Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy is slowly, but surely, finding its footing in popular culture. Whether you're for, or against drug use, the studies show fascinating positive effects on treating a variety of psychological maladies, namely Depression, PTSD and anxiety.

For a deep dive into the history, controversy and science, listen to “How Legal Psychedelics Work to Deepen our Self Awareness”, an Untangle interview with Robin Doblin, PhD. Dr. Doblin opens the door into an exciting look into the wide, wild world of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy.

Dr. Doblin is the Founder & Executive Director of Multidisciplinary Association For Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and has been on the forefront of clinically scientific psychedelic studies for several decades.

In this interview, he shares how his life, growing-up the shadows of the Holocaust, was shaped by deeply troubling questions about the nature of humanity and our capacity for depersonalization. (Dr. Doblin’s interviewer, Ariel Garten, is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and Muse founder).

Throughout his life, he saw the harrowing effects of how imbalance and narrow vision, had moored humanity into forgetting the spiritual connection of all life. Doblin struggled to understand this fatal error. This existential threat became personal, when he felt mortal threat from his own government, while admonished to fulfill his patriotic duty during the Vietnam draft.

During this time, he received an informal education from his counter-cultural peers. He was intrigued to open his mind beyond the intense negative propaganda the US ran against Dr. Timothy Leary and his ilk. He experimentation caused him to shift his negative judgements and become an activist, advocating for legalization of psychedelics to treat psychological maladies.

Since 1972, Dr. Doblin has continued to advocate and produce clinical trials and collaborative research into the consciousness expanding properties of psychedelics drug. Only lately, perhaps as the world seems more dramatically out of balance, has Dr. Doblin noticed an uptake of interest in the mainsteam. In this interview, he reflects on a life devoted to the reducing stigma of psychedelics (i.e. moving away from the word “hallucinogens” which implies an illusionary aspect of one’s insights), pioneering neuroplasticity research and developing empirically proven courses of clinical treatment, for Depression and PTSD.

In this quotation, Doblin describes how psychedelics create a visceral understand of our connectivity,

This idea of quieting the fear part of the brain, as a way to help people process these sort of instinctual ways, that ‘if you’re different from me, I need to be scared of you’. I think this idea of how we help people get underneath these cultural prejudices and feel how we’re all woven together and that’s our primary base and that’s through this mystical experience. Psychedelics are one of the most reliable ways and have been used for thousands of years to help people have.

If you find yourself intrigued by this interview, you can find resources and providers at Psychedelic Support.

Further Reading:

• Dr. Doblin recommends Zig Zag Zen, to learn more about the connection between psychedelics and Zen Buddhism. 


• News article, “FDA approves psilocybin for treating Major Depression”


• The Trip Treatment is a New Yorker article from 2015 that brought psychedelic therapy into the mainstream. This article begins with the advances in using psilocybin to ease end of life anxiety.


• Ariel’s TED talk with her grandmother Marianne Balshone and mother Vivian Reiss.