15 Aug Breakout Netflix Doc How To Change Your Mind Reopens Discussions About Psychedelic Therapies

The term “psychedelic” was first coined by the British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in a 1956 letter to his friend and writer, Aldous Huxley. Though you’ve likely never heard of Osmond, he was one of the most important and influential people in regards to the study of psychedelics in the 1950s, prior to their ban. 

In fact, were it not for Osmond, Aldous Huxley would have never written his seminal work, The Doors of Perception – which came about after a mescaline trip arranged and watched over by Osmond. In a 1956 letter to Osmond, Huxley wrote to his friend in an attempt to coin a word for the mind-altering substances, “To make this trivial world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme.” Osmond countered with his own rhyme – written above – taken from the Greek words “psyche,” meaning mind, and “delos,” meaning manifest. 

And thus, the term psychedelic was born. 

Although psychedelics were criminalized in 1968 in the US and made fully illegal under the Controlled Substances Act in 1970, many countries – including the US – funded massive numbers of research studies into their benefits for mental health.

In Michael Pollan’s 2018 book, How to Change Your Mind – now a Netflix Docuseries by the same name – the author explores not only the history of psychedelic use and research but also new and emerging studies into the use of psilocybin, LSD, Ketamine, MDMA, and other psychedelics for therapeutic reasons.

The book quickly climbed the charts to become a number one New York Times bestseller. Now, the docuseries is reaching even more people and reopening the discussion surrounding therapeutic psychedelics.

Image via www.benzinga.com/markets/cannabis/22/07/28069520/based-on-michael-pollans-best-seller-how-to-change-your-mind-is-the-newest-psychedelics-document

How to Change Your Mind

The novel, whose full title is How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, was written by Michael Pollan and was initially published in 2018. 

The author’s website describes the book like this, “When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction, and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists.”

When the novel debuted as a docuseries on Netflix, it was released to much acclaim. Pollan appears as himself in the series and walks viewers through his experiences with psychedelics. Clips of Pollan are interspersed with clips discussing the history of psychedelics and psychedelic therapies.

From LSD’s initial discovery in 1938 by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann – and his infamous “tripping bike ride” – through Timothy Leary’s “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” MKULTRA, psychedelic criminalization, and the Decriminalize Nature movement, How to Change Your Mind transports viewers through the different stages and ages of psychedelic medicines.

Image via www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/arts/television/how-to-change-your-mind-netflix-michael-pollan.html

Ketamine Therapy

Though How to Change Your Mind touches on many different forms of psychedelic therapy, such as LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and mescaline, one well-researched psychedelic medicine that it doesn’t touch on is Ketamine.

For a more thorough reading of the history of Ketamine as a therapeutic medicine, read our previous blog entitled A Brief History of Ketamine. 

At a glance, Ketamine was synthesized in 1962 by organic chemist Calvin Stevens by merging a ketone and an amine to create a fast-acting anesthetic – something it’s still used for today.

In the 1970s, academic and research trials began to understand the efficacy of Ketamine Therapy on mental illness, including one such study in Argentina that “employed Ketamine as an adjunct to psychotherapy for depression to facilitate regression to prenatal levels combining disintegration and death followed by progression to rebirth.”

Today, Ketamine Therapy and research have seen their own rebirth, with scientists conducting studies on its efficacy for treating treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, PTSD, and more. At the same time, Ketamine Therapy clinics – like MY Self Wellness – continue to open their doors in the United States, Canada, and beyond, to help sufferers end their mental health struggles.

Though Ketamine and other psychedelics are still labeled Schedule I controlled substances under the Controlled Substance Act, even the FDA has begun to see its therapeutic potential, having recently greenlighted two Ketamine-based medicines to treat depression.

At MY Self Wellness, we stand on the front lines in the fight for psychedelic therapy, and our doors are open to anyone looking for relief from their mental health struggles through Ketamine Therapy. If you’d like to learn more about what we do and how we can help you, contact us today.