Do psychedelics produce partial or even complete recovery?

Can psychedelics help people to blow past the first two or three to get to the fourth of the five stages of psychotherapeutic recovery? IME, yes. Are they the "complete solution?" IMPE, no.

I have to offer that in my professional experience since 1987, I have seen psychedelics provide "openings" but not cures. I have heard of "spontaneous remissions" of diagnostic criteria but never actually seen one, nor known another licensed professional who has. Relief of symptoms with such as ayahuasca, psilocybin, THC, MDA, DMT and/or LSD? Yes. But only for a while. And not with anything like 100% reliability from one pt to the next, nor even in the same pt.

Drug therapy is nothing more or less than seeing what happens when a chemical is placed in a specific genetic environment. And the risks of inducing increased anxiety, mania and/or depression are evidently considerable. Because no two human beings -- even including identical twins by the time they are 20 -- are genetically or epigenetically the same.

Inasmuch as the cause of the thinking that induces the symptoms in a feedback loop is enormously complex and wired into dense and hyper-complex default mode networks, it continues to look to me like the only way to UNwire those networks is with the five principle forms of psychotherapy including psychodynamic, behavioristic, cognitive, mindfulness (body & mind awareness) and corporeal stimulation approaches. (See section seven of this earlier post.)

BTW, I tend to agree with those who theorize that psychedelics induce a temporary disconnection of synaptic junctions somewhere in the limbic emotion regulation system and/or between that network of neural structures -- including the amygdala (the "seat of fear") and the hippocampus (the "seat of memory") -- and the cerebral corteces as well as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the autonomic nervous system, which is the "seat of reaction" via the fight-flight-freeze response of the general adaptation syndrome.

Added later:

Another Redditor wrote "...if you give psychedelics to someone who is materially not safe right now, you can't expect a lot of healing to begin. you can expect a "bad trip" like experience."

I answered: IMPE, not necessarily. As is mentioned in the article, the "right" psychedelic for a specific individual will shut down a portion of the default mode network that was built in reaction to his or her trauma. And in so doing, open a door to information and skills training making a new and more functional DMN to develop. Over time, the new DMN achieves greater "throw weight," at least when the pt is fully awake and his cerebral cortex is "on" and communicating with his limbic system.

Resources & References

Agarwal, N.: fMRI Shows Trauma Affects Neural Circuitry, in Clinical Psychiatry News, Vol. 37, No. 3, March 2009.

Bandura, A.: Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1997.

Brown A.; Marquis, A.; et al: Mindfulness-Based Interventions in Counseling, in Journal of Counseling & Development, Vol. 91, No. 1, January 2013.

Baumeister, R.; Heatherton, T.: Self-Regulation Failure: An Overview, in Journal of Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1996.

Begley, S.: Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How Science Reveals our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves, New York: Ballantine Books, 2007.

Bien, T.; Bien, B.: Mindful Recovery: A Spiritual Path to Healing from Addiction, New York: Wiley & Sons, 2002.

Block, S.; Block, C.: Come to Your Senses: Demystifying the Mind-Body Connection, New York: Atria Books / Beyond Words (Simon & Schuster), 2005, 2007.

Bohacek, J.; Gapp, K.; et al: Transgenerational Epigenetic Effects on Brain Functions, in Biological Psychiatry, Vol. 73, No. 14, March 2013.

Boraxbekk, C.; et al: Neuroplasticity in response to cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder, in Translational Psychiatry, February 2016.

Brown A.; Marquis, A.; et al: Mindfulness-Based Interventions in Counseling, in Journal of Counseling & Development, Vol. 91, No. 1, January 2013.

Buczynski, R.; Levine, P.; Van der Kolk, B.; Porges, S.; Ogden, P.; Siegel, D.; Fisher, S.; Rethinking Trauma: The Right Interventions Can Make Trauma Treatment Faster and More Effective, a webinar, National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, October-November, 2014.

Carlson, N.: Physiology of Behavior, 7th Ed., Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: The Effects of Childhood Stress Across the Lifespan, Atlanta, GA: CDC, 2008.

Coltheart, M.: The cognitive [vs. neural] level of explanation, in Australian Journal of Psychology, Vol. 64, No. 1, March 2012.

Courtois, C.: Guidelines for the Treatment of Adults Abused or Possibly Abused as Children (with Attention to Issues of Delayed or Recovered Memory), Washington, DC: The Psychiatric Institute of Washington, 1997.

Cozzolino, L.: The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Building and Rebuilding the Human Brain, New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.

Craig, M.; Catani, M.; et al: Altered connections on the road to psychopathy, in Molecular Psychiatry, 2009.

Which is only through the first three letters of the alphabet, though I will include the following because they really are the comprehensive underpinnings of my assertions above:

Hamilton, L.; Timmons, C.: Principles of Behavioral Pharmacology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990.

Ries, R.; Feillin, D.; Miller, S.; Saitz, R.: Principles of Addiction Medicine, 4th Ed., Philadelphia: Lippincott-Williams, 2009.

Stahl, S.: Essential Psychopharmacology: Neuroscientific Basis and Practical Applications, 2nd Ed., New York: Cambridge U. Press, 2000.