Psychedelic-Assissted Therapy for Veterans and Personality Improvement
Psychedelic-assisted therapy at the VA
Psychedelic-assisted therapy has recently gained mainstream acceptance among civilians, but what about for members of the military and veterans?
This therapy may soon be an option for some veterans. As “Lucid” reports, “psychedelic-assisted therapy is on the rise at some veterans administration hospitals.”
Phase 3 clinical trials of MDMA therapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder have been so successful, with 68 percent of participants in remission, the FDA granted MDMA a special ‘Breakthrough Therapy’ designation. But this therapy is not yet available all over the country, prompting more researchers to call on the VA to create protocols for MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine therapies. These psychedelics are still classified as Schedule 1 narcotics, and it will take political will and bipartisan support to win FDA approval.
If that happens, researchers at the forefront of these therapies hope to see VA hospitals nationwide using psychedelics to help veterans by the year 2024.
Could the use of hallucinogens actually improve your personality?
A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology looked at how psychedelics affect personality. Researchers recruited adults who were planning on using hallucinogens in the near future and asked them to fill out a survey regarding their personality, based on the five-factor model of personality traits:
- Extraversion
- Neuroticism
- Openness to experience
- Agreeableness
- Conscientiousness
Participants took the survey three times — before their psychedelic experience, two weeks after, and four weeks after. The results were impressive, with people reporting a reduction in neuroticism and an increase in agreeableness, even four weeks after their experience.
Brandon Weiss, a psychologist at Imperial College London and lead researcher told Psychology Today, “[F]irst, people seemed to report that they were not as quarrelsome or critical in their interactions with others. Second, people reported that they were less easily upset by things and less anxious.”
Weiss also pointed out that despite these positive outcomes, hallucinogens can be dangerous, especially with people who have pre-existing psychosis. More data is needed to confirm the studies’ findings. As a large number of participants did not follow through with the entire survey. But this is more evidence that hallucinogens could be another tool to help with mental health.
Scientists Find DMT Produces a Waking Dream State
Since the beginning of humanity, dreams have played an important role in spirituality, with shamans and sages interpreting them for their deeper meaning. In modern times, Freud and Jung have brought dream study to a new level, exploring the relationship of dreams to the subconscious and unconscious, looking for ways that a deeper self tries to communicate with the conscious one. And now, we’ve come to an even greater look at dreams via the influence of natural plants that contain what has been termed “the spirit molecule” — DMT (dimethyltryptamine). Researchers are now studying DMT’s ability to actually create a type of waking dream.
DMT is well known to neuroscientists, avid users of hallucinogenic plants, and ethnobotanists. The DMT compound produces brief and intense visual and auditory hallucinogenic experiences, whether consumed through ayahuasca, or as an isolated chemical — a white crystalline powder derived from plants found in Mexico, South America, and parts of Asia.
Medical News Today reported that the chemical root structure of DMT acts as a non-selective agonist (a substance that initiates a physiological response when combined with a receptor) at most or all serotonin receptors in the body’s cells. Serotonin has been called the happy chemical because it contributes to wellbeing and happiness. DMT is also produced naturally in the body in the lungs and in minute doses in certain areas of the brain.
