Dr. Hunter:

Thank you for an interesting and detailed account of psychedelics. Your article is worthwhile on many levels, not the least of which is the valuable information it, in general, shares. However, the assertion that psychedelics “induce hallucinations, typically as sensory experiences that seem real but are not caused by external stimuli,” bothers me. And I see it as not coming from a partaker but someone observing as others partake, then interpreting what he/she sees as hallucinatory. That is, to an observer it may seem as though the one ingesting the psychedelic is seeing and hearing things not really there and that the psychedelically altered brain is, for lack of a better word, projecting. And I think that’s the one thing your otherwise well informed piece gets dead wrong.

I’ll explain, but first some background:

I’m 83, took LSD several times in the 1960s, have also taken peyote, psilocybin, and ayahuasca many more times than I can count. In addition to being always positive, all my times taking psychedelics have been genuine learning experiences. And most us, probably all, who’ve had multiple positive experiences with psychedelics will tell you, we are not hallucinating! No, we’re just seeing all our surroundings for the first time in a nontraditional way, in a never before seen clarity, if you will. The edges may be gone but the clarity is stronger than ever. Yes, it’s different, but when the drug wears off we can still see the new reality. The drug fades but the beauty and wonder of the experience remains — forever!

And if you feel that your brain actually grows during these experiences, you’ll find that scientific experiments confirm this with their findings that psychedelic ingestion gives rise to new dendrite growth in the brain. Consider this, along with and my last statement above, and you begin to understand the therapeutic reality of psychedelics.