It’s Time to Learn About Psychedelic Therapy for Grief… It Will be Legal Sooner Than You Think.
One of the most compelling lectures scheduled for next week’s Reimagine: End of Life Event is one by Dr. Richard Louis Miller at Congregation Emanu-El. Dr. Richard Louis Miller, M.A., Ph.D., has been a practicing psychologist for the past 45+ years and is the Founder & CEO of Wilbur Hot Springs providing healing, prevention, and health maintenance as well as author of the book “Psychedelic Medicine.” Dr. Miller will discuss the new science around the use of psychedelic therapy and death, and the profound new understanding of brain science around trauma, anxiety, and addiction. Click here to learn more about Reimagine: End of Life featuring over 100 death-themed events!
Dr. Richard Miller tells Connecting Directors, “Psychedelic Therapy is the use of psychedelic medicine for the purposes of healing trauma, facilitating, and enhancing, personal growth and development. Dying is simply a transitional part of our life development. Psychedelic medicine allows one to gain perspective on this event rather than fear it.”
Embracing the revival of psychedelic research and the discovery of new therapeutic uses, Dr. Richard Louis Miller will discuss what is happening today in psychedelic medicine and what will happen in the future. He is joined at Reimagine by top researchers in this field, including Rick Doblin, Stanislav Grof, James Fadiman, Julie Holland, and Dennis McKenna.
Click to RSVP for Dr. Miller’s free lecture in San Fransisco on Wednesday, Apr 18, 2018, 7:15 PM – 9:00 PM.
What is Psychedelic Therapy?
Psychedelic therapy involves the use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, and MDMA to assist in psychotherapy. Psychedelic therapy has been linked to helping treat eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, major depression, PTSD, and Anxiety. The drugs are illegal in the United States, but many countries have conducted extensive research and legalized the drug including countries in Europe. Treatment in the U.S. is in the experimental stages with the government granting permission for just a handful of studies each year.
Despite the poor reputation psychedelics gained in the United States in the 1960’s due to widespread counterculture use of the drugs, they have been proven harmless in moderation by a study published in the Psychopharmacology journal. The results of the study titled “Acute Psychological and Physiological Effects of Psilocybin in Healthy Humans” indicate that psilocybin it is not hazardous to physical health.
The New York Times Reported in 2012 about a study conducted by Charles Grob, a psychiatrist and researcher at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center. In the study, Grob administered psilocybin (an active component of magic mushrooms) to end-stage cancer patients to see if it could reduce their fear of death. The results were remarkably successful at reducing the fear of death during the time of treatment and in the months following treatment.
In his study, Grob observed that one patient, Pam Sakuda, who had eyeshades draped over her face during the treatment, began to cry. Later, Sakuda revealed to Grob that the source of her tears was a keen empathetic understanding of what her spouse, Norbert, would feel when she died.
Grob’s studies were inspiredly Stanislav Grof, a psychiatrist born in Prague and a father of the study of psychedelic medicine for the dying. The NTY Reported that Grof “described cancer patients clenched with fear who, under the influence of LSD or DPT, experienced relief from the terror of dying — and not just during their psychedelic sessions but for weeks and months afterward.
The most recent research in the field can be read in Dr. Richard Louis Miller’s book “Psychedelic Medicine” published in November 2017 and available here.
Why Does Psychedelic Therapy Work?
It turns out we have a long road ahead for psychedelic research. We still have a very limited understanding of why it actually works to treat psychological conditions like cluster headaches, PTSD, depression, and early childhood trauma.
Grob told the New York Times, “It’s a bit of a mystery. I don’t really have altogether a definitive answer as to why the drug eases the fear of death, but we do know that from time immemorial individuals who have transformative spiritual experiences come to a very different view of themselves and the world around them and thus are able to handle their own deaths differently.”
Where Can Your Interested Customers Find Treatment?
According to psychedelictimes.com, “Psychedelic therapy is still illegal in the US, but thanks to the efforts of organizations like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), psychedelics like MDMA are on track to become a FDA-approved prescription medicine within a few years…” “There are some psychedelic-assisted clinical trials happening at prominent hospitals and universities, but the number of participants admitted to these studies are quite low. Generally speaking, if you want to find psychedelic treatment in the the near future, you will have to travel outside of the US to places like Mexico, Brazil, and Costa Rica.”
As for the future legal availably of psychedelic therapy treatment in the United States, Dr. Richard Miller says:
The US government has recently allowed a limited amount of research but the overall suppressive illegality is a major constraint. There are phase research 3 trials taking place with MDMA and this medication may be legally available by 2021.
