Drugs, which most people would shy away from. But have you ever thought it would be included in a psychotherapy program? Psychedelics were included in research on mental health and mental illness as early as the 1850s, and were later classified as illegal drugs due to abuse problems. Although still a niche field, the “psychedelic wave” has the potential to spread.
Historically, the use of hallucinogens for therapy is nothing new. In the Amazonian tribe’s time-honored ayahuasca ritual, shamans use dark-toned, intense Drums make people drink ayahuasca, generate hallucinations, and have the effect of strengthening the body. Today, the use of hallucinogens to assist psychotherapy has come to the fore again and is called psychedelic therapy. Banned drugs such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and psilocybin are also believed to have therapeutic effects, including the treatment of psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression, and addiction.
However, there are some voices of doubt in the academic world about psychedelic therapy-Psychedelic therapy is not simply the use of hallucinogens, the arrangement of the treatment environment is also very important, and music even more indispensable. London-based author Zoe Cormier believes that it is the music used in psychedelic therapy, not the psychedelics, that really heals. A 2018 study in Psychopharmacology by Mendel Kaelen and others at Imperial College London also called music in psychedelic therapy a “hidden healer”.
*Note: Ayahuasca: Dimethyltryptamine, is a hallucinogen and a new type of drug.
wirestock
01
Are hallucinogens the gospel?
Mainstream psychedelic therapy involves four classes of drugs: ayahuasca, LSD, psilocybin, and ecstasy (MDMA). So far, hallucinogen research has focused on anxiety and mood disorders, alcohol and substance use disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more. In general, hallucinogens work on people’s minds by affecting the neural circuits of serotonin.
Several scientific studies have investigated the therapeutic effects of psychedelics. For example, a 2021 study in the New England Journal of Medicine conducted a 6-week intervention in 59 patients with moderately high depression and found that, like the traditional antidepressant escitalopram, magic mushrooms The active ingredient in psilocybin is also effective in treatment-resistant depression (meaning at least two failed attempts at traditional antidepressant medication). Of course, the side effects of hallucinogens can not be ignored. Because of their powerful effects on thinking, they may change people’s time perception, reality perception, perception perception, and even distort them, and may also produce strong emotional reactions and delusions, and in more serious cases, may affect personality. Therefore, psychedelic research, as well as psychedelic therapy, requires the presence of trained professionals to help people understand the possible experiences.
Also,while the benefits of psychedelics are scientifically backed, their effects may not be long-lasting. Taking the treatment of alcohol addiction as an example, the meta-analysis results of Teri S. Krebs et al. in 2012 showed that the efficacy of a single dose of LSD on alcohol abuse could be maintained for 3-6 months. months, but the effect is not obvious after 12 months.
freepik
02
Are hallucinogens at the heart of psychedelic therapy?
Although we mentioned earlier that psychedelics may be beneficial for mental illness, they are drugs after all. But the problem is that psychedelic therapy is usually a combination of music and psychedelics, so it is necessary to explore whether the core of psychedelic therapy is psychedelics or music? According to Stacey Griffin, a Canadian-born Amsterdam-based musician, “You can have an extraordinary experience in music, you don’t have to use drugs to change it, just listening to music is so high. That’s it.” If music is at the heart of the whole therapy, then we can avoid the dangers of drugs and make the most of them.
Musician Jon Hopkins also said that what music you listen to is a big part of the experience. In 2021 he produced an indie music album Music For Psychedelic Therapy dedicated to psychedelic therapy, “When you think about these drugs in isolation and think they are magic cures, youwill get into trouble. If you think you can simply put this magical thing into your daily life without considering the context of the experience, the environment, and everything you need to do to make a profound inner transformation, then psychedelics are unlikely to do you any good. make lasting changes in your life. “
Music For Psychedelic Therapy
The potential side effects of music are obviously far fewer than hallucinogens. Music has been her therapist, her medication, her healer and best friend since birth long before she became interested in psychedelic therapy (or experienced it), Cormier said, music has never been Get her a hangover without destroying her home, breaking her heart, or killing any of her friends.
What’s more,the benefits of music have also been supported by scientific research. For example, Malaysian scientists Adiel Mallik and Frank A. Russo tested 163 people with clinically diagnosed anxiety and found that calming music and sound beat stimulation Effectively reduces physical anxiety and cognitive state anxiety in patients with moderate to high anxiety. Researchers such as Mendel Kaelen of Imperial College London found that in 19 people who used psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, they “significantly predicted a reduction in depressive symptoms one week later.” Yes, it is the characteristics of the musical experience, not the strength of the drug.
Becca Clark
03
Hidden Therapist: Psychedelic-Assisted Music Therapy
As the title of Kaelin et al.’s study “The Hidden Therapist,” perhaps psychedelic therapy is more accurately described as “psychedelic-assisted music therapy.” All forms of psychedelic therapy such as ayahuasca rituals, cactus paste rituals, psychiatric experiments in the 1950s, underground scenes born in the 1970s, and modern ketamine clinics and the Dutch entertaining magic mushroom truffles Resorts, all of which put music at the center of the experience. Many therapists also describe music as an “anchor” or “guide,” with hallucinogens the ingredient that provides real healing. In other words: you can do music therapy without psychedelics, but it is almost impossible to do psychedelic therapy without music.
So, what kind of music should psychedelic therapy use? Musicians are always creating slow, quiet, ambient, electronic, no-melody music for soothing purposes, and Hopkins’ headline-making psychedelic therapy album is also extremely soothing and slow-paced, with no beats or drum beats to accompany With a trove of waterfalls, breezes, and birdsong from a 2018 trip to Tayos Caves in Ecuador with artist Eileen Hall, the soft tones take on a layered texture.
Actually, there are some forms of music made specifically for psychedelics. In the 1960s, “psychedelic rock” attracted a legion of addicts and Grateful Dead fans with its distorted sound, endless guitar solos, and hours of riffs. Throughout the 1980s, gong baths, wind chimes and singing bowls became popular among the psychedelic-based underground hippie community, Michael Pollan scoffed and accurate It is called “spa music”. Then, in the 1990s, rave culture and a (horribly) repetitive, long form of dance music emerged, explicitly called “psy trance”.
But making music for psychedelic therapy is not the same as making music for psychedelics. “Music has the power to regulate emotions”, musicians can now use information gleaned from modern neuroscience to see how music affects listeners, then digitally craft musical compositions that carefully and precisely evoke specific listeners reaction. Music is not just an art, but a drug, a therapy, a technique, a means of manipulating listeners, and perhaps the most effective hallucinogen.
NoizeCatz
Many studies have explored the neural mechanisms of “music is a drug,” and music may be the same as other rewarding stimuli (eg, food, sex, drugs). Listening to pleasant music activates the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area. Dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area project primarily to the nucleus accumbens and forebrain regions, which are necessary for stimulation to function as a reward. However, these studies mostly use PET or fMRI, and it is difficult to directly investigate the release of dopamine during listening to music. If music is also a powerful “psychedelic”, then the mechanism of action of psychedelics may also provide ideas for our understanding of the powerful power of music.
Computational biologist and world-renowned professional DJ Max Cooper said: “Psychedelics explain the mechanics of thinking and clearly show that we build models of reality , and these models such asHow to constrain our thinking. Psychedelics are great for coming up with new thought processes, finding new solutions to troubled things, and changing your neural networks in positive ways. A study published in PNAS in 2016 showed how LSD increases “functional connectivity” between different areas of the brain. Areas that normally do not communicate with each other are suddenly able to exchange information, resulting in new ideas, new perspectives, new breakthrough.
04
Conclusion
As musician Brian Eno once quipped, “Music is something your mind does.” It exists outside of your brain, but it is in your brain that specific chords, notes, rhythms, repetitions, and musical themes really become meaningful. On a physiological level, music itself can be a form of medicine: nourishment without food, healing without words, therapy without a therapist.
Music is not the icing on the cake, an aid to therapy, or even a “hidden healer.” Music is therapy itself, because it is the ultimate psychedelic drug.
References
https:https://neo.life/2022/03/music-as-medicine/
https:https://www.verywellmind.com/psychedelic-therapy-how-does-it-work-5079161#citation-8
Carhart-Harris, R. L., Muthukumaraswamy, S., Roseman, L., Kaelen, M., Droog, W., Murphy, K., Tagliazucchi, E., Schenberg, E. E., Nest, T., Orban, C., Leech, R., Williams, L. T., Williams, T. M., Bolstridge, M., Sessa, B., McGonigle, J., Sereno, M. I., Nichols, D., Hellyer, P. J. , … Nutt, D. J. (2016). Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(17), 4853–4858. https:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas .1518377113
Chanda, M. L., & Levitin, D. J. (2013). The neurochemistry of music. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(4), 179–193. https:https://doi.org /10.1016/j.tics.2013.02.007
Kaelen, M., Giribaldi, B., Raine, J., Evans, L., Timmerman, C., Rodriguez, N., Roseman, L., Feilding, A., Nutt, D., & Carhart-Harris, R. (2018). The hidden therapist: Evidence for a central role of music in psychedelic therapy. Psychopharmacology, 235(2), 505–519. https:https://doi. org/10.1007/s00213-017-4820-5
Krebs, T. S., & Johansen, P.-Ø. (2012). Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) for alcoholism: Meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 26(7 ), 994–1002. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881112439253
Mallik, A., & Russo, F. A. (2022). The effects of music & auditory beat stimulation on anxiety: A randomized clinical trial. PLOS ONE, 17(3), e0259312. https : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259312
Author: Zhang Xuhui | Cover: NoizeCatz
Editor: Light and Shadow | Typesetting: Light and Shadow
