Mind Blown

 https://mishpacha.com/mind-blown/

In the last few years, the world of mental health treatment has seen a quiet but powerful shift: psychedelic assisted therapy. For people who have struggled with deep-seated trauma or intractable emotional pain, psychedelic therapy with drugs such as psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, and ayahuasca, can open the door to sudden, almost miraculous healing. For some, psychedelic-assisted therapy has accomplished in one or two sessions what would have taken conventional talk therapy months or years to achieve.

But along with its incredible capacity to bring healing results, psychedelic drugs hold the potential to wreak untold psychological, mental, and physical harm. They are the Jekyll and Hyde of therapy: credited with both facilitating stunning emotional breakthroughs unheard of in conventional therapy, and with triggering devastating outcomes like psychosis and suicide. This duality has generated a worldwide ban on the illicit use of these potent drugs.

What are these “miracle drugs” that have mesmerized so many in our community? What power do they hold to better people’s lives? What motivates an otherwise law-abiding person to ignore the ramifications of ingesting a powerful, illegal, and unregulated substance? And where is this cultural trend heading?

Rav Moshe Rotberg, a Toms River posek heavily involved in mental health issues and a licensed therapist, doesn’t deny the potential for psychedelic therapy to effect profound healing. He believes that in the future, psychedelics will figure significantly in trauma treatment.  He has seen firsthand how psychedelic therapy administered once or twice, and entrusted to qualified practitioners with vast experience, who maintain rigorous screening standards, has produced remarkable results.

However, at the same time, he’s observed a psychedelic community that has sprung up with practitioners, prescribers, and even rabbis involved — but shockingly devoid of real, responsible oversight.