Radical Adventure: An Inquiry Into Psychedelic Psychotherapy

At age twenty-seven, Andrew Feldmar accepted a tentative offer from his supervisor, Zenon Pylyshyn, a participant in the first experiments with LSD-25, to experience an LSD trip. Following that initiation, he took various other substances, always returning to LSD. During his apprenticeship with R. D. Laing, he was trained in Laing's approach to LSD-therapy. A few years later, the use of these substances was prohibited. Now, after more than forty years, research has begun again into the healing possibilities of psychedelic psychotherapy. A movement has begun to have psychedelics, entheogens, and empathogens accepted worldwide as legal. However, training in how to use them varies. Feldmar details fascinating stories of patients whose recovery hinged upon their use of LSD. He talks of how a single session of MDMA assisted many to attain insights that enabled their psychotherapy to proceed faster and deeper than before. He wants his experiences to help the next generation of psychedelic psychotherapists. They demonstrate that the most important aspect of psychedelic psychotherapy is the human connection: being involved and engaged with the other. There cannot be a protocol to follow, programmed music played, orders given. The therapist needs to feel at home within the altered state of consciousness of the patient during the session. The only way to learn this is through apprenticeship and time is running out as the older generation who worked in this way is dying out. The gains are high with this type of therapy, but so are the dangers. Thus, the focus needs to be not on the drug, but on the relationship between the therapist and the patient. Psychedelic psychotherapy is not for everyone but done well with the right patient and therapist, it can be transformative.