OPENING THE DOORS OF DEPRESSION
YOUR WORK IS CENTRED ON PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS. WHAT DOES THE TERM ‘PSYCHEDELIC’ ACTUALLY MEAN?
Psychedelics was a term developed back in the 1950s by people like Aldous Huxley [the author of The Doors Of Perception]. Psychedelic means mind-manifesting. Typically, we talk about psychedelic drugs as drugs that produce altered states of perception and consciousness, such as magic mushrooms, LSD, mescaline, peyote, DMT, ayahuasca. It turns out they all work on a particular receptor in the brain called the serotonin 5HT2A receptor.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE SEROTONIN 5HT2A RECEPTOR?
The human brain is loaded with them, all in the parts of the brain where you do your thinking and your analysis of yourself. They tie together your consciousness with your other senses. They’re really in that circuit that kind of defines what you are as a human being. When you stimulate those receptors with psychedelics, you change the way the brain processes things.
The brain is an amazing organ; it’s the most efficient computer, 10 times more energy efficient than any computer we’ve yet invented. One of the
