One of the key things that came out of meditation, for me, was recognizing that the voice in your head is not you, nor are many of the thoughts and feelings such as pain or sadness or grief or happiness. Listening to what that voice was saying and it was quite appalling. Of the voice in my head that was giving me a And then you realize you don't have much, if any, agency at all over what's coming intoĬonsciousness. The usual beginning meditation instruction sounds so simple. In 1994, I began attending some local meditation programs, and I became fascinated by meditation experiences and their implications. I was intrigued by the idea that for millennia different cultures had developed techniques of exploring the inner subjective landscape of mind. Unlike some who have been drawn to study psychedelics after having some kind of remarkable personal experience with them, I became interested in studying psychedelics after initiating a regular meditation practice about 25 years ago. On finding a life's calling through meditation At a minimum we need to anticipate such problems rather than having the fanciful idea that there are no risks. Although research to date suggests these compounds are relatively safe, there are real risks that can result in injury, death, or onset of new debilitating psychiatric conditions. And that too could set back the investigation of these fascinating compounds. I think that if we end up with a huge cultural pushback, whether or not it shuts down research again, it might create the divisiveness that we see play out in social media on all kinds of topics. There are many today who say, "Well, the train's out of the station, there's absolutely no way to stop this." I don't know that to be true. Although these compounds were showing therapeutic promise, the advocacy for widespread use resulted in a reflexive kickback from culture at large about potential dangers that ended up shutting down all clinical research for decades. Otherwise, we run the risk of replicating the mistakes of the 1960s in which these compounds were actively promoted by poster children such as Timothy Leary for widespread use without appreciation for the risks to individuals or to broader culture. It seemed to me, from the very beginning, that we would need to proceed in baby steps, starting with evaluating safety and efficacy through existing regulatory and culturally accepted channels such as medical use. My initial focus has been on the approval of psychedelics as therapeutics. In his own words, here is what Griffiths has to say about his life's journey. Griffiths PhD Professorship Fund, an endowed psychedelic research program that aims to "advance understanding of well-being and spirituality in the service of promoting human flourishing for generations to come." As a legacy project, he recently created the Roland R. He's filled with "gratitude for the miracle of sentient existence" and hope for the future. Just over a year ago, Griffiths, who is 76, received a terminal stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis. The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins, which he founded, has been at the epicenter of it all. Since then, his clinical trials and hundreds of published papers have shown the drug's significant therapeutic benefits for treating depression and nicotine addiction and, perhaps most dramatically, a profound reduction in end-of-life anxiety for people with cancer. In an initial study, most participants reported having "mystical-type" experiences, and 14 months later, two-thirds of those people described the experience as one of the five most meaningful of their lives. In 1999, the psychopharmacologist, whose research had previously been focused on drug addiction, convinced Johns Hopkins School of Medicine leadership and government agencies to let him initiate a research program focused on psilocybin. Psychedelics were banned by the 1970 Controlled Substances Act and, before his work, the last legal dose of psilocybin given to an American was in 1977. He famously brought psilocybin-the active ingredient in "magic" mushrooms-back into the field of medical research for the first time in decades. In a career that's melded scientific rigor with open-mindedness, Griffiths has blazed a new era into the research of psychedelics. He first dabbled in meditation as a graduate student, and though talk of "heart chakras" left him dubious, he used the practice as metaphor and leaned in. Roland Griffiths is a self-defined skeptic-but he'll entertain the fanciful. By As told to Greg Rienzi / Published Summer 2023
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