Psychedelic Psychotherapy & Integration

Psychedelic means mind-manifesting, and is a broad term applied to compounds, such as plant medicines and experiences with related subjective effects of an altered perception of one's sense of self and an increased awareness of mental processes.

Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy is an emerging area of mental health treatment. Research in the area is promising regarding positive outcomes for clients struggling with end of life anxiety, PTSD and treatment resisitant depression. Other areas of recent research also include the treatment of addictions and OCD.

Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy incorporates integration of the psychedelic experience and is a service I provide within a model that incorporates principles of harm reduction, psychotherapy, psychedelic-assisted therapy, mindfulness-based modalities, and psychodynamic and somatic therapy, and provides a framework for examining and working with psychedelic experiences and expanded states of consciousness providing the actual psychedelic experience as part of treatment. The TGA has now approved the use of MDMA and psylocibin to treat treatment resistant depression and PTSD and can be prescribed by Psychiatrists registered to do so from July 2023. Currently cannabis is also being trialed in the treatment of PTSD.

I completed a Post Graduate Certificate course in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. The protocol I use consists of 1-2 pre sessions which are generally 1 hour each and 1 or 2 medicine sessions (2 hrs each) along with 2-3 post medicine sessions after each dosing session (1 hour each), which include education, assessment and integration therapy sessions. I offer a free 20 min consultation to explain the protocol and what will occur in these sessions. This is a flexible model depending on ongoing need for support. These sessions utilise a blend of psychedelic cannabis that can be prescibed by a GP for those wishing to explore psychedelic assisted pysychotherapy to heal and transform old patterns and wounds and do deeper self exploration work.

Readings and links to Articles

Expectancies for Cannabis- Induced Emotional Breakthrough, Mystical Experiences and Changes in Dysfunctional Attitudes: Perceptions of the Potential for Cannabis-Assisted Psychotherapy for Depression Mitch Earleywine, 1 Maha N. Mian, 1 Brianna R. Altman, 1 and Joseph A. De Leo 2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10212245\

Cannabis-induced oceanic boundlessness - Mitch Earleywine https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6870-0623 mearleywine@albany.edu, Luna F Ueno https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7062-5231, […], and Brianna R Altman+1View all authors and affiliations. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881121997099

Cannabis-assisted psychotherapy for complex dissociative posttraumatic stress disorder: A case report

Anya Ragnhildstveit,,*&#x;Anya Ragnhildstveit1,2,3* Et.al. CASE REPORT article. Front. Psychiatry, 09 February 2023 Sec. Psychopharmacology. Volume 14 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1051542

Gorman, I., Nielson, E. M., Molinar, A., Cassidy, K., & Sabbagh, J. (2021). Psychedelic harm reduction and integration: A transtheoretical model for clinical practice. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 710

Lea, T., Amada, N., Jungaberle, H., Shecke, H., Scherbaum N. & Klein, M. (2020). Perceived outcomes of psychedelic microdosing as self-managed therapies for mental and substance use disorders. Psyochopharmacology, 237, 1521-1532

Winkler, P., Gorman, I., & Kočárová, R. (2016). Use of LSD by Mental Health Professionals. In Neuropathology of drug addictions and substance misuse (pp. 773-781). Academic Press.

Tatarsky, A., & Marlatt, G. A. (2010). State of the art in harm reduction psychotherapy: An emerging treatment for substance misuse. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 66(2), 117-122.

Belouin, S. J., & Henningfield, J. E. (2018). Psychedelics: Where we are now, why we got here, what we must do. Neuropharmacology, 142, 7-19

Carhart-Harris, R. L., & Friston, K. (2019). REBUS and the anarchic brain: toward a unified model of the brain action of psychedelics. Pharmacological reviews, 71(3), 316-34

Carhart-Harris, R. L., & Goodwin, G. M. (2017). The therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs: past, present, and future. Neuropsychopharmacology, 42(11), 2105-2113.

Mithoefer, M. (2017). A Manual for MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

Guss, J., Krause, R., Sloshower, J. (2020).Yale manual for psilocybin-assisted therapy of depression.

Swanson, L. R. (2018). Unifying theories of psychedelic drug effects. Frontiers in pharmacology, 9, 172.

Williams, M. (2018). The Dynamic Field of Psychedelic Medical Research: A Review of Recent Developments.

Disclaimer: I acknowledge the value of Australia’s harm minimisation approach regarding drug use which is a complex phenomenon. I do not endorse or facilitate illegal use of substances but I do advocate for decriminalisation along with Psychedelic psychotherapy. This aligns with my desire to support clients by providing education and psychotherapy services grounded in the latest research and clinical evidence.