Psychedelics appear to offer a new frontier in psychotherapeutic treatment. Clients of all ages and stages now make inquiries into the use of psilocybin, with the hopes that it may be the missing piece in their treatment of trauma, anxiety, or depression.

Do these newly and often widely available drugs offer hope for the chronically depressed, or are they merely a new wellness fad, capitalizing on our ongoing search for the new and novel?

A recent presentation by psychoanalyst Leslie Stern summarized the clinical research to date and presented a mixed set of findings for the clinical application of psychedelics. He noted that while clinical research between the years 2012 and 2022 tended to report a positive bias in favour of psychedelics, this has shifted in years after 2024. Researchers and clinicians, he argues, are more cautious of late around the efficacy of psychedelics, a fact that he links in part to the growing interest in large-scale capital investment in “magic mushroom” production and........

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