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This is a first-person account from a psychiatry resident (me) enrolling in a clinical trial of psilocybin. Somewhere between a trip report, an overview of the pharmacology of psilocybin, and a review of the clinical evidence suggesting pronounced benefits for depression.
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I enjoyed this write-up. It was informative and written in an engaging style.
One thing that I think makes psychedelics effective is the work that is done after the trip. Being in a supportive community after the trip seems to produce a lot of benefit. Talking to other people who have also done psychedelics can help you feel a sense of deeper connection. If I was designing a psychedelic therapy trial I would include a mostly peer driven support group for people that have participated in clinical psychedelic trials.
I agree that your experience sounds like the 10mg dose. If you took a higher dose and had a mystical experience or ego death I suspect it may have given you more motivation/desire to make a bigger change to your life. I’m interested in how the results between 10 mg and 25 mg will vary in the trial. I suspect that the higher dose benefits would be more noticeable and would last longer. If the effects from 10mg start to wane it may be an interesting personal experiment to try something approximately equivalent to the 25mg dose.
Thank you!
I think the study does a reasonable job at providing ongoing therapeutic support, but I, idiosyncratically, have never found that therapy worked well for me. I did the bare minimum to keep them content, and didn't notice much of a change. The doses caused immediate and lasting changes in mood, before any followup therapy.
Hopefully, once the results are out, we'll have a proper understanding of the dose response curve at play here.
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