Psychedelic Medicine Podcast with Dr. Lynn Marie Morski

In this episode, Matthew W. Johnson, PhD returns to discuss how psychedelics can be leveraged to catalyze human agency. Dr. Johnson has been at the forefront of psychedelic research for 21 years, having conducted seminal research on the effects of psilocybin on mystical experience, personality, and treatment of cancer distress, major depressive disorder, and tobacco addiction. His work with tobacco addiction received the first federal funding for a classic psychedelic in the modern era of research.

In this conversation, Dr. Johnson explores psychedelics as powerful enhancers of human agency—the felt capacity to steer one's own life, make meaningful choices, and act from a place of inner autonomy. Drawing from two decades of research across depression, cancer distress, addiction, and healthy volunteer studies, he argues that increases in agency may be a core, yet under-recognized, mechanism behind therapeutic change. Dr. Johnson discusses agency as a "meta-executive" function intertwined with free will, mental flexibility, and meaning-making, and suggests that psychedelics may uniquely illuminate and strengthen this capacity. In closing, he shares thoughts on how individuals can better take advantage of psychedelic-induced neuroplasticity to increase agency in their own lives.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• What Dr. Johnson means by "agency" and why he sees it as central to psychedelic healing
• Clinical examples of participants who rediscovered autonomy, changed behaviors, or reframed their suffering after psilocybin sessions
• Why psychedelics may enhance big-picture psychological flexibility, not just moment-to-moment cognitive flexibility
• How increased agency may help people with depression, addiction, and cancer distress shift entrenched patterns of thinking and behavior
• Potential future research directions for studying the neuroscience of agency

Quotes:

"It's not just that enhancing agency is the elephant in the room of why psychedelics are working, it's also that I think psychedelics can be a tool for finally understanding this thing of human agency." [4:31]

"Even if you think the sense of free will is an illusion, it has to be an evolutionarily advantageous illusion. Why else would it be seemingly universal?" [12:30]

"When someone really has one of these 'ah-ha' experiences, they can really come to this perspective of 'no, no, no, no, no, I really am choosing how I'm thinking about myself.' In cancer [patients] it happened a lot." [21:51]

Links:

In this episode, Psychedelic Medicine Podcast host, Dr. Lynn Marie Morski, provides the latest updates from the field of psychedelic medicine. Dr. Morski discusses the breakthrough therapy designation which a number of psychedelic compounds have received in the past few years, the most recent of which is BPL-003, a nasal spray formulation of 5-MeO-DMT. One of the exciting aspects of this new compound, Dr. Morski notes, is that it is shorter-acting than most serotonergic psychedelics—a feature which may make treatment with this substance less expensive and more accessible.

Another exciting development is the COMPASS Pathways phase 3 trial of COMP360 psilocybin. Dr. Morski shares that the company believes they are nine to twelve months ahead of schedule, which means that if all goes well, this psilocybin compound could be approved for treatment resistant depression as early as sometime in 2027. She also discusses why the US FDA said they rejected MDMA for PTSD and what this governing body would like to see from subsequent research before reconsidering this decision. In closing, Dr. Morski shares excitement about the development of novel psychoplastogens—the non-hallucinogenic psychedelics—which may help bring many of the same healing benefits to populations currently unable to be served by the existing compounds under investigation.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Which psychedelics currently have breakthrough therapy designation and for which indications
• Details of recent ketamine research for inpatient depression care and why these results are not as negative as they may seem
• The current horizons of psychedelic research and what indications may soon be explored
• Sources of hope in the current state of psychedelic research and the legal landscape

Quotes:

"[BPL-003] showed rapid and durable antidepressant outcomes after a single dose. … here we have something that is under an hour [of psychedelic experience] for treatment resistant depression." [7:43]

"Keeping patients blinded to whether or not they got the placebo or MDMA is a big focus that [the FDA] wanted to emphasize for these future phase 3 trials." [19:07]

"I know we had a big setback last year. I think a lot of us thought by this time we'd be a year into MDMA being approved and we're not. However, there are so many things on the horizon that are worth being excited about." [23:48]

Links:

In this episode Matthew Hicks, ND, MS joins to dive into the topic of psilocybin-assisted group therapy for depression. Dr. Hicks is a research Investigator at the National University of Natural Medicine as well as a Naturopathic doctor and licensed psilocybin facilitator at Synaptic Institute.

In this conversation, Dr. Hicks shares findings from one of the first studies investigating psilocybin-assisted group therapy for depression, conducted in Oregon's new legal psilocybin framework. He explains how the high cost and labor-intensive nature of psychedelic therapy inspired him to explore a group model that could make treatment more financially accessible while preserving - and even enhancing - its therapeutic potential. Dr. Hicks describes the structure of the study and discusses how initial participant hesitancy about group work transformed into deep connection and shared healing. He also highlights the study's significant reductions in depression scores, improvements across quality-of-life measures, and the potential for group-based approaches to pave the way toward insurance reimbursement and broader access to psychedelic care.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why affordability and accessibility were central motivations for developing a group-based psilocybin protocol
• The benefits and challenges of conducting psilocybin sessions in a shared group setting
• How Dr. Hicks' study balanced inclusion of low-income participants with safety and stability criteria
• The details of the group treatment structure for Dr. Hicks' study
• Why Dr. Hicks believes group formats may be inherently therapeutic in addition to their economic efficiency
• Dr. Hicks's vision for future efficacy and cost-effectiveness studies that could enable insurance coverage

Quotes:

"In terms of the group dynamic, almost everyone in the intake process was very reluctant. They were trepidatious. They were a little worried about the group part of it. And almost everybody at the end of it, when we did the follow ups at the group, was amazing. People made friends. They felt really supported. They felt really seen by the process of hearing other people's journeys and the growth that they went through—and seeing some other examples of transformation was really powerful and was really encouraging to me." [10:29]

"So [there are] really positive aspects to doing this in a group format that's not just economic—it's not just cheaper to do this in group, it actually has therapeutic benefits that you miss out on when you only do this one on one." [11:12]

"That was always my question in the follow up sessions: 'did your participation in this study change the way you engaged in psychotherapy? Did it change the relationship with your therapist?' And a lot of people reported that it did. They felt they were able to open up and engage more deeply, be more introspective. And it did, in many cases, not all, improve their psychotherapy outcomes as well." [18:24]

"Some people reported that hearing someone else in the group crying for a bit really opened up something in them and they almost felt grateful for that. This other person is having a meaningful experience over there, and that's something they wouldn't have gotten on their own if they hadn't heard that person crying." [22:45]

Links:

In this episode Rotem Petranker, PhD joins to discuss the current state of research on microdosing psilocybin. Dr. Petranker is the co-founder of the Psychedelic Studies Research Program at the University of Toronto and the Canadian Centre for Psychedelic Science. He recently ran the world's largest randomized controlled trial on the effectiveness of microdosing psilocybin on Major Depressive Disorder.

In this conversation, Dr. Petranker shares insights from running the world's largest randomized controlled trial on psilocybin microdosing for major depressive disorder. He explains the origins of microdosing research, from early anecdotes and surveys to his team's carefully designed clinical study comparing psilocybin to placebo across different environments. While participants in both groups reported significant improvements, the findings point to the powerful role of expectancy and placebo effects, alongside nuanced signals of cognitive shifts on measures like dysfunctional attitudes. Dr. Petranker emphasizes the importance of rigorous methodology, open science, and transparency in psychedelic research, while also acknowledging the stories of participants whose lives were positively impacted by study participation itself.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• What early microdosing research suggested, and its limitations in anecdotal and survey-based designs
• Why psilocybin was chosen over LSD for the study design
• What motivates people to try microdosing a psychedelic
• Key results from Dr. Petranker's study, including reports of both positive and adverse events
• How placebo effects—and simply being part of a trial—can powerfully shape outcomes
• Reflections on how psychedelics may work by increasing connectedness

Quotes:

"There's no real rigorous definition [of microdosing]. People say, 'oh, I'm just going to microdose some mushrooms,' and then they often take a random amount. I think what people mean is 'I'm going to take an amount that will not knock me out, won't cause serious hallucinations,' but they still use an amount that they often feel. Now, this is in contrast to what people in the [academic] literature define it as, which is more like a sub-perceptual dose, a sub-hallucinogenic dose." [2:17]

"If you microdose and go to work, just to sit under the flickering lights for eight hours in your cubicle versus, say, if you're going to microdose and then go on a walk, or do art, or do as you wish because it's the weekend, you're going to have very different impacts on your anxiety." [15:26]

"[In our study] there were three other self-report measures of depression. There is only a significant difference on one of them, where people who were microdosing were doing better. And that was on the dysfunctional attitude scale, which measures more cognitive assumptions about life." [26:2]

"people who microdose—regardless of why they microdose—they more or less all said that they got to what they wanted through an increased sense of meaning." [35:05]

Links: