[PragmaticPulp]

> It should be noted that in the original article the test subjects (1) take Psilocybin only once and (2) are followed from this dose by hours of therapy by a professional psychologist.

Virtually every modern psychedelic study includes huge amounts of therapy. I actually don’t know if review boards would even approve a study which didn’t have a significant therapy component right now.

This makes the study results non-portable to recreational use. Many of the depression studies use upwards of 20 therapy sessions around the 1 or 2 psychedelic sessions, which is nothing like what happens when taking psychedelics recreationally.

[notch656a]

But I think you'd also be quite hard pressed to find any peer-reviewed study that shows a professional therapist yields better results regarding long-term detriment after exposure to psychedelics than mere access to health care when needed along with friends or whatever circumstance people find most enjoyable to take psychedelics in.

There's scant evidence that mandatory therapy sessions are the determining factor of whether or not psychedelics can be taken safely.

This is simply a poorly understood area, scientifically, due in part to government restriction on research. The intertwining of the therapy could mean psychedelics counteracted bad therapy, or the inverse, or neither.

I am going to offer a piece of opinion here that will offend the psychiatrists, psychedelics enthusiasts, and many of those with more conservative views about drug use: what if psychedelic drugs are just another form of entertainment for the mind, like television. What if our ancestors in places like indigenous communities in present-day Mexico actually first started taking them because it GAVE THEM SOMETHING TO DO and a reprieve from boredom, and the spiritual interpretations later just added to the entertainment. What if therapists and psychiatrists, lawmakers, doctors, parents, shaman are making much ado about nothing while injecting their own influence into the mix, particularly for the relatively low risk drugs.