Count Deepak Chopra among the medical experts who see enormous promise in psychedelic substances like psilocybin or “magic mushrooms.”
“I think psychedelics might wake us up,” Chopra says in the new documentary short series Open Minds. “And if they do, then maybe we can reengineer the world.”
The six-part series, directed by Robert Schober, becomes available Tuesday on major VOD platforms through ALTRD.TV.
“It is becoming obvious that psychedelics do decrease inflammation, do restore what we might call homeostasis or self-regulation, do alleviate the symptoms of depression, anxiety, and even suicidal ideation,” Chopra tells Deadline, “and do have a role, as we move into the future, of alleviating a lot of suffering in both chronic physical disease and chronic mental disease.”
For decades, the U.S. government has classified psilocybin, LSD, peyote, MDMA and other psychedelics as Schedule 1 drugs without any medical benefit. That classification stymied research, but in the 2000s limited studies began to explore the efficacy of psychedelics in treating addiction, major depression, anxiety, PTSD and other psychological conditions. Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is among the major institutions actively investigating “how psychedelics affect behavior, brain function, learning and memory, the brain’s biology, and mood,” according to the university’s Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.
“What is not clear is the exact difference between these [substances] in their mechanism of action,” Chopra explains. “We do know that a lot of them work through receptors in the brain, particularly the serotonin receptor, but they may be affecting other receptors — dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, opiates. That research is not yet there, although a lot of people are engaged in that research.”
Chopra speaks from first-hand experience about the impact of psychedelics, having taken them twice in a clinical setting as a young medical student in India in the 1960s.
“I was part of an experiment with LSD in a control group,” he says, describing the experience as giving him a sense of “awareness without boundaries.”
He tells Deadline, “It had a great impact on my mind to experience the compassion and the joy equanimity and the peace and the euphoria that is actually a fundamental state of being in every human being, but only overshadowed by the neural correlates of the conditioned mind.”
As the title of the series suggests, psychedelics are about opening the mind – detaching it from conditioned patterns that bind us to a narrow conception of reality.
“What I think happens with psychedelic experiences is when the neural correlates of the conditioned mind are loosened — particularly the part of the brain that we call the ‘default mode network’ … the neural correlate of our ego identity — when the default mode network cools down or when the other correlates cool down, there’s less defensiveness, there’s more vulnerability, there’s more openness,” he says, “and there’s also the likelihood of transcendence, which actually in many cases even removes the fear of death.”
In the 1960s psychedelics were closely associated with the counterculture, which triggered a backlash against them and proponents like Timothy Leary. But Chopra detects a sea change in how psychedelics are now being perceived.
“Number one, the research is coming up really fast, and number two, there’s a pressure from the public,” he notes. “And number three, there’s interest in the industry in general, economically. And number four, the public awareness of the efficacy is increasing.”
Among those who appear in the documentary series is Doug Drysdale, CEO of Cybin, a company that says it’s “working with a network of world-renowned partners and pioneers in the field to create safe and effective psychedelic-based therapies. Together, we believe we can discover, develop and commercialize novel therapies that will transform the mental health treatment landscape.”
Psilocybin mushrooms are found in Mexico, Central America and parts of the U.S. and have been used by Indigenous cultures going back millennia. Ayahuasca, a plant-derived psychedelic brew, has been “used for spiritual and religious purposes by ancient Amazonian tribes and is still used as a sacred beverage by some religious communities in Brazil and North America,” according to healthline.com.
“There’s a history of using psychedelics in Indian culture for various kinds of spiritual experiences,” Chopra comments. “I never encountered a spiritual tradition where something like a psilocybin or peyote experience was absent.”
Last year, the not-for-profit Chopra Foundation created by Chopra, announced a partnership with Cybin “to support education and awareness about [Cybin’s] groundbreaking research to harness the potential of psychedelic therapies in mental health.”
“Our partnership with Cybin is precisely that,” Chopra explains, “to bring public awareness of the history of the use of psychedelics in various cultures, in various Indigenous peoples, the practices and the modern research. When you bring all this together, I think there’s a movement and we want to be part of that movement, if not lead it.”
Last month, Chopra and Cybin’s Doug Drydale joined a panel at SXSW titled “Open Minds: Innovations in Consciousness, Psychedelics & Mental Health.” At a private dinner during SXSW he received the Hope Award from Ceci Chan, founder of ACE91 and a faculty member of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, honoring his body of work.
That work includes authoring more than 90 books, including his latest, Living in the Light (co-authored by Sarah Platt-Finger), about Royal Yoga, “an ancient Indian practice that focuses on meditation, physical poses, and breathing.”
“I’ve been a student of meditation and yoga for the last 40 years plus. When I came to the United States, meditation was a new phenomenon, and it was difficult to find a yoga studio in a big city, even like New York. Now I can’t walk more than a block without finding a yoga studio,” he joked, “and very young svelte-looking, athletic, glamorous-looking young people coming in and out of yoga studios and obviously enjoying it and feeling a sense of euphoria.”
The book is meant to expand understanding of yoga as more than simply a physical practice.
“I realized that most people in the West, other than experts or scholars, were only familiar with the physical aspect — which is very wonderful,” he says. “But the goal of yoga ultimately is to realize that everything you experience, including your own body, is a modified form of your own consciousness.”