Are we better than the machines or not?

Meeting will take place in Sharm el-Sheikh and include leaders of the UK, Italy, Spain and France

YouTube video by Trevor Noah

In a world of distraction, it’s easy to jump from one interruption to another. Could sitting doing nothing for an hour help us cope – or is it just meditation by another name?

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In the historical context of a crisis in biological psychiatry, psychedelic drugs paired with psychotherapy are globally re-emerging in research clinics as a potential transdiagnostic therapy for treating mood disorders, addictions, and other forms of psychological distress. The treatments are poised to soon shift from clinical trials to widespread service delivery in places like Australia, North America, and Europe, which has prompted ethical questions by social scientists and bioethicists. Taking a broader view, we argue that the ethics of psychedelic therapy concerns not simply how psychotherapies are different when paired with psychedelic drugs, but how psychedelic therapies shape and are shaped by different values, norms, and metaphysical commitments. Drawing from the published literature and interviews with seven psychedelic therapists working in clinical trials in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia, this article opens the black box of the treatments to consider the values and informal debates currently animating the therapies. Considering questions of patient autonomy, mechanisms of therapeutic action, and which therapies are best suited to pair with psychedelic substances, we examine the ethics of psychedelic therapy as an emergent form of life. To bring this form of life out in fuller relief, we conclude by comparing and contrasting it with ayahuasca use in Amazonian shamanism.

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Way back in 2015, VICE made 16 predictions about what drug taking would be like in 2025. Let's see how right—and wrong—we were.