Essential Guide to the Psychedelic Renaissance

  • "After a very long and strange trip, psychedelics may finally be back for good."
    • —Rick Doblin, PhD, Founder & Executive Director, MAPS.

Psychedelics and Mental Health

  • "Irene de Caso explains in an understandable and entertaining way the current neuroscientific advances related to psychedelic drugs."
    • —José Carlos Bouso, PhD, Scientific Director, ICEERS.

Your Brain on Psychedelics

  • "To understand the pharmacology of psychedelics is to understand the essence of what makes us human."
  • —José Carlos Bouso, PhD, Scientific Director, ICEERS.

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  • Discover how psychedelics promote profoundly revealing mental states capable of restructuring our internal models of the world

Recent news

Check out the latest news on the field of psychedelics.

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How does LSD affect your brain?

By Gabriel García on July 27, 2022

LSD stands for lysergic acid diethylamide. It is a psychoactive substance, which means that it acts on the central nervous system. This results in a change in behavior and the way the user relates to the world around them. These effects occur because of the way LSD affects the action of a brain chemical called serotonin. This substance helps control mood, thinking, behavior, and the senses. As Anton Gomez-Escolar tells us in the Essential Guide to the Psychedelic Renaissance, LSD was originally used as a psychotomimetic.

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The day Portugal decriminalized psychedelics

By Gabriel García on July 20, 2022

23 years ago Portugal decriminalized the consumption of narcotics. Contrary to what many expected at the time, this measure brought about a reduction in the consumption of substances such as heroin or cocaine, as well as a drop in the rate of HIV patients. Source: Portugal’s Parliament discusses comprehensive regulation of cannabis (https://canamo.net/noticiasimundo/el-parlamento-de-portugal-discute-la-regulacion-integral-del-cannabis) After the end of the dictatorship, a countercultural movement swept Portugal. And, as with much of the countercultural movements in the West after World War II, this wave was accompanied by a boom in the consumption of different types of substances.

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Why are Set and Setting important when taking psychedelic substances?

By Gabriel García on July 11, 2022

We usually talk about the potential positive effects of psychedelic substances, however, it is important to keep in mind that these potential positive effects of psychedelic substances usually have an important psychological burden. That is why the psychological variables of person and context are especially crucial to not only make this type of experience as risk-free as possible, but also to turn it into a positive and, hopefully, transcendental experience.

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What effects does psilocybin have on your brain?

By Gabriel García on July 6, 2022

As Antón Gómez-Escolar tells us in his Essential Guide to the Psychedelic Renaissance, throughout history, psilocybin mushrooms have had various religious, ritual and shamanistic uses. Nowadays, its use can be associated with recreational, spiritual, self-knowledge contexts and, therapeutically, it is investigated for the treatment of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, addictions or obsessive-compulsive disorder. But, how exactly does psilocybin act in our brain?? Antón Gómez-Escolar answers this question in his book, from which the information in this article is taken.

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