“Psychedelics are to the study of the mind what the microscope is to biology and the telescope is to astronomy.”
- Dr. Stanislav Grof.
Prior to researching this topic, I conceived of palliative care as specifically care for patients with terminal illnesses. While these patients do often seek out palliative care, a patient need not be terminally ill to receive such care. Palliative healthcare treats the symptoms of an illness rather than its cause, which seems to run counter to standard medical philosophy, but has yielded some surprising recoveries and overall reduction of suffering (1). In the case of the terminally ill, treating one’s symptoms is often the only thing we can do, which is why you see this field commonly associated specifically with end-of-life care.
Palliative care is a rich interdisciplinary field, recruiting everything from physicians and advanced practice nurses to chaplains, social workers, and psychologists (2). This diversity is paramount. While palliative care treats physical discomfort, it must also be flexible enough to have an effective treatment for psychological woes. Terminally ill patients understandably experience a lot of death anxiety and debilitating depression relating to their condition. The question is, is our current understanding of palliative care equipped for the task? While healthcare professionals generally feel confident in the efficacy of our current methods, some feel that we could be doing more (2). This is where psychedelics enter the picture.
The current philosophy of treating patients with death anxiety, or “existential distress,” suggests a meaning-centered approach. Healthcare professionals feel that, if psychedelic-assisted therapies (PAT) are to be effective, they will need to be integrated into existing models of treatment (2). As it so happens, psychedelics have the potential to occasion mystical experiences which subjects have reported as being among the most meaningful experiences of their lives. To see how that might be the case, I strongly suggest you read Mark Huslage’s account of his experience as a subject in a study conducted by Johns Hopkins University. He describes an experience that is nothing short of a shamanic vision quest.
https://www.sociedelic.com/my-first-psychedelic-experience-at-johns-hopkins-changed-my-life/
Here is a short video clip of a different patient who was able to overcome the existential distress related to her terminal cancer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqnPVZUzDPc
Though they acknowledge the potential of PAT, healthcare professionals are hesitant because of the lack of evidence to support the efficacy of such treatments. The current body of research is admittedly small, and mostly recent. If you know your history, you know that the CIA was (unethically) playing around with LSD way back in the 1950’s. So psychedelics have been well known for at least 70 years. You might be thinking, “wait a minute, where is all the research? It’s been 70 years!” You can thank the war on drugs for that one.
PAT are experiencing something of a renaissance currently. Psychedelics have been cornerstones for various religious traditions since time immemorial, and PAT date back to the 1950’s. However, following their adoption by the counterculture, psychedelics quickly became stigmatized as a drug for hippies and burnouts. Subsequently, psychedelics fell prey to the war on drugs, earning the label of schedule 1 substance. Research into these substances went dark and has only begun to reemerge in the past 20-30 years. Slowly, both the public and the scientific community are warming up to the idea of PAT. Recently, psilocybin (the active chemical in magic mushrooms) earned the FDA designation of breakthrough therapy for treatment-resistant depression, and MDMA earned the same status for treatment of PTSD (3).
References
Psychedelics in Palliative Care. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/psychedelics-in-palliative-care/
Palliative care provider attitudes toward existential distress and treatment with psychedelic-assisted therapies. https://bmcpalliatcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12904-021-00889-x
Ted talk by Rick Doblin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9XD8yRPxc8&t=779s
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