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> do I want some recent college graduate with a psychology degree to be in charge of my experience? Um, no. This strikes me as a very strange way of framing th

by nimih 4y ago

> do I want some recent college graduate with a psychology degree to be in charge of my experience? Um, no. This strikes me as a very strange way of framing things. When you phrase it that way, I'd also reflexively say "no," but on the other hand, would I want a well-trained and compassionate professional, whose judgement I trust and who is following what the medical community has decided are best practices, to guide me through a psychedelic experience? Well yes I would, and that's not really much different than the bar I set for therapists and other medical professionals. edit: It occurs to me that maybe your point is more that this isn't a good route to full legalization (or at least a national push towards rescheduling/decriminalization), rather than about the efficacy/prudence of psychedelic-assisted therapy. On that front, in defense of the shrinks, this is basically following the same model as cannabis, whose decriminalization has been on whole a pretty successful effort so far IMO.

labrador 4y ago
I said that because psychedelic therapy is an emerging treatment so you're going to get a lot of young therapists at first. There aren't enough older ones with psychedelic experience to go around. I've done psychedelic therapy with an experienced therapist at a precursor to MAPS Santa Cruz [1] and I felt the therapist got in the way. She was mostly there to keep me safe, which I didn't need. Then she projected her own experience in interpreting mine. That said, for the average person who doesn't do psychedelics (my mother for example) the therapist patient setting is the way to go. That model also provides the best path for legalization. I'm not going to complain about how it gets legalized because I understand how to compromise. My complaint is that I shouldn't have to go to a therapist to do it legally, but that's further down the road. As you said, that process has been successful for marijuana. [1] Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies https://maps.org/ https://maps.org/

by nimih 4y ago

labrador 4y ago

I said that because psychedelic therapy is an emerging treatment so you're going to get a lot of young therapists at first. There aren't enough older ones with psychedelic experience to go around. I've done psychedelic therapy with an experienced therapist at a precursor to MAPS Santa Cruz [1] and I felt the therapist got in the way. She was mostly there to keep me safe, which I didn't need. Then she projected her own experience in interpreting mine. That said, for the average person who doesn't do psychedelics (my mother for example) the therapist patient setting is the way to go. That model also provides the best path for legalization. I'm not going to complain about how it gets legalized because I understand how to compromise. My complaint is that I shouldn't have to go to a therapist to do it legally, but that's further down the road. As you said, that process has been successful for marijuana. [1] Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies https://maps.org/ https://maps.org/