Researchers from Johns Hopkins report that most of the subjects in a 2006 study of psychedelic drugs still rate their trips "as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant (experiences) of their lives." Related research in the Journal of Psychopharmacology lays out guidelines for running experiments involving hallucinogens. From Physorg.com:
The two reports follow a 2006 study published in another journal, Psychopharmacology, in which 60 percent of a group of 36 healthy, well-educated volunteers with active spiritual lives reported having a "full mystical experience" after taking psilocybin...Spiritual effects of hallucinogens persist
Fourteen months later, (Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Roland) Griffiths re-administered the questionnaires used in the first study -- along with a specially designed set of follow up questions -- to all 36 subjects. Results showed that about the same proportion of the volunteers ranked their experience in the study as the single most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful or spiritually significant events of their lives and regarded it as having increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.
"This is a truly remarkable finding," Griffiths says. "Rarely in psychological research do we see such persistently positive reports from a single event in the laboratory. This gives credence to the claims that the mystical-type experiences some people have during hallucinogen sessions may help patients suffering from cancer-related anxiety or depression and may serve as a potential treatment for drug dependence. We're eager to move ahead with that research."
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