"I developed an interest in drugs, including psychedelics, over 25 years ago in my early 20s. I was fascinated by the history of psychedelics in our culture; the fact that there was medical research in the early days; and I just had this growing fascination with psychoactive compounds in general. The idea that any of these substances, whether we're talking about cocaine, caffeine, you name it, including the psychedelics, how these things affect our behavior,"
"how you put these small amounts of a substance in your body, and they can have, at times, radical changes in your subjective experience and what you do. It's hard to imagine a more interdisciplinary topic in the realm of drugs than psychedelics. I mean, psychedelics crosscut so many interesting domains. They've apparently been used for time immemorial by indigenous cultures throughout many different cultures on the planet."
Psychedelics are a distinct drug class that can produce radical, sometimes enduring changes in subjective experience and behavior, occasionally after a single use. They intersect many domains: historical indigenous ritual use, mid-20th-century Western cultural upheaval, and contemporary scientific study. Psychedelics prompt interdisciplinary research into how small doses of substances can precipitate profound shifts in perception and life course. Early medical research existed, and modern investigators study both beneficial and harmful behavioral effects. Claims of long-term therapeutic or life-changing benefits following a single psychedelic experience are notable and relatively uncommon among other drug classes.
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