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Reinventing Yourself – How Psychedelics May Help Change Unwanted Behaviors

A photo illustration of the mind. University of Cincinnati postdoctoral researcher Neşe Devenot studies psychedelics in UC’s Institute of Research in Sensing. Credit: Andrew Higley and Margaret Weiner

Individuals were able to quit smoking by seeing themselves as nonsmokers.

Psychedelic substances have the potential to aid individuals in modifying undesirable behaviors by facilitating a re-examination and re-imagination of their self-perception.

A team of researchers from the University of Cincinnati analyzed the post-treatment journals of participants in a 2014 study on smoking cessation, which concluded that psychedelics were successful in assisting some individuals in quitting smoking for years.

In a new paper published in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, researchers analyzed the participants’ own words and found that psychedelics combined with talk therapy often helped longtime smokers see themselves as nonsmokers. This new core identity might help explain why 80% of participants were able to stop smoking for six months and 60% remained smoking-free after five years.

The 2014 study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that participants who wanted to quit smoking and used psilocybinPsilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound found in certain species of mushrooms, also known as "magic mushrooms" or "shrooms." When consumed, psilocybin is metabolized in the body to produce psilocin, which is responsible for the compound's psychoactive effects. Psilocybin has been used for thousands of years in spiritual and religious practices, and more recently has gained attention as a potential therapeutic tool for treating a range of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, and addiction.” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{“attribute”:”data-cmtooltip”, “format”:”html”}]”>psilocybin, the active hallucinogenic ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, combined with cognitive behavioral therapy were far more likely to succeed than those who try other traditional quit-smoking methods.

University of Cincinnati postdoctoral researcher Neşe Devenot studies psychedelics in UC’s Institute of Research in Sensing. Here she holds up a ‘magic’ mushroom a student crocheted for her. Credit: Andrew Higley

Lead author and University of Cincinnati postdoctoral researcher Neşe Devenot said the results demonstrate the potential psychedelics have to reshape self-perceptions to help people break free of old habits or addictions in the face of life’s daily triggers and temptations.

“We saw again and again that people had this feeling that they were done with smoking and that they were a nonsmoker now,” Devenot said.

She studies the science, history, and culture of psychedelics in UC’s Institute for Research in Sensing.

Devenot said this new sense of self might help arm people against temptation or old triggers.

“If you want to give up meat but you smell a delicious steak, it might be hard to resist,” she said. “But if you identify as a vegetarian and your sense of who you are is someone who does not eat meat, that identity helps encourage a different choice.”

During the smoking cessation study, therapists gave participants guided imagery exercises in which they were asked to envision smoking as a behavior external to their core identity. The participants documented their experience in writing.

One guided imagery exercise from the study framed nicotine addiction as an external force, manipulating behavior for its own ends like the zombie-creating fungus in HBO’s popular series “The Last of Us.”

“Like the Cordyceps fungi that functionally transforms insects into ‘zombified’ marionettes to serve the fungi’s own reproductive purposes, smoking behavior is characterized as a form of parasitic manipulation,” the study found.

Albert Garcia-Romeu, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University, said psilocybin could serve as a catalyst to help motivate and inspire people to make a change with the help of cognitive behavioral therapy.

“Cognitive behavioral therapy asks us to tune into the thoughts and feelings that we experience in our day-to-day lives and how those relate to our behaviors,” Garcia-Romeu said. “In turn, people often tend to build a narrative or sense of self around those cognitions and behaviors.

“This sets the stage for actually having the psilocybin experience, which can both provide novel insights and perspectives as well as serve as a marker of that identity shift like a rite of passage, signifying the change for instance from smoker to nonsmoker.”

Devenot said the experiment’s sample size was relatively small at just 15 participants. But the results are encouraging.

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“I feel that I am somehow fundamentally different to yesterday,” one participant wrote. “I guess I feel like some sort of metamorphosis has taken place!”

Some participants said the treatment with psilocybin made quitting feel easy compared to past experiences. Another said the cravings for nicotine used to be unbearable. But during the dosing session, the participant was unable even to imagine craving a cigarette.

“The concept seems firmly cemented into my reality even today, that cravings are not something that are real,” one said.

How do psychedelics help with this transformation?

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Devenot says people often get stuck in the same ruts of behavior, responding the same way to stressors or other triggers. She likens it to a downhill skier who uses the same grooved path down the mountain that they have used a thousand other times.

“It’s not that simple, but it’s a metaphor for how we talk about psychedelics,” Devenot said.

“Psychedelics have been compared to skiing in fresh snow. Some researchers suggest that you might have more freedom to maneuver your skis anywhere down the mountain,” she said. “The entrenched grooves of bad habits might not have as much pull on our skis, so we can lay down other paths.

“We’re looking for ways to help people shift behaviors and overcome the inertia of their habits that are more in line with their goals and aspirations,” Devenot said. “That’s why psychedelics are of wider interest to researchers.”

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Reference: “Psychedelic Identity Shift: A Critical Approach to Set And Setting” by Neşe Devenot, Aidan Seale-Feldman, Elyse Smith, Tehseen Noorani, Albert Garcia-Romeu and Matthew W. Johnson, December 2022, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal.
DOI: 10.1353/ken.2022.0022

Related article: Psychedelics Have Huge Potential, But Financial Interests Could Corrupt Them

Source: SciTechDaily