What Are Psychedelics? How Do Psychedelics Work?
Psychedelics are everywhere. They're growing immensely popular in therapeutic and even in non-therapeutic settings, so what's all the buzz about? [1]
In this article (and video above), we will walk you through the basics of psychedelics: what they are and how they work in therapeutic settings.
The goal is for you to be able to emerge from this article/video with a solid foundational understanding of how psychedelics work.
Overview
The video speaker is Nick Martin, M.A., the founder of our organization Pivot Psychedelics: a team of therapists and guides who support people through psychedelic therapy and guided psychedelic journeys.
While we don't know everything, our team has supported many, many people on intentional psychedelic journeys, so we look to share some of our experience and information with you today.
We'll start off by covering the topic "What Are Psychedelics?" and then we'll go into the topic "How Do Psychedelics Work?", with a particular focus on the therapeutic benefits for our mental health and overall wellness.
And before we jump into that, we want to acknowledge three things.
We approach psychedelics from primarily a Clinical, Western framework. We are a team of therapists guides and coaches, and so that's our orientation to this type of work. There certainly are other approaches; we just want to acknowledge where we are coming from.
Pivot is a team of mental health professionals, but we're not neuroscientists and we don't claim to know everything about how the brain and brain chemistry and neurological connections work. Again we're more interested in the therapeutic benefits and that's really the undertones for our article/video today: how do psychedelics impact how we feel, our sense of happiness joy, connection, purpose, and so forth.
We do not support or endorse the use sale, transfer, acquisition of any type of illicit substances or any illegal activity for that matter. The information we provide today is just that: information. We are not attorneys; we are not medical professionals, so always check with local laws and a medical professional like a doctor or a psychiatrist to understand what's legal for you to pursue and what's safe for you to pursue.
What Are Psychedelics?
All right and with that said let's dive into what are psychedelics. And we'll start by actually looking at the term psychedelic. This word "psychedelic" comes from Greek Roots:
"psyche" = mind, soul or spirit
"delic" = revealing manifesting or made visible
Put together it essentially translates into "mind manifesting" or "soul revealing".
History of Psychedelics
In the mid 20th century, psychedelics emerged onto the scene for American and European researchers.
A Swiss chemist named Albert Hoffman first synthesized LSD. I encourage you to take a look at him maybe just Google him if you want to learn more about him.
Similarly an Indigenous woman named Maria Sabina is often times credited as being the person responsible for introducing psilocybin containing magic mushrooms to the West. So take a look at those two individuals if you want to learn more.
The mid 20th century is when we saw psychedelics emerge onto the scene in the Western world.
What people began to realize at this time is that psychedelics are extremely powerful. They could onset amazing, even transcendental experiences, which could have positive implications for people 's psychological as in their mental health and emotional well-being.
What's more, these psychedelic medicines seem to bring about positive therapeutic benefits well beyond the journey itself. People saw improvements in how they felt days, weeks, months, even years after a psychedelic experience. [2]
It's as if people could feel a sense of clarity, a sense of wholeness again, and this was studied throughout the 20th century.
Here in the 21st century, we've seen a little bit of a Renaissance in the psychedelic space, and we won't cover all the details in this article/video but we'll certainly pull from some of the ideas that we've learned from clinical research over the last two decades.
Psychoactive vs Psychedelic Substances
In this section we’ll explore what makes a psychedelic a psychedelic and how are they similar or different from other substances.
Let's first zoom out and talk about drugs in general.
There are many types of substances or drugs out there, some that affect our consciousness and some that do not.
Take caffeine for example. Caffeine is a psychoactive substance meaning that it impacts our consciousness or the way that we think. Most people feel, when they consume caffeine from coffee or tea, a sense of energy, an uplift in their energy or their focus, perhaps they feel even a little bit of anxiety, but it has this psychoactive property. You think differently when you've consumed caffeine.
There are plenty of psychoactive substances that are out there. Take nicotine for example which comes from tobacco leaves or THC which is found in cannabis.
An example of a non-psychoactive substance would be something like ibuprofen. This drug impacts our inflammation and our sense of pain, but it doesn't impact the way that we think.
Now psychedelics are indeed psychoactive, they impact our consciousness, but they get their own distinction as psychedelic because of their mind manifesting or soul revealing qualities.
Types of Psychedelics
There are a few ways to classify psychedelics, and scientists can't always agree on how to classify them, so we hope we don't step on too many people's toes, but we're going to break it down into two main categories.
The first category is what's called "classic psychedelics". These are serotonergic psychedelics because they impact our serotonin receptors. Substances include:
LSD
Psilocybin, which is found in magic mushrooms
Mescaline, which is found in peyote and huachuma cactus
DMT, which is found in a variety of forms including Ayahuasca
These substances work on our serotonin receptors and on set what we've introduced as this mind manifesting or soul revealing quality.
The second group doesn't have a pretty name like classic psychedelics so we'll just call them the "non-classic psychedelics".
And this is a bit of a catch-all group for other substances that are indeed psychoactive, similar to the classics in that they produce some soul revealing or mind manifesting qualities, but they engage in the brain in a different way. Here are two of the two most common ones:
MDMA, sometimes referred to as “molly” or “ecstasy” - works on serotnin itself, rather than receptors
Ketamine, has anti-depressent and anxiolytic effects, but it impacts the glutamine system
How Psychedelics Impact Mental Health
All right so we've covered different types of psychedelics, we know what psychedelics are generally speaking they bring forth this mind manifesting or spirit or soul revealing quality, so how does this actually help us in a therapeutic way?
How do psychedelics impact our mental health?
There are lots of scientists and clinicians trying to answer that very question "how do psychedelics work? how do psychedelics help?".
So far, it seems like the answer is complex and there's still lots to learn, but we do have a pretty solid understanding of how these substances can impact our mental health.
In this section of the article/video, we will introduce five core ideas we've derived this from clinical research, as well as our own experience guiding and providing therapy to people.
And we hope that these five concepts provide again a foundational framework for you to begin to think about how psychedelics impact mental health.
#1 Mental Health Issues Occur When We Feel Stuck
Let's get started with concept number one: mental health issues occur when we feel stuck.
Issues and disorders like anxiety, addiction and depression certainly have different symptoms or they present in different ways, but there seems to be at least one underlying characteristic behind all of these things…
They occur for an individual who feels stuck: someone who feels stuck in a certain way of thinking or a certain way of feeling or in a certain way of behaving.
For someone with these issues, it can feel like they are trapped, like there's no way out, there's no possibility to think or feel any differently.
And it's this rigidity, this stuck with way of thinking and feeling, which can lead to us to feel and experience suffering.
Now what psychedelics seem to offer, and perhaps why they're so beneficial for our mental health, is that they temporarily seem to increase flexibility, loosen up our patterns of thought and feeling, and ultimately provide pathways for people to get unstuck. [3]
Let's further illustrate this with concept number two: the snowy hill analogy.
#2 Snowy Hill Analogy: The Mind & Psychedelics
This analogy, used by researchers at Imperial College of London and made Popular by Michael Pollan in his 2018 book "How To Change Your Mind", invites us to consider the brain as a hill with snow on it and your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are like many, many sleds going down that hill.
Over time, the sleds continue to go down the hill and they go down the hill in the same way. This deepens the tracks, and it becomes difficult for future sleds to go down the hill in a new way.
Now this is super helpful for us functioning in as humans. For example, it helps us know how to do basic things that we learned long ago, like tie our shoes. It can also be helpful for more complex things like language.
Most people don't really have to think about what they're hearing and saying for basic conversation, that we use all of the time.
So again, these thoughts and these thinking patterns can be quite helpful, but it's not always so helpful for our mental health.
Take for example someone who has anxiety. They may feel especially anxious in social situations and they may use alcohol as a way to cope with feelings of anxiety in those situations.
Over time this pattern can become ingrained, and this repeated reliance on alcohol in those social situations can make those tracks deeper and deeper, and make it harder for an individual who experiences anxiety and social situations to go about those situations in any other type of way - as in not use alcohol.
It's as if the tracks on that snowy hill have become deeply, deeply ingrained.
Psychedelics As A Fresh Snowfall
Now psychedelics enter the picture, and can be so helpful, because they act as a fresh snowfall upon the snowy hill.
With a fresh snowfall, the grooves become leveled out, and it's easier for sleds or skis or whatever you want to think - our habits, thoughts and feelings - to go down the hill in new ways.
There's flexibility now. This opens us up to new possibilities, new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, and ultimately, pathways to move beyond our stress and our personal narratives, and towards growth and healing.
And this leads us to our third concept: psychedelics can serve as a reset or a refresh.
#3 Psychedelics As A Reset or Refresh
This fresh sheet of snow is like an opportunity, an opportunity to let go of anything that isn't helpful and to replace it with something that is indeed helpful and healthy.
People with a variety of mental health issues who feel stuck can gain this sense of a refresh or a reset, which helps them let go of things that aren't helpful and embrace things that are.
Now this feeling of a refresh or reset what's the science behind that?
Answering that leads us to our fourth concept, which is that psychedelics increase neuroplasticity in the brain.
#4 Psychedelics Increase Neuroplasticity
Our brains are composed of many, many neurons and neurological connections.
We all have these neurons on microscopic levels that fire together and wire together, connect our brains and our bodies, and essentially allow us to live as ordinary human beings helping us do everyday things like sing songs and build sand castles.
As we've covered, psychedelics can serve as this refresh or reset or this fresh sheet of snow, and the underlying theory behind this is an increase in neuroplasticity in the brain.
Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to form new neurological connections.
When plastic is hot, it can be morphed into pretty much any shape we can imagine. So too can our neurological pathways take on new shapes and new forms during neuroplasticity.
The Psychedelic experience indeed onsets neuroplasticity in the brain which can impact the way that we think, feel, and behave.
Psychedelics & Brain Connectivity
Scientific studies have shown that under the influence of psychedelics our brains are making new connections that aren't normally taking place.
Take a look at this image popularized by Michael Pollan in his book "How To Change Your Mind". On the left, it shows a visualization of a brain that has gone through a placebo, as in they don't have any psychoactive substance within it. [4]
There's certainly some connections there, but take a look at the visualization on the right, which shows that under the influence of a psychedelic, there are many, many more connections taking place, with a greater severity or greater magnitude.
The theory is that this heightened activity and connection in the brain is what's responsible for new neurological connections, new ways of thinking and feeling, which ultimately informs the therapeutic effects.
So the main idea here is that psychedelics increase neuroplasticity, which allows for new connections in the brain, which ultimately can lead people to think and feel differently.
And this is our fifth and final connected concept: psychedelics lead to novel patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.
#5 Psychedelics Lead to Novel Patterns of Thinking, Feeling and Behaving
Through these psychedelic effects, call it a fresh snow fall, a reset, a refresh, increased neuroplasticity, what it all boils down to is the facilitation of profound meaningful changes to how we feel and what we do.
As you can imagine, this can help individuals with a range of personal issues, from mental health challenges, to spiritual or existential discovery, or even coping with daily life stressors.
Intentionally using these plant medicines for our health and wellness is certainly possible, and in another article/video we're going to cover some of the most most commonly reported therapeutic effects of the psychedelic experience. [5]
Disclaimer: While the body of research around psychedelic treatment for mental health conditions is growing, many substances remain federally illegal in the United States. None of the information presented in this article is an endorsement of illicit drug use. No content, including this blog past nor video, from Pivot Psychedelics is medical advice nor an adequate substitute for it. Please consult with a medical professional if you are experiencing issues related to health.
Sources:
Cavarra M, Falzone A, Ramaekers JG, Kuypers KPC and Mento C (2022) Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy—A Systematic Review of Associated Psychological Interventions. Front. Psychol. 13:887255. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.887255
Nichols D. E. (2016). Psychedelics. Pharmacological reviews, 68(2), 264–355. doi:10.1124/pr.115.011478
Johnson, M. W., Garcia-Romeu, A., Cosimano, M. P., & Griffiths, R. R. (2014). Pilot study of the 5-HT2AR agonist psilocybin in the treatment of tobacco addiction. Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 28(11), 983–992. doi:10.1177/0269881114548296
Petri, G., Expert, P., Turkheimer, F., Carhart-Harris, R., Nutt, D., Hellyer, P. J., & Vaccarino, F. (2014). Homological scaffolds of brain functional networks. Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 11(101), 20140873. doi:10.1098/rsif.2014.0873
Raj, P., Rauniyar, S., & Sapkale, B. (2023). Psychedelic Drugs or Hallucinogens: Exploring Their Medicinal Potential. Cureus, 15(11), e48719. doi:10.7759/cureus.48719
