And this is suposed to be news??! How far away from the psychedelic era we have ended up, I felt as I read this report of the study, partially federally funded and published in the journal Psychopharmacology. Touted by some as a landmark, it is said to be the first study to ‘rigorously’ study the subjective experiences of hallucinogen users. Charles Schuster, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, commented: “We’ve lost 40 years of (potential) research experience with this whole class of compounds,” he said. Now, with modern-day scientific methods, “I think it’s time to pick up this research field.” Despite the fact that hallucinogens have been used since time immemorial in spiritual ceremonies in all but the most uptight societies, the new work is said to demonstrate drug effects in a new way. Given that users report intense mystical experiences, proponents of the study say they may have a window into the religious experience, for example by doing fMRIs of people under the influence of psilocybin or other hallucinogens. Ah, the ludicrous tragedy of feeling it is somehow more valid to study the ‘subjective’ ‘objectively’! Again, the article talks as if this establishes that hallucinogens might be useful for the treatment of drug addicts or depression in the terminally terminally ill. Of course, these two categories are picked because they are areas in which there is already clinical hallucinogen research and established evidence of effectiveness.