Recent research offers promise that psychedelic drugs may “reopen” the brain to help it recover from trauma.
Scientists at Johns Hopkins University were investigating the drugs’ effects on “critical periods” for social learning, times when the brain is more open to new information that diminish as we age. Success in mice suggests that psychedelics can start a fresh period of learning.
Prior research has found that MDMA can help soldiers reconsider traumatic events on the battlefield, learn from them, and move on. That phenomenon had all the earmarks of a critical period for social learning. Perhaps, Dolen said, psychedelics could open a critical period in a soldier’s life – or a drug-addicted person’s or rape survivor’s – and give them tools to process their trauma.
Ketamine achieved that reopening for 2 days, while the other drugs – ibogaine, LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin – opened critical periods of between 2 and 4 weeks, long after the drugs’ acute effects had worn off.“You wouldn’t achieve these results if you dropped ecstasy and attended a rave,” she said. “The key seems to be to establish an intention for the therapy: Discuss what you hope to get from the experience, be guided through it, and process it with the therapist after the fact.
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