Recovering memories under MDMA or psychedelics and the impact of The Tell, a few scattered thoughts and observations: kangaslampi.net/the-tell-and...

Our new paper "Key competencies for psychedelic treatment in real-world mental health care settings" has just been published in General Hospital Psychiatry. Full-text link below.

My article "Experiments in medicalization" on the Swiss and Australian efforts to enable psychedelic therapies outside of clinical trials but short of market approval has just come out in BioSocieties: www.nicolaslanglitz.de/ewExternalFi...

Bluesky now platform of choice for science community - except for the psychedelic science community, which seems to have chosen Linkedin. What does this say about psychedelic science?

BREAKING: German regulators have green-lit the EU's first psilocybin compassionate access program. Unlike other countries’ pre-approval pathways, Germany’s does not require case-by-case regulatory approval and may see insurers cover costs. Details: psychedelicalpha.com/news/germany...

Our recent article "Reframing psychedelic regulation: Tools, not treatments" is discussed on the SPACE blog (in Portuguese): space.com.pt/blogue/regul...

Big news for psychedelic research in Europe: The new €4.3M INTEGRATE project will train 16 PhDs across Europe. Funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, it marks a major step forward. PAREA is proud to support by hosting secondments. More here: parea.eu/parea-news/i...

Small feasibility study testing MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for major depression, unsurprisingly with promising results, from Norway. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Doing psychedelic research with Spanish-speaking populations & interested in avoidance/acceptance? There is now a culturally decentered Spanish APEQ version designed to work equally well across the Spanish-speaking world: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New Viewpoint: Countries allowing assisted suicide should offer candidates psychedelics and support to change their minds. If we truly value life, shouldn't we explore every therapeutic option - even controversial ones - before accepting that suffering is untreatable? ja.ma/4l2gdls

This seems relevant to psychedelic research, where expectancy is still often viewed only as a baseline variable. We should also consider its dynamic changes, how (psychedelic & other) treatment experiences influence them, and their impact on outcomes. @psybalazs.bsky.social @theborislab.bsky.social

Enjoyed this recent paper about considering psychedelics as tools to accelerate psychotherapy vs interventions in and of themselves. doi.org/10.1177/2050... #psychedelicscience

Please join me next Wed at Einstein Center for Neurosciences Berlin 🇩🇪 for an in depth discussion about evidence and mechanisms in psychedelic therapies. I'll finish with a brief spoiler about a new project coming on, in my new role at ULisbon 🇵🇹 💫

Die Universität Würzburg bietet jetzt zum ersten Mal ein Zertifikatsprogramm zum Thema "Machtmissbrauch erkennen und verhindern" (MEV) an. Die Teilnahme ist kostenlos. Im Verlauf eines Jahres werden Wissens- und Handlungskompetenzen in diesem Bereich vermittelt (jeweils 1 Modul).

A promising approach

I’m intrigued 🧐 it makes sense!

Glad to see this paper out finally. Well done @trpwolff.bsky.social for driving it! I think this idea has potential for significant impact in psychedelic drug development. /1 🧵 👇 📄 doi.org/10.1177/2050...

Reframing Psychedelic Regulation: Tools, not Treatments In this new article, we propose to regulate psychedelics as psychotherapeutic treatment tools rather than as treatments in their own right. The use of anesthetics as treatment tools in surgery is a useful analogy.

📚 Just another #review about #psychedelics? Maybe... but in this paper we systematically reviewed ALL neuroimaging articles involving #psilocybin intake in humans. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We've got some interesting qualitative data from experienced integration therapists coming out, warning about taking imagery of abuse too literally. I agree this may be a protest will need addressing. Not sure how widespread it is.

Special section on CBT and psychedelics just published. Can't wait to see the data resulting from these studies. Introduction: Charting a New Frontier: Integrating Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Approaches with 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Surprising and concerning that though the authors do mention the importance of "not guiding towards confirmation or denial", they have no problem declaring (including in the title of a scientific paper!) that for both these two patients it was in fact "emergence of dissociated traumatic memories".

This new article in the Journal of Eating Disorders seems to uncritically portray psilocybin as a truth serum that can accurately recover "historical autobiographical material" from repressed traumatic memories... What could possibly go wrong? jeatdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

An important empirical question is how belief in the "reality" of encountered entities relates to outcomes. My guess is that belief magnifies negative outcomes and is less clearly related to positive outcomes, but that needs to be tested. Results could inform best practices for prep & integration.

More remarkable than the results reported in this minor paper is that the first & last author are two of the world's leading psychotherapy researchers. It seems that they are finally beginning to engage. Have you ever seen the below stated as unmistakably? This is so refreshing and much needed.

Last year, @jacobsaday.bsky.social and @trpr-ucsf.bsky.social asked: "Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy: where is the psychotherapy research?" link.springer.com/article/10.1... How soon can we say "here it comes"?

Finally, leading psychotherapy researchers begin to engage with psychedelic therapy. This is so desperately needed. Let's hope for more to come!

Thank you to those who contributed study materials to this field-wide review of materials used in psilocybin studies over the past two decades! Taking stock to understand, improve, and move forward -> www.researchgate.net/publication/... @jhpsychedelics.bsky.social @robincarhartharris.bsky.social

Another thing that stands out in the "mushroom stones" pictured here is the groove above the edge of the cap. Am I right to assume that's not a common feature of real mushrooms? But apparently many modern "mending mushrooms" do have it, to hold the cloth in place.

Since my wife uses this thing here to mend holes in our kids' clothes, I wonder if this has already been suggested as a purpose of these "mushroom stones" often taken as evidence for ancient ritual use of psilocybin. Isn't there a tendency in archeology to interpret practical items as cult objects?

The more effectively an active 'placebo' mimics the subjective effects of a psychedelic, the more likely it will induce similarly context-dependent psychotherapeutic experiences — right?

Important article.

I'll speaking, alongside other wonderful colleagues and friends of EPIC, at this online conference on 'The Language of Psychotherapy'. May 8th and 9th 😊 In my view, genuinely an intriguing line-up of titles. For more info & registration: the-therapeutic-game.webnode.page/conference/

Excited for the 1st APT Network Convention kicking off today! The APT Network consists of 166 psychotherapists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals who we have trained since the launch of our APT program in 2021.

Vielen Dank für diesen Artikel @herzog.bsky.social @tkaiser.science. Kann ich in der Lehre gut gebrauchen, denn in meinem Feld halten sich manche dieser Fiktionen besonders hartnäckig.

Out now: Psychedelics and autobiographical memory - six open questions With Morten Lietz, we present 6 unanswered questions on #psychedelics and autobiographical memory & discuss why they matter, what little we know about them, and ways to better study them in the future. doi.org/10.1007/s002...

The general trend is crazy. Here is Twitter vs Bluesky volumes for the last week. On some days they are equal in volume.

Call for papers - General Hospital Psychiatry, special issue on psychedelics. GHP focuses on issues at the interface of psychiatry and general medical settings (eg, integrated care, med-psych, psychosomatics, CL psych, mental health services). Please share! www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

Great work for psychedelic research to overcome RCT-based epistemic authoritarianism, led by @sdmuthu.bsky.social and @tehseennoorani.bsky.social 👏👏👏. Thankful for the invite to to collaborate, together with @trpwolff.bsky.social, @mattbagg.bsky.social and others. osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧪🧠💊

philosojules.bsky.social this experimental result is probably of interest to you: People are most accepting of psychedelic therapy after being informed about potential benefits AND harms. This is something that not only researchers but also 'advocates' should be aware of.

Acceptance of Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy in German-Speaking Countries New @mind-foundation.bsky.social paper (in German): link.springer.com/article/10.1... Important result: Informing people about potential benefits only increases acceptance when information on risks is also provided.

"The activation of shame-related experiences with psychedelics may pose unique learning conditions for self-acceptance & growth, or alternatively, ongoing avoidance or reinforcement of negative patterns of self-judgment that promotes or maintains psychopathology." www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

move slow and fix things

We are recruiting for a psilocybin in OCD study: hopkinspsychedelic.org/ocd-study

Case report of a suicide 3 days after psilocybin. Apparently there were some at least dark orange flags. "The consistent difficulty in (...) accessing the patient’s internal l experiences may have hindered the recognition of critical psychological states." www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

EU medicines agency quits X & moves to Bluesky "EMA will no longer post updates and content on X. We believe the X platform no longer suits our communication needs” the agency said in a statement www.reuters.com/world/europe...

The call for papers is now open for Psykedeelit 2025 – The 3rd Finnish Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelics, held on October 2-4, 2025, in Turku, Finland! Submissions on all aspects of psychedelic research from any field of science are welcome. 1/

Much can be learned by drawing analogies between the use of psychedelics in psychotherapy and that of anesthetics in surgery. This new commentary considers some of these analogies. Highly recommended for anyone interested in psychedelic therapy. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

It seems clear to me that any clinical *mental health* treatment involving psychedelic experiences, even with minimal "psychological support", should be considered a (more or less ethically defensible) attempt to practice psychotherapy. But what about other treatments, e.g. for pain conditions?

As seems to be evident in this case, too, much of the risk of self-medicating with psychedelics (and note that atypical psychedelics such as ketamine do not even have psychedelic effects in many contexts) seems to come from a substance-focused misunderstanding of psychedelic therapy.