When people take psychedelics, they often report experiences akin to fanciful dreams: going back into their mother’s womb, where they fight the devil; encountering a “NASA space guy” who scrubs their brain clean; imagining the self as a rotting, decaying skeleton. But these visions are also often revelatory to the person experiencing them — for instance, the woman who saw herself as a skeleton was in treatment for an eating disorder, and her ayahuasca-spurred vision encouraged her to try to start gaining weight again. As scientists further explore the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs, they keep running into such tales — and they disagree about where they fit into psychedelic science.
5 Questions for Joost Breeksema
This is such an awesome interview.