Why psychedelics are wrong for depression

A therapist’s view

Don Van Vliet. “Meaty Blond People Danced at the End of the Hall Yellow and White”, 1986. Oil on canvas.

Psychedelics research gets a lot of press, usually uncritical if not starry-eyed. Because of the unique place that psychedelics hold in popular imagination, and the way in which clinical research was closed down in the “War On Drugs,” there is a tendency to conflate understandable counter-culture triumphalism with hard scientific facts.

But credulous news pieces are not the only places where this hazy blurring of consciousness can be found: the clinical trials and meta-analyses themselves are riddled with weasel words and Newspeak that can mask the true agendas of the researchers, their backers, or the true results of the tests.

Hi, I’m Richard. I’m a psychotherapist, researcher and member of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators. I’ll be your writer today.

While more knowledge is good and more research is better than less, as a trauma-informed therapist, I am concerned by the current uncritical fervour with which the potential use of psychedelics in the treatment of depression is being met in the media.

I believe there is cause for caution at the way the most distressed among us are, once again, being used as guinea pigs for what I believe is the un-necessary and counter-productive drugging of trauma. And, contrary to the claims of…