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We carry out scientific research into psychoactive drugs and consciousness, and promote evidence-based, health-oriented drug policy reform, led by Amanda Feilding.

A new Beckley Retreats article examines the research around experiential therapy and lasting change.“Emerging research s...
02/09/2026

A new Beckley Retreats article examines the research around experiential therapy and lasting change.

“Emerging research suggests that psychedelic-therapies create a “critical window” of psychological flexibility following treatment whereby neurons can more easily break old connections and form new ones, helping to foster long-term behavioural change.

By pairing emotional insight gained through psychotherapy with the practice of new habits, behaviours, regulation of the nervous system and emotional responses, individuals can work on developing long-term, meaningful change.”

https://www.beckleyretreats.com/blog/why-cant-i-change-my-patterns-even-with-therapy

In a fascinating new paper, researchers challenge a common description of the psychedelic state as one of “disorder” in ...
26/08/2026

In a fascinating new paper, researchers challenge a common description of the psychedelic state as one of “disorder” in the brain.

Sixty-two people with no previous psychedelic experience underwent fMRI and EEG scans before and after taking psilocybin, while resting, meditating, listening to music and watching a film.

Using machine learning to track how brain activity unfolded moment to moment, the researchers found that what looks like randomness in conventional averaged measures is in fact organised: under psilocybin, brain activity reorganised into structured patterns closely shaped by what the person was doing and experiencing at the time. Networks that normally keep internal thought and external sensory input separate began to merge, and this merging was strongest in people who reported feeling continuous with their surroundings rather than separate from them, a state the authors call “embeddedness.”

The stronger that experience, the greater both the reorganisation in the brain and the shifts in the person’s outlook the next day, which the researchers suggest may help explain how the psychedelic experience itself, and the setting it takes place in, translates into lasting change. This was a healthy sample given a single dose with no blinded placebo, so it does more to illuminate mechanism rather than treatment, but it offers a richer picture of how the psychedelic state is organised in the brain.

📑 Psychedelics align brain activity with context – Stoliker et al., 2026

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10910-z

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10910-z

A new article from Beckley Retreats explores how psilocybin may specifically help the bereaved deepen their emotional p...
20/08/2026

A new article from Beckley Retreats explores how psilocybin may specifically help the bereaved deepen their emotional processing and reconnect with what makes life feel meaningful. While research on psilocybin for grief is still in the early stages, adjacent studies centered on issues like depression and end-of-life anxiety or existential distress offer a valuable foundation for exploration.

Studies Involving Existential Distress or End-of-life Anxiety:

Two widely cited clinical trials published in 2016 provide insight into psilocybin’s potential use for grief. These studies found that psilocybin-assisted therapy, combined with psychological support, significantly reduced anxiety and depression in patients with life-threatening cancer.

📄Griffiths, et al., 2016 reported that a single high-dose psilocybin session produced substantial and sustained reductions in depression and anxiety in 80% of participants.

📄Ross, et al., 2016 similarly reported rapid and lasting improvements in emotional well-being for participants with existential distress.

Importantly, participants described changes in their relationship to their mortality. Many said their experiences centered around forgiveness, connection, love, or acceptance of death. Although these studies did not focus specifically on grief, they suggest that psilocybin may help individuals navigate emotionally and existentially difficult experiences.

https://www.beckleyretreats.com/blog/psilocybin-for-grief-and-loss

Tomorrow, ticket prices for the World Ayahuasca Forum will increase from €395 to €495. If you’re planning to join us in ...
14/08/2026

Tomorrow, ticket prices for the World Ayahuasca Forum will increase from €395 to €495. If you’re planning to join us in Girona this September, today is the last day to secure your Advance Ticket at the current rate. Join us for three days of dialogue, connection, and collective reflection on the future of ayahuasca and Indigenous medicines.

September 11–13, 2026 · Girona, Spain

https://www.ayahuasca2026.com/tickets/

A new psychedelic survey from UCL is seeking to understand how psychedelics and related drugs affect different people ac...
14/08/2026

A new psychedelic survey from UCL is seeking to understand how psychedelics and related drugs affect different people across the lifespan.

See details and the link to contribute your experience to psychedelic research below:

https://qualtrics.ucl.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_a44pPupnpjzL5ie

A new ethnographic study sheds light on the changes in the usage, customs and knowledge of Psilocybe mushrooms in a Zapo...
14/08/2026

A new ethnographic study sheds light on the changes in the usage, customs and knowledge of Psilocybe mushrooms in a Zapotec community in Oaxaca, Mexico.

🖇️ Full paper on our Psychedelic Links in our bio

Current use of holy mushrooms of the genus Psilocybe in a Zapotec community in Oaxaca, Mexico. Haro-Luna MX, Ruan-Soto F, Ramírez-Cruz V, Amaya-Pérez J, Guzmán-Dávalos L (2025)

📷✨ Photo Credit: Alan Rockefeller

Further excellent DMT research to share:The powerful psychedelic compound DMT has become famous for its capacity to reli...
30/07/2026

Further excellent DMT research to share:

The powerful psychedelic compound DMT has become famous for its capacity to reliably evoke contact with a menagerie of different entities, often perceived as sentient and interacting with the experiencer in various ways.

Despite such experiences being widely reported and well documented, the experiential aspects of such immersive experiences under DMT and other psychedelics remains conceptually undefined and phenomenologically underexplored. Seeking to shed some light on these facets of people’s DMT experiences, the authors of a new study paper applied micro-phenomenological interviews to a group of 23 participants receiving doses of 20mg intravenous DMT. 

Analysis of the interviews revealed 125 phenomenological categories, with reliable developmental patterns being evident, with bodily effects preceding visual and auditory ones, with the perception of 3D presences only emerging after multisensory integration and 3D spatial characteristics had developed, as high-order features of immersive experiences. This illustrates a hierarchical relationship between subtle and gross forms of immersion which occur along a structured continuum, with the former seemingly providing the experiential scaffolding for the latter. Perceived entities varied widely in sensory modality, semantic complexity, and relational mode.

These findings highlight DMT immersion as being a dynamic, constructive process, and suggest that DMT research may inform our understanding of immersive experiences in other contexts, potentially including ordinary experience of the waking world.

📑 Micro-Phenomenology of Immersion and Perceived Presences under DMT
Sanders JW, Millière R, Demšar E, Daily ZG, Erritzoe D, Carhart-Harris R, Timmermann C, 2026

DOI: 10.1093/nc/niag015

🖇️ Full article in our bio links

Robin Carhart-Harris, Ph.D. Chris Timmermann, PhD

A new study set out to test whether DMT, the psychedelic compound found in ayahuasca, can prompt human brain stem cells ...
21/07/2026

A new study set out to test whether DMT, the psychedelic compound found in ayahuasca, can prompt human brain stem cells to grow and multiply.

The researchers used neural stem cells grown in the lab from human donor cells, avoiding the usual reliance on rodents. A single 24-hour exposure to DMT increased the rate at which these cells divided and raised levels of BDNF, a protein that supports the growth and survival of neurons and is one of the leading candidates for how psychedelics might produce lasting change in the brain.

The growth advantage persisted even after the drug was washed away, with treated cells going on to form larger clusters. This matters because the rapid, long-lasting antidepressant effects reported for psychedelics are hard to explain, and the capacity to encourage new brain cell growth is one proposed mechanism. The authors note that this laboratory work in cultured cells says nothing yet about whether the same happens in a living human brain or has clinical implications, only that a mechanism long assumed from animal work can now be observed in human cells.

It is an early but important step in understanding how psychedelics might drive the growth of new brain cells.

📑 Proliferative Effects of the Psychedelic N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in Human Neural Stem Cells – Salerno et al., 2026

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acschemneuro.6c00209

Creativity Survey 🔍✨🌀Are you a scientist or creative who feels that non-ordinary states of consciousness have benefitted...
14/07/2026

Creativity Survey 🔍✨🌀

Are you a scientist or creative who feels that non-ordinary states of consciousness have benefitted their work in some way? The below survey is the result of a research collaboration that seeks to shed more light on this topic.

Non-ordinary states (NOS) encompass any state of consciousness that differs from typical waking, day-to-day awareness, in whatever form or through whatever means these occur. This includes dreaming, hypnagogic states, intense emotions, deep focus or flow, meditation, breathwork, sensory changes, and pharmacological means such as through ingesting psychedelic substances.

This research seeks to take things forward by examining how non-ordinary states relate to insight, problem-solving, and cognitive flexibility in scientific and specialised work. The overarching aim is to better understand how people actually experience and interpret these states, what benefits or challenges they associate with them, and how they may contribute to knowledge discovery across disciplines.

This is a collaboration between Sensoria Research (Leonardo Christov-Moore), Manesh Girn and Sam Gandy. It is part of a larger effort to build a rigorous, openly discussable field with real standards, real tools, and genuine data sovereignty.

If you have relevant experience, please consider taking this 10 minute confidential survey exploring this or sharing it over your networks, or with folk you think may hold relevance.

Thank you ✨🌱

https://s.sensoriaresearch.org/nos

Defined as a loss of subjective self-identity, ego dissolution corresponds to a temporary breakdown in the normally high...
10/07/2026

Defined as a loss of subjective self-identity, ego dissolution corresponds to a temporary breakdown in the normally highly organised connectivity of the default mode network.

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