Science Coffee Hour: Psychedelics

Come and join our Science Coffee Hour where we discuss your favorite science topics.

This session we will be discussing the science and history of psychedelic research. I'm going to continue a similar format where I just post a podcast episode as reference for the discussion and additionally I'll link a video from a different podcast and a book as well. Here is the link to the podcast episode: https://www.alieward.com/ologies/psychedeliology .

On the podcast What Now? there is a video of a discussion on this topic as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMXu7Fn_bZc . There is also a book discussion on this topic, its called "Tripping on Utopia" by Benjamin Breen.

The definition of psychedelics is "a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states and preceived 'expansion of consciousness'." according to Wikipedia.
We will discuss the history of its psychedelic research in the United States, what happens in the brain, and how psychedelics can be used for therapeutic interventions.