immanence

Time magazine’s Healthland supplement summarizes a recent clinical study of 18 healthy, spiritually inclined adults who were administered a certain drug over 5 eight-hour sessions. Among the results:

Fourteen months after participating in the study, 94% of those who received the drug said the experiment was one of the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives; 39% said it was the single most meaningful experience.

Critically, however, the participants themselves were not the only ones who saw the benefit from the insights they gained: their friends, family member and colleagues also reported that [X] had made the participants calmer, happier and kinder.

What’s “[X],” and the medicine it involved? “The psilocybin experience.”

That means that 7 out of the 18 participants had the experience of their lives, and 17 out of 18 had at least a “top five” experience. What I’d like to know is why the last fellow didn’t. What others things has he or she done to beat it?

It’s worth reading the article through to the end, where Jerome Jaffe, America’s first “drug czar,” asks if “properly-informed citizens” should “be allowed to receive psilocybin for its possible spiritual benefits”? Pinch me.

The original research article can be found in the journal Psychopharmacology. You can listen to an interview with the lead researcher, Johns Hopkins University’s Roland Griffiths, at The Secular Buddhist.

The journal Nature provides further background on the topic here, along with an article about a related study.

H/t The Neurocritic.