The Drugs That Changed Our Minds

by Lauren Slater

  Ayahuasca experiment in Brazil: Simon Romero, ‘In Brazil, Some Inmates Get Therapy with Hallucinogenic Tea’, New York Times, 28 March 2015.

  Importance of set and setting: J. Huston Smith, The Huston Smith Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 26 March 2012), 165.

  ‘It feels a little bit like Rip Van Winkle’: Personal interview with Charles Grob, 18 March 2012.

  ‘It is enormously exciting’: Ibid.

  Psilocybin as ‘existential medicine’: Ibid.

  Grob envisioning treatment centres: Ibid.

  ‘Why confine this to just the dying?’: Personal interview with Rick Doblin, 3 March 2012.

  Griffiths’s 2006 psilocybin study: Griffiths et al., ‘Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences’, 268.

  Fourteen-month follow-up: Ibid.

  Griffiths’s study and personality domains: Ibid.

  ‘The core feature of the mystical experience’: Brown and Reitman, ‘An Interview with Roland Griffiths, Ph.D.’

  Importance of priming the patient: Personal interview with Charles Grob, 18 March 2012.

  Nutt et al. MRI study: David Nutt et al., ‘Neural Correlates of the Psychedelic State as Determined by fMRI Studies with Psilocybin’, PNAS 109, no. 6 (7 February 2012): 2138–43.

  All patients displayed marked improvement, and five had had a complete remission: Zoe Cormier, ‘Magic-Mushroom Drug Lifts Depression in First Human Trial’, Nature, 17 May 2016.

  Additional studies done at New York University: Pollan, ‘The Trip Treatment’.

  Charles Grob’s findings from his psilocybin study: Charles S. Grob, ‘Commentary on Harbor-UCLA Psilocybin Study’, MAPS Bulletin 20, no. 1 (2010): 28–29.

  ‘an intuition that consciousness is alive’: Brown and Reitman. ‘An Interview with Roland Griffiths, Ph.D.’

  Griffiths exploring the role of psilocybin: Roland Griffiths et al., ‘Pilot Study of the 5-HT2AR Agonist Psilocybin in the Treatment of Tobacco Addiction’, Journal of Psychopharmacology 28, no. 11 (11 September 2014): 983–92. See also Lauren Nelson, ‘Hallucinogen in “Magic Mushrooms” Helps Longtime Smokers Quit in Hopkins Trial’, John Hopkins University, The Hub, 11 September 2014, Web.

  William’s experience in Griffiths’s study: Personal interview with Roland Griffiths, 10 October 2015.

  ‘the ultimate existential medicine’: Personal interview with Charles Grob, 18 March 2012.

  Rick Doblin’s mission to legalise psychedelics: Personal interview with Rick Doblin, 8 April 2017.

  Doblin’s opinion regarding how psilocybin may prove useful: Ibid.

  Carol Vincent listening to black spirituals: Personal interview with Carol Vincent, 3 March 2016.

  7. MDMA (Ecstasy)

  Thomas and Kelly Shuge’s marital problems: Personal interview with Thomas and Kelly Shuge, 8 November 2014.

  On the history and development of MDMA: Roland W. Freudenmann, Florian Öxler and Sabine Bernschneider-Reif, ‘The Origin of MDMA (Ecstasy) Revisited: The True Story Reconstructed from the Original Documents’. Addiction 101, no. 9 (September 2006): 1241–45. See also Alexander T. Shulgin, ‘History of MDMA’, in Ecstasy: The Clinical, Pharmacological and Neurotoxicological Effects of the Drug MDMA, ed. S. J. Peroutka (Boston: Kluwer, 1990), 1–20, esp. 4–6; also Alexander T. Shulgin, ‘The Background and Chemistry of MDMA’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 18, no. 4 (1986): 291–304, esp. 291, 297.

  Shulgin feeling ‘absolutely clean’: Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin, PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (Berkeley, CA: Transform Press, 1991), entry 109.

  Therapists using MDMA in their practice: Myron J. Stolaroff, The Secret Chief Revealed (Santa Cruz, CA: MAPS, 2005).

  Effectiveness of MDMA in couples counselling: Matthew J. Baggott et al., ‘Intimate Insight: MDMA Changes How People Talk about Significant Others’, Journal of Psychopharmacology 29, no. 6 (28 April 2015): 669–77.

  Doblin’s critique of Leary: Personal interview with Rick Doblin, 11 October 2015.

  Percentage of Americans who have used psychedelics: Jeremy Travis, ‘Rise in Hallucinogen Use’, NIJ Research in Brief, October 1997.

  Doblin discussing social stigma of psychedelics: Personal interview with Rick Doblin, 24 August 2016.

  Charles Grob and Alicia Danforth on MDMA for autistic adults with social anxiety: Alicia Danforth et al., ‘MDMA-Assisted Therapy: A New Treatment Model for Social Anxiety in Autistic Adults’, Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry 64 (4 January 2016): 242.

  91 per cent of respondents report an increase in feelings of connectedness: Ibid.

  LSD experiments with autistic children in 1960s: Ibid., 242–43.

  LSD was also given to mute catatonic schizophrenics: Ibid.

  The need for ‘good medical research’ into MDMA: Personal interview with John Halpern, 8 May 2015.

  The need for high-quality research: Personal interview with John Halpern, 13 November 2015.

  Mithoefer’s MDMA study for post-traumatic stress disorder: Michael C. Mithoefer, Mark T. Wagner, Ann T. Mithoefer, Lisa Jerome, Scott F. Martin, Berra Yazar-Klosinski, Yvonne Michel, Timothy D. Brewerton and Rick Doblin, ‘Durability of Improvement in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms and Absence of Harmful Effects or Drug Dependency after 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine-Assisted Psychotherapy: A Prospective Long-Term Follow-Up Study’, Journal of Psychopharmacology 27, no. 1 (20 November 2012), Web.

  Second phase of Mithoefer’s study: Michael C. Mithoefer et al., ‘The Safety and Efficacy of {+/-}3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine-Assisted Psychotherapy in Subjects with Chronic, Treatment-Resistant Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: The First Randomized Controlled Pilot Study’, Journal of Psychopharmacology 25, no. 4 (2011): 452.

  MDMA allowing patients to reframe trauma: M. B. Young, R. Andero, K. J. Ressler and L. L. Howell, ‘3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine Facilitates Fear Extinction Learning’, Translational Psychiatry 5, e634 (2015): 138.

  MDMA helped Kelly Shuge: Personal interviews with Thomas Shuge and Kelly Shuge, 3 January 2015 and 15 April 2016.

  Oxytocin increasing when on MDMA: G. J. Dumont, F. C. Sweep, R. van der Steen, R. Hermsen, A. R. Donders, D. J. Touw, J. M. van Gerven, J. K. Buitelaar and R. J. I. Verkes, ‘Increased Oxytocin Concentrations and Prosocial Feelings in Humans after Ecstasy (3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine Administration’, Social Neuroscience 4(4) (2009): 359–66.

  Brain is ‘flooded’ with oxytocin when on MDMA: Personal interview with Rick Doblin, 11 May 2016.

  Prairie voles and oxytocin: Thomas R. Insel and Terrence J. Hulihan, ‘A Gender-Specific Mechanism for Pair Bonding: Oxytocin and Partner Preference Formation in Monogamous Voles’, Behavioral Neuroscience 109, no. 4 (August 1995): 782–89.

  MDMA made in Boston and Texas: Torsten Passie and Udo Benzenhöfer, ‘The History of MDMA as an Underground Drug in the United States, 1960–1979’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 48, no. 2 (2016): 67–75. See also Bruce Eisner, Ecstasy: The MDMA Story (Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing, 1989) 6, 14–15.

  Senator in Texas grows concerned about MDMA: AP, ‘U.S. Will Ban ‘Ecstasy,’ a Hallucinogenic Drug’, New York Times, 1 June 1985. See also Jerome Beck and Marsha Rosenbaum, Pursuit of Ecstasy: The MDMA Experience (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), 18–20.

  MDMA caused neurotoxicity in rats: G. A. Ricaurte et al., ‘(±)3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (“Ecstasy”)-Induced Serotonin Neurotoxicity: Studies in Animals’, Neuropsychobiology 42 (2000): 5–10.

  ‘We saw it coming’: Personal interview with Rick Doblin, 14 October 2013.

  Doblin challenges Ricaurte’s study: Ibid.

  Doblin wins lawsuit: Ibid.

  ‘For me the work has to be not about what we’ve achieved’: Personal interview with Rick Doblin, 5 November 2013.

  Doblin fighting the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA): Ibid.

  Ricaurte claiming primates are dying from MDMA: G. A. Ricaurte, J. Yuan, G. Hatzidimitriou, B. J. Cord and U. D. McCann, ‘Seve
re Dopaminergic Neurotoxicity in Primates after a Common Recreational Dose Regimen of MDMA (“Ecstasy”)’, Science 297, no. 5590 (27 September 2002).

  ‘They shut us right down’: Personal interview with Rick Doblin, 5 November 2013.

  ‘We’ve seen thousands of people safely use MDMA’: Personal interview with Julie Holland, 6 November 2013.

  ‘MDMA is just not a significant cause of psychiatric crisis’: Ibid.

  Ricaurte’s retraction: George A. Ricaurte et al., ‘Letters: Retraction’, Science 301, no. 5639 (12 September 2003): 1479. See also Leo John, ‘RTI Denies It Made Mistake That Torpedoed Results of a $1.3M Study’, Triangle Business Journal, 10 November 2003, Web.

  ‘The Ricaurte study has definitely added to the stigma’: Personal interview with Rick Doblin, 10 March 2016.

  Efficacy of MDMA in treating post-traumatic stress disorder: Mithoefer et al., ‘The Safety and Efficacy of {+/-}3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine-Assisted Psychotherapy’.

  MDMA has many applications beyond the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder: Personal interview with Rick Doblin, 12 October 2013.

  MDMA stored at Purdue University: Ibid.

  Doblin against using MDMA for couples counselling: Ibid.

  Marriage is not a disease: Ibid.

  ‘My life’s goal is to see the psychedelics made into prescription drugs’: Ibid.

  8. PKMzeta/Zip (Memory Drugs)

  Population doubling: Jennifer M. Ortman and Victoria A. Velkoff, ‘An Aging Nation: The Older Population in the United States’, United States Census Bureau, May 2014.

  Recalling events reactivates fear circuitry: Alain Brunet, Ph.D., Joaquin Poundja, B.Sc., Jacques Tremblay, M.D., Éric Bui, M.D., Émilie Thomas, B.Sc., Scott P. Orr, Ph.D., Abdelmadjid Azzoug, B.Sc., Philippe Birmes, M.D., Ph.D., and Roger K. Pitman, M.D., ‘Trauma Reactivation under the Influence of Propranolol Decreases Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Disorder: 3 Open-Label Trials’, Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology 31, no. 4 (August 2011): 547–50.

  Propranolol inhibits adrenaline: A. Brunet et al., ‘Effect of Post-Retrieval Propranolol on Psychophysiologic Responding during Subsequent Script-Driven Traumatic Imagery in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’, Journal of Psychiatric Research 42, no. 6 (2008): 503–6.

  Beta blocker works to dilute traumatic memories: Ibid.

  Todd Sacktor studying protein kinase C: Personal interview with Todd Sacktor, 12 February 2014.

  Sacktor influenced by father: Ibid.

  Loftus discovering suggestibility in recall: E. F. Loftus and J. E. Pickrell, ‘The Formation of False Memories’, Psychiatric Annals 25 (1995): 720–25.

  Phelps and Hirst, flashbulb memories: William Hirst, Elizabeth A. Phelps et al., ‘Long-Term Memory for the Terrorist Attack of September 11: Flashbulb Memories, Event Memories, and the Factors That Influence Their Retention’, Journal of Experimental Psychology General 138, no. 2 (2009): 161–76. See also William Hirst, Elizabeth A. Phelps, Robert Meksin, Chandan J. Vaidya, Marcia K. Johnson, Karen J. Mitchell, Randy L. Buckner, Andrew E. Budson, John D. E. Gabrieli, Cindy Lustig, Mara Mather, Kevin N. Ochsner, Daniel Schacter, Jon S. Simons, Keith B. Lyle, Alexandru F. Cuc, Andreas Olsson, ‘A Ten-Year Follow-Up of a Study of Memory for the Attack of September 11, 2001: Flashbulb Memories and Memories for Flashbulb Events’, Journal of Experimental Psychology 144, no. 3 (9 March 2015): 604–23.

  Act of repeating a narrative somehow contaminates it: E. Loftus, ‘Our Changeable Memories: Legal and Practical Implications’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 4 (March 2003): 231–34.

  Shift in mental weight alters the network of neurons: Tony W. Buchanan, ‘Retrieval of Emotional Memories’, Psychological Bulletin 133, no. 5 (2007): 761–79. See also Jonah Lehrer, ‘The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever’, Wired, 17 February 2012.

  PKMzeta always present in the brain: Personal interview with Todd Sacktor, 30 May 2015.

  Jerry Yin did a similar experiment with fruit flies: Lewis D. Solomon, The Quest for Human Longevity (Livingston, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 130.

  PKMzeta and addictions: Personal interview with Todd Sacktor, 12 February 2014.

  Sacktor’s comparison of PKMzeta to a sheepdog: Michael Humphrey, ‘Todd Sacktor’s Search for the Memory Enzyme’, Forbes, 25 May 2011.

  The mice had no memory attenuation: Lenora J. Volk, Julia L. Bachman, Richard Johnson, Yilin Yu and Richard L. Huganir, ‘PKM-ζ Is Not Required for Hippocampal Synaptic Plasticity, Learning and Memory’, Nature 493 (January 2013): 420–23.

  Memory’s back-up system: Ibid.

  ‘It turns out that when PKMzeta is genetically eliminated’: Todd Sacktor, email correspondence, 31 May 2015.

  He says he hated school and was always the fat, shy, smart kid: Personal interview with Todd Sacktor, 30 May 2015.

  ZIP undoing memories in rodents’ brains: Ewen Callaway, ‘Long-Term Memory Gets Wiped’, Nature, August 2007, Web.

  ZIP not damaging the rodents’ brains: Todd Charlton Sacktor, ‘Memory Maintenance by PKMζ—An Evolutionary Perspective’, Molecular Brain, 18 September 2012.

  Chronic pain linked to memory: D. S. Choi, D. Y. Choi, R. A. Whittington and S. S. Nedeljkovic, ‘Sudden Amnesia Resulting in Pain Relief: The Relationship between Memory and Pain’, Pain 132, nos. 1–2 (November 2007): 206–10.

  ‘ZIP might be injected to try to “reset’ the synapses in that region’: Interview with Todd Sacktor, ‘Erasing Your Memories’, New York Times, 13 April 2009.

  ‘I am somewhat hesitant’: Elie Wiesel, ‘Never Forget’, op-ed, New York Daily News, 10 April 2009.

  ‘imagining the future depends’: Daniel L. Schacter et al., ‘Remembering the Past to Imagine the Future: The Prospective Brain’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 8 (September 2007): 657.

  Reader comments in response to Sacktor interview: Sacktor, ‘Erasing Your Memories’.

  By 2050 more than 16 million Americans will have Alzheimer’s: Paola Scommegna, ‘Dementia Cases Expected to Triple by 2050 as World Population Ages’, Population Reference Bureau, November 2012, Web.

  If the molecule is available to the brain in larger amounts: Personal interview with Todd Sacktor, 30 May 2015.

  ‘we don’t have another treatment for [Alzheimer’s]’: Gwenn Smith, ‘A Stimulating Finding in Mild Alzheimer’s’, Hopkins Medicine Magazine, Spring–Summer 2012.

  DBS for memory disorders discovered via obese man: C. Hamani, et al., ‘Memory Enhancement Induced by Hypothalamic/Fornix Deep Brain Stimulation’, Annals of Neurology 63. no. 1 (2008): 119–23. See also Carl Erik Fisher, ‘Psychiatrists Embrace Deep-Brain Stimulation: Brain-Stimulation Procedures for Psychiatric Disorders Are on the Rise. Should We Be Concerned?’, Scientific American Mind, 1 January 2014, Web.

  Electrodes implanted in patients with Alzheimer’s: Andres M. Lozano et al., ‘A Phase II Study of Fornix Deep Brain Stimulation in Mild Alzheimer’s Disease’, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease 54, no. 2 (2016): 777–87.

  9. Deep Brain Stimulation

  Mario Della Grotta case: Series of personal interviews with Mario Della Grotta, June 2003–September 2004.

  Pierre Paul Broca confirms theory of localisation in 1861: Maria Konnikova, ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Speak and How He Revolutionized Psychology’, Scientific American, 8 February 2013.

  Moniz looking for suitable lobotomy patients: Dominik Gross, Ph.D., M.D., D.D.S., and Gereon Schäfer, Ph.D., ‘Egas Moniz (1874–1955) and the “Invention” of Modern Psychosurgery: A Historical and Ethical Reanalysis under Special Consideration of Portuguese Original Sources’, Journal of Neurosurgery 30, no. 2 (February 2011): E8.

  By the late 1950s, more than twenty thousand patients: Fiona Govan, ‘Lobotomy: A History of the Controversial Procedure’, Telegraph, August 2011, Web.

  Heath implanted electrodes in human beings: James Hamblin, ‘Deep Brain Stimulation for the Soul’, The Atlantic, 25 June 2013.

  Feelings of rage, fear, pleasure vary by electrode placement: La
uren Slater, ‘Who Holds the Clicker?’, Mother Jones, November 2005.

  Heath’s treatment of a homosexual man: Robert Heath, ‘Pleasure and Brain Activity in Man: Deep and Surface Electroencephalograms during Orgasm’, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 154, no. 1 (1972): 6–9. See also John Horgan, ‘What Are Science’s Ugliest Experiments?’, Scientific American blog, 14 May 2012.

  People had believed that thoughts and emotions: Michael S. Sweeney, Brain: The Complete Mind (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2009).

  Account of Delgado provoking an implanted bull: John A. Osmundsen, ‘ “Matador” with a Radio Stops Wired Bull: Modified Behavior in Animals the Subject of Brain Study’, New York Times, 17 May 1965.

  Louis Jolyon West, the Vacaville Prison and the CIA: Harry V. Martin and David Caul, ‘Mind Control’, thirteen-part series, Napa Sentinel, 13 August–22 November 1991. See also Samuel Chavkin, The Mind Stealers: Psychosurgery and Mind Control (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 13–15, 60–63, 96–109.

  Implants were resurrected in 1987: A. L. Benabid, P. Pollak, A. Louveau, S. Henry and J. de Rougemont, ‘Combined (Thalamotomy and Stimulation) Stereotactic Surgery of the VIM Thalamic Nucleus for Bilateral Parkinson Disease’, Applied Neurophysiology 50, nos. 1–6 (1987): 344–46.

  150,000 patients worldwide implanted for movement disorders: Helen Mayberg, email correspondence, 13 June 2017.

  ‘It’s how a lot of medicine happens’: Personal interview with Jeff Arle, 21 January 2005.

  ‘We want more than anything to find that sweet spot, and go there’: Personal interview with Helen Mayberg, 5 January 2005.

  ‘If you can get relief without invasive surgery’: Personal interview with Harold Sackheim, 7 February 2005.

  ‘We have searched and searched for the Holy Grail’: Personal interview with William Burke, 17 June 2003.

  Remission rates of 31 per cent after fourteen weeks: Thomas Insel, ‘Antidepressants: A Complicated Picture’, National Institute of Mental Health blog, 2011.