DoseNation 30: Thomas Roberts, The Psychedelic Future of Mind

Nicely said, James: "ayahuasca ... a viral memetic package"! Fx

That was by far the best into so far! Wow, more of that!

Just a little bit disappointing that the good doctor balked at 'the hard question' James posed: Is there evidence that psychedelics actually make you smarter (paraphrased). The subtitle of his book begins with the phrase "How Entheogens Are Enhancing Cognition". It's too bad he didn't support that statement more directly in the interview... but then I haven't read the book. Then again, there isn't much research to fall back on due to our societies response to the perceived and real dangers of these substances over the past 4 decades or so. The only thing that pops up in my mind is the research on the personality trait of openness with psilocybin (long term increase, but arguably not an enhancement of cognition) and the canadian study (in 2002 I think) that had a very big sample size and found that moderate cannabis use increased IQ by an average of 4 or 5 points (can't recall which). Other side of that coin was that heavy use was correlated with a decrease of 4 or 5 points (can't recall which was which). I think the other thing they found is that if use began past adolescence, the decrements vanished. If I wasn't working I'd have time to check my facts more carefully. So, are there other studies out there that should be mentioned?