The word most people use for this field was coined in 1957 by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond, writing to Aldous Huxley: Greek psyche, mind, and deloun, to make visible. Their letters appeared in 2018 as Psychedelic Prophets, a primary source.

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#PsychedelicHistory #HistoryOfScience

Writing in this field tends to blend three kinds of claim: a trial with a method and a sample size, a personal story worth exactly one data point, and an interpretation of what it all means. None is worthless. They are just not the same currency.

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#PsychedelicScience

A single receptor explains why some of these medicines belong together and others do not. The classic family, psilocybin and mescaline among them, acts on the serotonin 5-HT2A receptor. Ketamine works on NMDA instead. One word, different pharmacology.

#PsychedelicScience #Neuroscience

Picture one long road: a healer's fire at one end, a hospital research room at the other. Episode 01 of Tribal to Therapy maps it, from Basel 1943 to the 1971 lockdown.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Rw4rUiuMloMp4IqeprQpL

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#Podcast #PsychedelicHistory

1/5 Three commitments hold my work together, and each one checks the other two: evidence, respect for the traditions, and honesty about risk. Lose one and you drift into dry scientism, credulity, or cheerleading.

#PsychedelicScience #HarmReduction

One detail from the anthropological record turns our model of medicine around. In many shamanic settings the healer takes the plant, not the patient, working on the sufferer's behalf. The sufferer may never touch it. Modern trials assume the reverse.

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#Anthropology #Ethnobotany

Hi, I’m Leon Tessar. My book “Psychedelics: From Tribal to Therapy” comes out November 15 on Amazon: a history of sacred plants, ritual and psychedelic medicine.

The companion podcast is online now, 21 episodes + trailer:
🎧 https://open.spotify.com/show/2GraH8CXpwCWkJq3In2zVx

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Ancient wisdom. Modern science. Honest about risk. That is Tribal to Therapy, my podcast on psychedelics from Indigenous ceremony to clinical trials. The trailer and full season are streaming.
https://open.spotify.com/show/2GraH8CXpwCWkJq3In2zVx
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#Podcast #PsychedelicHistory

Season one of Tribal to Therapy is streaming in full: a trailer and 21 episodes on psychedelics, from Indigenous ceremony to clinical trials. A short map of where it goes.

#Podcast #PsychedelicScience

1/4 Two words set the tone for how I write about this subject: curious and careful. As I write in my book: “If this book does its job, you will finish it more curious and more careful at the same time.” Coming November 15.

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#PsychedelicScience

A book about this field should work like an honest map. It marks the gardens, and it also marks the swamps and the cliffs. A map is not the territory, and it is not a set of instructions. It shows where the ground is firm and where nobody has surveyed yet.

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#History

Two roads lead into this field, and each keeps its own records. Science keeps trials, sample sizes and peer review. Healing traditions keep songs, teachers and a community's memory. I was told to choose. I read both and say which one I cite.

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#PsychedelicHistory #Anthropology