Observing the profound effect that a naturally occurring, mind-altering compound could have on a person in psychological distress inspired a journey of discovery. Dr. Settlage read renowned science writer Michael Pollan’s book “How to Change Your Mind,” which details much of the lost history of experimentation with psychedelics, and she was amazed at how much research already existed. “When I was in grad school, I never learned about this whole history and how promising psychedelics were psychotherapeutically,” she says.
What Settlage discovered was that a highly successful, decades-long program of drug research and trials had been halted at the stroke of a pen and kept hidden for years. Drug trials begun in the 1950s that had proved to be highly effective in the treatment of alcoholism, depression, and anxiety were shut down by presidential decree. Draconian laws against possession were passed, condemning young users to long prison sentences and casting a hard freeze on scientific inquiry. Decades later, the prohibitions are thawing. Researchers today are rediscovering these once-forbidden substances and have been dazzled by the results. Many believe a psychedelic renaissance has dawned.
Throwing Open the Doors of Perception
Looking back through the prism of criminalization, it is difficult to grasp how widely accepted the therapeutic promise was for lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and other hallucinogens. Throughout the ’50s, researchers sought to ascertain how “psychedelics” could be beneficial in psychopharmacological settings. At the same time, supporters of the psychedelic movement endeavored to legitimize their use among “healthy normals” by introducing them to prominent members of society across a broad spectrum of disciplines—captains of industry, Silicon Valley pioneers, and Hollywood actors, including screen star Cary Grant.
Then, in the early ’60s, LSD “escaped the lab.” Young people were dropping bootleg LSD, which was inexpensive and not yet illegal, while a Harvard psychology professor named Timothy Leary advised young people to “tune in, turn on, and drop out.” The explosion of the use of hallucinogens among teenagers and college students ignited a moral panic among parents and politicians alike.
In 1971, President Nixon declared drug abuse public enemy number one and signed the Comprehensive. Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, ending nearly all government-funded research. For nearly the next half century, hallucinogenic drugs were listed as Schedule 1 narcotics, and the movement Leary sought to lead was relegated to head shop mythology.
“I went to Berkeley in the ’90s, and I never heard a thing about the large body of academic and clinical research using LSD and psilocybin,” Dr. Settlage says. “It was a shock that all this had happened back then without me knowing.”
Decriminalizing Nature
What gets lost in the crackdown by the federal government, which was motivated in part by a fear and loathing of counterculture gurus like Leary and their perceived mind control over a large swath of American youth, is that naturally occurring psychedelics—including psilocybin, peyote, and ayahuasca—have been used by humans for centuries, even millennia. Furthermore, the harsh punishment for even small doses scared away researchers who had years of experience in utilizing these substances. And though the lengths of some sentences have changed, many of these laws are still in place.
For more than 20 years, any research being done was conducted underground, and some continues today. “It's kind of the wild west out there,” Dr. Settlage says. “I do think people have been doing underground work for years and have been tremendous help to a lot of people.”
Talking with people who describe transformative experiences was also pivotal in the course of her research. “Just hearing people’s stories was kind of a spiritual awakening,” she says, “about a lot of things I had wanted to believe but hadn't allowed myself to. Since then, I haven't looked back.”
Green Shoots of a Psychedelic Spring
Last year, Dr. Settlage attended a training by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) for the use of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) for treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The MAPS organization is currently in stage three clinical trials for the use of MDMA to treat PTSD, which Dr. Settlage hopes will gain approval so MDMA can be prescribed to qualified patients outside of an experimental clinical setting. Since her interest in this area has become more widely known among her colleagues, Dr. Settlage says she has been overwhelmed with questions. “Students are asking me about it all the time,” she says. “It comes up in our courses quite a bit.”
Dr. Settlage believes Saybrook is a natural home for research into the broader scientific and cultural significance of this renewed focus on psychedelics, given the traditions for open inquiry among the students and faculty. Richard Tarnas, Ph.D., who received his doctorate from Saybrook University in 1976, was an acolyte of Stanislav Grof, Ph.D., an early researcher into psychedelics and former clinical and research fellow at Johns Hopkins University, which is currently one of the epicenters of renewed research into psychedelics. Dr. Tarnas went on to found the program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
Ritual and Community
Coming from a dance background, Selene Kumin Vega, Ph.D., professor in the Mind-Body Medicine Department at Saybrook, espouses the essentiality of mind-body wellness as well as the centrality of the individual within a group setting, and that philosophy has guided her work in drug-assisted therapy. She feels that more and more people are entering into these sorts of therapies with the understanding that there is something sacred about them. “People in Native American peyote circles aren’t taking peyote as a party drug,” she says. “They are taking it as a healing drug, not just for individual healing, but for community healing.”
This is a key aspect of the culture of psychedelics in its more traditional forms that attracts Dr. Vega within the context of the mind-body wellness program: a sense of healing within a larger context. “That health and wellness aren't just individual activities,” she says. “They are community processes.”
Like Dr. Settlage, Dr. Vega has undergone MAPS training, which she says aligns well with the way she is accustomed to working. The guide is not there to direct the experience. They are there to create “a safe container for whatever is happening.” The key is to trust the client and allow them to go where the experience takes them rather than to steer them toward a predetermined outcome. For instance, researchers in the 1950s and ’60s noticed that clients tended toward outcomes that mirrored the training of the clinician administering the drug and providing their treatment. In contrast, Dr. Vega sees contemporary approaches as being very different. “Our role is really more as a midwife to follow the process that’s going on rather than try to make it go a certain way,” she says.
Freeing the Mind in Safe Settings
While the client is enabled to associate freely during these sessions in MDMA assisted therapy, the protocols are organized to include typically three preparatory sessions before the medicine is introduced. Then, clients alternate between sessions in which the drug is administered in the presence of a guide followed by a session to process that experience. The course of treatment takes nine to 12 sessions. However, as other substances, including psilocybin, move through trials and are approved for use, protocols will vary, and, of course, people continue to experiment on their own.
“As a therapist, I’ve worked with people who had had experiences in an ayahuasca circle or in just an LSD trip and then come in to say, ‘Help me understand what that was and what it means for me in my life,’” Dr. Vega says. “And the work that we do then has to do with reconnecting with that state of consciousness that they went to in a very deep way, exploring what happened for them, and what it feels like now in their body in a way that helps to integrate that experience.”
Gazing Beyond the Horizon
As befitting the substances themselves, the future of psychedelic inquiry is both foreseeable and, for now, unknowable. Given the status of current research, the clinical use of MDMA and psilocybin are all but certain. A recent article in National Geographic described how drug manufacturers are working on perfecting psilocybin delivery so that the drug takes effect more quickly, the effects do not last as long, and the potential for nausea as a side effect is reduced.
What is less clear, with some states looking to legalize psilocybin as they have marijuana, is what the future of personal use, outside of clinical applications, will look like. Dr. Settlage is of two minds on the question. “For me, in the beginning, I was so enthusiastic that I felt like a proselytizer, like, ‘Everybody should have this, go out and do it,’” she says. “But I no longer feel that way. It’s wise to approach these drugs with caution, and I am on the fence about how regulated they should be or how prescriptive they should be. The extent to which an individual can make that choice versus the state is another question.”
What seems certain, however, is that armed with the lessons of the past, researchers are going to make great strides in treating mental illness with the use of substances the possession of which can, currently, get you arrested. As Dr. Vega says, “I am so excited that this is getting out into the world and the way that it seems to be kind of exploding everywhere around us. I think it’s going to make a huge difference.”
*The term was coined by the Canadian psychiatrist Humphry Osmond during correspondence with the visionary writer Aldous Huxley.