Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)

So the first thing that we've got to get into is what do we mean by psychedelics?

Because psychedelics are actually a class of compounds.

They include things like ayahuasca, they include LSD, psilocybin, DMT, which is the active ingredient in ayahuasca, also things like the peyote cactus, ibogaine.

So there's a lot of these different compounds, and they're actually each different.

Now, the reason that we kind of classify them together is because they do have certain shared mechanisms of action.

So the primary neurotransmitter that we're sort of focused on or the primary receptor we're focused on is the serotonin 2A receptor.

So that's the 5-HT2A receptor.

And so if we want to understand what separates psychedelics from other drugs, we have to understand what that receptor does.

So the first thing to understand is that there needs to be no outcome from small talk.

This is a vasana too.

Your mind is vasanas all the way down.

So the key thing about detachment is not that you don't have wants, it is that your wants do not control you.

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So the 5-HT2A receptor does a couple of different things in the brain.

The first thing that it does is it affects things like mood and anxiety.

So the 5-HT, the serotonin receptor, is also what we're sort of focusing on with antidepressant medication.

So we know that if we alter the serotonin transmission in your brain, it will affect things like your mood and your anxiety.

Now, generally speaking, when we boost serotonin transmission, mood, like depressions, feelings of sadness and things like that go down, feelings of anxiety go down.

But this is where things get fun with psychedelics.