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Are the Subjective Effects of Psychedelics Necessary for Therapy?
New research explored whether you need to go on a psychedelic trip to experience their groundbreaking therapeutic effects.
Many psychedelic researchers have spent the last decade or so trying to figure out what it is about the psychedelic experience that induces positive changes in mental health. David Yaden and Roland Griffiths, postdoc and professor at the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins, have recently argued in a paper that the subjective effects — that is, the psychedelic trip itself — is fundamental for therapeutic outcomes.
However, David Olson, assistant professor at UC Davis, has published a paper refuting this. He argues that patients may not need to trip to experience the groundbreaking benefits of psychedelics. This perspective comes off the back of a new psychedelic compound that was synthesised in Olson’s lab, which creates major changes in the brain, but elicits no psychedelic effects.
Olson’s perspective seems controversial, but the two papers tap into an ongoing debate in the psychedelic research community: are the subjective effects of psychedelics necessary for therapy, or is it the changes in the brain that are more important?
