogens,” writes a UCLA researcher working on psilocybin experiments, “individuals transcend their primary identification with their bodies and experience ego-free states before the time of their actual physical demise, and return with a new perspective and profound acceptance of the life constant: change.”


As Dr. Martin describes, "It was a whole personality shift for me. I wasn’t any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people. You have a feeling of attunement with other people.”

1UP, indeed!