Rick Doblin: Multidisciplinary Association For Psychedelic Studies

Rick Doblin, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a non-profit research and education organization that advances clinical research on the safety and efficacy of adjunct therapies such as LSD, ayahuasca, MDMA, cannabis, and psilocybin for various diseases and disorders. In this interview with Great Minds, Dr. Doblin explains how psychedelics can be used to treat a variety of mental health conditions; his personal path from engineering school through focus on psychedelics; what it was like working at the Department of Defense as an anti-narcotics researcher in the 1980s; why he founded MAPS in response to failed drug policy; what it’s like being at the forefront of psychedelic research; why we need to break silos between disciplines in order to make progress in the field; what he thinks about today’s culture around drugs; and his thoughts around a career focused on psychedelics.

How psychedelics can help with mental illness and trauma

There’s now a large and growing body of scientific evidence that various psychedelics can be helpful with a wide range of mental health conditions and addictions. In general, psychedelics are non-toxic, have a very low potential for adverse side effects, aren’t addictive, and can be used as adjunct or catalytic agents in therapy. The PTSD population, in particular, is one that’s very responsive to psychedelics. So, for example, with people who have trauma from sexual assault, military combat, childhood sexual abuse, natural disasters like earthquakes, or other kinds of serious traumatic events, the therapy that’s most effective for that is psychotherapy. What psychedelic therapies do is add a catalyst to psychotherapy. The catalyst effects are that they can help people process traumatic memories, including traumas that have been repressed and are not available to the conscious mind, and help them understand the emotions and feelings related to that material in a different way that’s not so distorted by emotion.

The personal path to psychedelics

I was fascinated by the therapeutic potential of psychedelics since I was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, where I studied psychology and neuroscience. I was very influenced by the work of Timothy Leary, Charles Tart, and the Harvard Group. But I went on to get a Ph.D. in engineering because I was interested in technology and how we could apply it to improve the human condition. I became interested in psychedelics again when I became aware of the AIDS epidemic. I had this vision of how psychedelics could be applied to problems like substance abuse, domestic violence, and other social problems. At the time, nobody was interested in psychedelic research, especially clinical research. In 1986, I founded the Human Potential Foundation, which conducted research and education about psychedelics and other consciousness-expanding drugs. But when the organization encountered financial problems, I thought I might have to close it down in 1990, I went to the Zihuatanejo conference in Mexico and heard Albert Hofmann talk about LSD. It was a transformative moment for me. I realized that my mission in life was to do psychedelic research and expand the therapeutic uses of these substances. So, I decided to get back into doing research with psychedelics again and founded the MAPS at that time.

Working at the Department of Defense on anti-narcotics research

I was a doctoral candidate at the Johns Hopkins University and was contracted to do a study on neuropharmacology at the very low level of funding, but it was a foot in the door. The project was to study the effects of drugs on rats’ brains. I had been experimenting with psilocybin at the time, so I said, “Let’s just do the psilocybin research and the other stuff can be something else.” It turned out the other stuff was to study how the brain metabolized cocaine and heroin. We were trying to use the latest advances in neurochemistry, psychology, and physiology to study how drugs affect the brain. While I was doing this research, I encountered a couple of interesting things. One was the discovery of how widespread illicit drug use was in the military. In all branches of the service, there were people who were being discharged for drug use. They weren’t being discharged because they had become addicted to drugs. They were being discharged because they had used drugs while they were in service and it was an illegal act. Although many of them might have had stress problems as a result of their work, they weren’t able to get treatment for that. Even after they left the service, they weren’t able to get treatment. I started to think that this was a very important public health problem.

Why you founded MAPS in the first place?

At the time, the only way to try to figure out if these drugs might have therapeutic potential would have been to do animal experiments with them and apply for a human research grant, which would have taken years to get approved. And the chances of it getting approved would have been very small because of the Drug War mentality that was controlling research at the time. So, I said to myself, “The only way we’re going to get any data that’s useful with psychedelics is to do it outside of the government.” I was already running a nonprofit organization and had some experience with managing people and managing finances, so I decided to start a research organization that would be dedicated to doing psychedelic research. And that’s how MAPS came into being.

What it’s like being at the forefront of psychedelic research

It’s challenging and very exciting. There are many ways in which this is like other fields of research. For example, in the early stages of any field of research, there are many unknowns. There are also false starts and wrong turns. There are many challenges getting funding for the research, and there are many challenges getting government approval for the research. If you’re trying to break new ground, you’re going to have a lot of obstacles placed in your path by people who don’t understand what you’re trying to do. There are also people who are very excited about the potential of these substances and are eager to see the research proceed. It’s a very interesting and complex field where you’re trying to break new ground and you don’t quite know how to proceed, but it’s also very exciting because you know this has the potential to help a lot of people and improve the human condition in a very fundamental way.

The need to break silos between disciplines in order to make progress in this field

Psychedelics are stimulating an interest in consciousness research and the interdisciplinary aspects of this field. People are coming out of their silos, which is wonderful. There’s an interest in how psychedelics can be applied to problems like climate change and a wide variety of other serious problems. Unfortunately, although the interest is there, the funding isn’t. Funding for psychedelic research is very small compared to the need. One of the questions I’m often asked is why there isn’t more funding for this research. It’s a legitimate question. One reason is that the people who have funding for research typically don’t see the need for this research. Another reason is that the people who have money to give out for research don’t understand the importance of this research.

Your thoughts around a career focused on psychedelics?

I think it’s an exciting time to be involved in this field. People are coming together from various disciplines and forming new interdisciplinary fields. The psychedelic field is a very interesting one, so I encourage young people to consider it as a field of study or a career. You can learn a great deal about the human condition and make a real contribution to the world. You can also make a very nice living doing it. It’s a very exciting time, and I encourage people to participate in this field.