Can psychedelics turn therapists into vampires?

Abstract

Education and training of mental health professionals about psychedelics, and specifically psychedelic-assisted (psycho)therapy raises an idiosyncratic personal and ethical dilemma: should trainees have personal experiences with the drugs they might later administer, either for research or for medical purposes? We argue that the situation is personally and ethically challenging because psychedelic experiences can be, although are not always, transformative experiences in the sense described by philosopher LA Paul. That is, psychedelic experiences can be both personally and epistemically transformative, and thus the decision to have a psychedelic experience or not will ultimately be a personal choice that must take into consideration full autonomy regarding issues of epistemic ignorance, epistemic revelation, and personal transformation.