Dr. Paul Conti

And I think it's because...

It can do what we are trying to get at in good therapy, but it can really catalyze that by just putting a person in that part of the brain that can see it for what it is without all that chatter in the cortex about, hey, you got to think it's your fault or you won't avoid it again.

And that makes the repetition compulsion.

How do I think ahead to the next thing that might happen and what else bad might happen?

I mean, we don't get anywhere doing that.

these psychedelics, the medicinal value, I believe, is putting us in that part of the brain where a person can really find truth.

And that's why I think that it's come so far in these few years, because I think that is very clinically evident

And I think we're going to see more and more the value of that and how what the psychedelics do can become, I believe, a heuristic for understanding like, wait, how are our brains really functioning?

And what are the parts that really matter to our experience of being human?

It's those parts of the brain, right?

The deep parts of the brain, the insular cortex and the areas around it that say light up when a person has an experience of spiritual ecstasy or an experience of connection with another person, right?

So we kind of have these telltale markers that something is going on there that's very important and very special.

And then when they come in a sense back online in a normal cognitive way,

They realize like, wow, now I'm applying all those mechanisms of trying to understand truth and to that.

And what I see is that it's true.

And wow, it's true.

Like, I mean, we hear that all the time, which tells me, hey, something different is going on there.

And of course, these are powerful tools.

So misused, like very bad things can happen.

But you think about the clinical utility and what does it mean to,