New Paradigms in Therapy: The Psychedelic Renaissance

In the 1950s and early 1960s, many in the psychiatric community regarded LSD and psilocybin as “wonder drugs” for treating addiction, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, among other ailments. But the war on drugs initiative in the United States criminalized psychedelic substances and plants and ostracized their users. Psychoactive plants that have been used therapeutically by many traditional cultures throughout history have been banned both from research labs and the clinician’s toolkit. In the last decade or so, research on psychedelics has made a comeback in medicine, particularly within mental health, a field that has found itself in deep ideological and methodological crises. In this course with Adam Aronovich, we will explore the intriguing therapeutic potential and concerns of psychedelics.

Adam Aronovich is the director of therapy and integration for Rē Precision Health, a wellness center on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. He is an active member of the Medical Anthropology Research Center and of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. Mr. Aronovich spent more than four years conducting research and extensive fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon. He is the creator of Healing from Healing, a social media platform that casts a critical, skeptical, and humorous gaze at healing culture. He is a doctoral candidate focusing on medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain.