With psychedelic-assisted therapy now getting airtime on major media outlets and channels like CNN and Bloomberg, it is safe to say that psychedelics have now gone mainstream. However, the media doesn’t provide as much detailed information as the public needs since the media is driven by the lure of the shareable sound bite and the sensational headline. For this reason, many members of the public may use the term psychedelic therapy when referring to psycholytic therapy, yet these concepts aren’t interchangeable. To clear this confusion, we have prepared the following analysis of these related forms of therapy.
Psychedelic Therapy
In psychedelic therapy, a high dose of a psychedelic like ketamine or psilocybin is administered to a patient over several treatment sessions. This high dose of the substance induces a fully-dissociated psychedelic state to help the patient go deep into their mind and emotional state.
With the help of carefully selected music, the patient is transported into a deep state from which they gain new insights about any specific challenges they are struggling with.
With psychedelic therapy, the use of high doses of psychotropic substances often makes it nearly impossible for dialogue to occur between the therapist and the patient. Clients momentarily lose their ability to speak, so even if dialogue were desired, the practical realities of the situation rule it out.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University are using this high-dose method to study how psilocybin can help people quit smoking. They, for example, administer approximately 30 milligrams of psilocybin for each 70 kilos of body weight.
Psycholytic Therapy
With psycholytic therapy, low doses of a psychedelic substance like ketamine or MDMA are administered to a patient by a highly experienced and licensed therapist. This method opens new perceptual doors for the patient (through creating new neural pathways) and the patient gets solutions or insights that they couldn’t have thought about before.
The low dose of psychedelics administered allows the patient to retain the ability to dialogue with the therapist. The two parties remain in contact with each other throughout the journey, unlike in psychedelic treatment where it seems the therapist administers the substance and waits for the patient to emerge on the other side once the psychedelic has run its course.
Each of these two approaches (psychedelic and psycholytic therapy) has its own merits and situations in which it’s better suited. For example, the high-dose method works best in situations where suicidal tendencies and other crises have to be addressed while low-dose sessions help in processing developing situations, such as navigating a divorce. Sometimes, a hybrid method combining both techniques may be required to bring healing to a patient. Each patient is unique and should therefore be approached with an open mind rather than with a fixed mindset, such as “more medicine will be better.” This customized way of delivering psychedelic-assisted therapy is precisely why entities like Cybin Corp. advocate for the use of these powerful substances only in controlled clinical settings.
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