The Hopkins/Griffiths protocol for psilocybin (enduring benefits)

If you like reading studies, here is the study PDF link ("Psilocybin-occasioned mystical-type experience in combination with meditation and other spiritual practices produces enduring positive changes in psychological functioning and in trait measures of prosocial attitudes and behaviors" Griffiths et al 2017).

But I will summarize this for you below, and I have created a video on the subject as well.  This study is important for many reasons.  For one, they came up with a detailed protocol that can result in up to 56% of participants having the single most spiritually significant experience of their life, and a remarkable 96% reporting that it was in their "top 5".  But perhaps more importantly, they discovered a synergy between psilocybin and meditation ("spiritual practice").  These results have since been reproduced by other researchers.

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WHY I LIKE THIS STUDY SO MUCH:

1. They used healthy volunteers, this represents the widest possible audience - as opposed to studies on people with addictions, or cancer, or depression, or eating disorders.
2. It was a pretty large group of participants for this type of study, 75 people in total, all of whom were given a high dose of psilocybin at some point (the 25 in the control group got their high dose after the study)
3. The study shows the potential long lasting benefits that can be achieved with an elaborate protocol that includes a psilocybin induced complete mystical experience.
4. They documented exactly HOW to produce the desired deep mystical experience through careful attention to details like set, setting, and dosage.
5. Everyone in the psychedelic community knows that mindset is very important, but there aren’t a lot of detailed, step by step published guides for how to prepare one’s mind for a deep psychedelic experience, now there is.
6. This team achieved the highest levels of safety and success that I’ve ever seen from a large study. Not a single serious adverse reaction or significant psychological issue, proving that by carefully screening participants and preparing their minds for the experience and providing a supportive, safe, trusted environment as well as a lower dose before a higher dose, you can have nearly 100% positive results.
7. When I look at a research study, I don’t just see the study itself, but the potential that it represents for wider application. This study lays the groundwork for more than meets the eye. I believe the same principles at work here can be used to achieve all sorts of improvement and goals in one’s life. This video does not ONLY represent a framework for what was done in the study, it is a framework to reprogram your subconsious mind.  You might want to think about the possibilities and potential.  My belief is that meditation and daily repetition set the intent and start the work, and psychedelics may solidify the desired changes.  This is very exciting when you think about it, and I hope others see the same potential that I see.

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Dr. Griffiths has done two related TED talks (1 & 2) that you may be interested in, as well as an interview with Dr. Rhonda Patrick and a nice lecture at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelics Research organized by The OPEN Foundation. He also briefly describes the above particular study here (just before Griffiths speaks in the video they mention that just using psychedelics is too unpredictable to be considered a primary "spiritual practice", but they have particular promise when used judiciously in combination with a spiritual practice both before and after).

Past studies have not shown a whole lot in the way of ENDURING (long lasting) positive results from the use of psychedelics.  You may have seen this yourself - where a person is excited after an experience for a little while, they may also have complete relief from depression or anxiety which is fantastic, but after 1 to 3 weeks, they slowly revert back to their old self again.  The Griffiths team found that by combining a "spiritual practice" (details below) with 2 psilocybin sessions, they were able to achieve something more - long lasting (6 month followup) improvements in trait measures including interpersonal closeness, gratitude, life meaning/purpose, forgiveness, death transcendence, daily spiritual experiences, religious faith and coping, altruism/positive social effects, positive behavior change, and increased spirituality.  They even checked with friends and family of participants to independently confirm these enduring trait changes, and it was all done in a blind, placebo controlled way.  Spiritual practice alone did not produce these results, nor did psilocybin alone, it was the combination that proved so valuable.

So what we have here is a reproducible way to generate enduring positive changes in attitudes and behavior and increase healthy psychological functioning.  Analysis shows that these beneficial effects were correlated with the intensity of the psilocybin-occasioned mystical experience and the rates of engagement with meditation and other spiritual practices.

THE PROTOCOL

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All participants were required to read the book “Passage Meditation” by Easwaran, and put the 8 point program into practice. In the study they only really emphasized doing 10-20 minutes a day of passage meditation plus using a mantra and one pointed attention in daily activities. They also gave each participant a blank notebook and encouraged them to write down daily self-reflective insights, benefits, and challenges of spiritual practice in daily life (journaling).  Each participant also received a one page outline of spiritual practice suggestions.   Here is a detailed video that gives an introduction to passage meditation.

The passage you memorize (from the above mentioned passage meditation) will help put you into the ideal mindset for the psilocybin sessions.  The book describes many possible passages to use, but the top recommendation is The Prayer of St. Francis or you can pick something on your own that will hopefully inspire you or give you some goals to work toward.  For the musically inclined, there are many versions of The Prayer of St. Francis on YouTube, like this one by Sarah McLachlan.  You will need to memorize the passage, and be able to repeat it in your mind very slowly for the passage meditation.

Do this meditation/spiritual practice daily for one month before partaking in a psilocybin session which will start with a 2 gram dose of dried cubensis mushroom equivalent (4-5 capsules) or 1g (or less) of powdered of panaeolus cyanescens (2 capsules). Continue your meditation/spiritual practice for another 30 days before doing a second psilocybin session at a 3 gram dried cubensis mushroom equivalent (6-7 capsules) dosage (see footnotes for more info on dosages, you may need more). Note: the stepped up dosing is considered important for optimal results and reduces the chance of an adverse reaction (in fact no one in this study had any significant problems at all with the psilocybin sessions or afterwards, the worst that happened was a single participant experienced abnormally elevated blood pressure which was treated with sublingual nitroglycerin, but even that person reported a positive overall experience).

For the psychedelic sessions - make sure you have a pleasant setting, no disruptions. Don’t take the psilocybin too late in the day as the effects can last 5 to 6 hours (peak experience is between hours 2 and 3). Enter a state of mental surrender before ingesting the psychedelic (trust, let go, and be open).  The Hopkins team uses nature & art books with beautiful pictures as a way of distracting participants minds from other thoughts. This is important, studies have shown that preoccupation of the mind is more likely to result in less optimal outcomes while the best outcomes result when a person enters a state of surrender before taking the psychedelic. In “Replication and Extension of a Model predicting response to psilocybin” researchers found that the Mental state of surrender lead to mystical experiences, while preoccupation of the mind is associated with adverse experiences.

Study participants were asked to eat a low fat meal before arriving at 8:15AM the day of their psilocybin session.  Do not start too late in the day, you don't want to be tripping in the niddle of the night when you should be sleeping and recovering.  Spend most of the session laying down, wearing comfortable eyeshades that don’t touch your eyelids, or close your eyes. Focus within, on your internal experience. Listen to music that will facilitate a mystical experience: You could use the 10 hour soundtrack I made explicitly for this purpose (it can also be downloaded for offline, commercial free use, all patrons are given a link to the download). But I also created a playlist based on what is actually used by the Hopkins team (patrons are also given a link to download this one for offline commercial free use) and that is the recommended place to start.

Optionally use a friend/guide (trip sitter) if that idea brings you comfort (highly recommended for the inexperienced). The guide can watch over you, assist you if needed for example getting to a bathroom or giving you some water to sip. The guide should be instructed not to disrupt you, but they can encourage you to focus within, and provide reassurance as needed. The Hopkins guides would sometimes hold a participants hand or shoulder to let them know they were there and to provide love and encouragement.

After the trip, you should write down as much about your experience as you can remember, this will help you with the integration phase in the days and weeks to follow.  How will you know if your dosage was adequate? After your psilocybin session, take the following mystical experiences questionnaire which has been scientifically validated (here and here) and has been used by countless researchers (mentioned in many reputable published studies):

MEQ30 [Mystical Experiences Questionnaire] 

Experimental Self Scoring MEQ30 I created with Google Forms: https://bit.ly/3icmyd1

You had a “complete” mystical experience if your scores on each of the four factors were ≥60% of the maximum possible factor score.  If you had no problem with the dosage but did not attain a complete mystical experience, increase the dosage for the next session by one gram (2 additional capsules). Keep in mind that achieving a complete mystical experience is the single most important determinant of successfully achieving the long term benefits described in the study.  About half of the participants in the study were able to achieve a mystical experience on the 2 gram (4 capsule) equivalent dose, this rose to 64% after the higher 3 gram (6 capsule) dose, but some people require more than others, it can take up to 5 grams (10 capsules).  Also note that potency of your dried mushrooms could vary considerably*** (this is also a reason to powder your supply in a large batch which homogenizes the end product making it more consistent, predictable, and thus more safe - see footnote for more details).

Never do psychedelic sessions closer than 2 weeks apart, in the Griffiths study they always waited 30 days and only administered 2 high dose sessions per participant.

Continue your meditation / spiritual practice for at least 30 days after the last psilocybin session before optionally doing a second session at a higher dose.  Study participants were asked to continue the spiritual practices for a total of 6 months, so at least 4 months of additional spiritual practices after their final psilocybin session.

Psychedelics can be life changing, and the real "magic" comes from proper preparation of the mind.  The very same principles from this study can be adapted to treat addictions, depression, PTSD, trauma, or to change behaviors or modify one's life for the better.  The only real requirement is that the participant be fully engaged and genuine in seeking the change/outcome.  You must do your part in the process because the psychedelic is merely one aspect of the equation and is not enough on its own.  But note that having a spiritual practice may in fact help mediate a complete mystical experience on psychedelics, and it is this component (and/or its neurophysiological or other correlates) that was found to be critical for enduring benefits.

Note: I believe these results could be achieved using oral DMT although as far as I know, no researchers have studied it in this way.  It does not seem like vaped DMT would be a good alternative, and Griffiths specifically mentions in the study (p19) that LSD is not likely to work based on other studies showing very low incidence of complete mystical experiences with LSD.

Additional notes:  The Johns Hopkins team uses the principle of “trust, surrender, let go”. Bill Richards offers the following insight to those taking psychedelics:

“The same force that takes you deep within will, of its own impetus, return you safely to the everyday world,” the manual offers at one point. Guides are instructed to remind subjects that they’ll never be left alone and not to worry about their bodies while journeying, since they will be monitored. If you feel like you’re “dying, melting, dissolving, exploding, going crazy etc.—go ahead, embrace it: Climb staircases, open doors, explore paths, fly over landscapes.” And if you confront anything frightening, “look the monster in the eye and move towards it. . . . Dig in your heels; ask, ‘What are you doing in my mind?’ Or, ‘What can I learn from you?’ Look for the darkest corner in the basement, and shine your light there.”

These guidelines may partially explain why the incidence of "bad trips" or negative experiences are very rare in the Hopkins trials.

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Things you will need for the protocol:  Passage Meditation by Eknath Easwaran

Eyeshades (these are great!)

Blank NoteBook  (or just use an app for that)

Gem scale I recommend (important for proper dosing)

Headphones  (but if you don’t need to drown out distractions playing on an in room sound system with subwoofer is better)

Hopkins Music Download

Hopkins Spiritual Practice Suggestions (one page outline)

Suggested Passages for Passage Meditation or use The Prayer of St. Francis

Spores (if you need mushrooms)

Mushroom Growing Vid

References used in the video:

A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin (2019) 

“Science and Sacraments: Psychedelic Research and Mystical Experiences”

Introduction to passage meditation

Blue Mountain Center for Meditation

FoundMyFitness “Roland Griffiths, Ph.D. on Psilocybin, Psychedelic Therapies & Mystical Experiences”

Sacred Knowledge by William (Bill) Richards (source for the Hopkins playlist)

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• ***[footnotes] I converted Griffiths' dosages of pure (synthetic) psilocybin to "dried cubensis equivalent" dosages after doing substantial research and review of all published studies on alkaloid content of psilocybe cubensis mushrooms (this is the easiest psilocybin containing mushroom to grow and the most commonly cultivated psilocybin containing species).  The highest quality studies I could find on this subject were Morphological and Chemical Analysis of Magic Mushrooms in Japan and Forensic analysis of hallucinogenic mushrooms and khat using cation-exchange liquid chromatography. These studies and many others have found that alkaloid content can vary wildly from sample to sample.  In particular the total content of psilocin and psilocybin in cubensis ranged from 0.51 to 1.44% per dry mass of the whole mushrooms (and well over 3% for panaeolus cyanescens).  Other research has shown that  there can be up to a four-fold variation in potency of individual mushrooms that were even grown simultaneously in the same small jar. There can be up to a three-fold variation in potency between a cap and a stem of a single mushroom.  I point this out for safety reasons and reproducibility purposes - there is virtually no way to know the potency of any mushroom.  By properly drying them and blending (powdering) the entire batch together, you end up with a nice uniform mix which will be consistent and safer for experimentation purposes (this is known has homogenization).  This is why I showed that step in my bulk mushroom cultivation video however I could not explicitly explain the reason in the video without triggering the censors at YouTube (it needed to be a generic, "how to grow any type of mushroom video").  Anyway, the AVERAGE psilocybin/psilocin content from Tsujikawa 2003 was  almost exactly 1%  But an average isn't going to help you determine the alkaloids in your personal supply which may be weaker or stronger, you need to take several small test dosages from the homogenized (powdered) mix, before assessing potency.  Also note that an individual's response to these compounds can vary wildly - for one person a 1.5g dose is enough to elicit hours of closed eye visuals, while another person sampling the same batch could get no visuals at all even with a 4g dose (I have seen this happen).  Some people trip far more easily than others, there are likely genetic factors involved, possibly related to monoamine oxidase inhibition.   Also note that the Hopkins researchers adjusted dosage based on bodyweight, likewise my equivalent dosages are based on dose/70kg (154lb) bodyweight and should be adjusted up or down if you are significantly heavier or lighter than that.  For example if you weigh 190 lbs you would multiply the suggested dose by 190/154 or 23% more (there are limits to this adjustment, for example a 300lb obese person should not double the standard dose).  Also note that some species of mushrooms are at least twice as potent and possibly 3 times as potent as cubensis mushrooms, so you will need to adjust the dose accordingly.
• Here are the safety guidelines used by the Hopkins team. Exclusion criteria are described in great detail starting on page 9, including medical and mental health exclusions, drug and supplement interaction exclusions, family history (mental illness), personality types (too rigid, or too emotional), and more. They also describe countermeasures that can be taken to intervene in the rare event of psychosis.
• Note that the Hopkins team excluded 96.3% of volunteers from their study.  They used mostly middle aged people with little to no experience with psychedelics in excellent physical and mental health with no family or personal history of mental health issues - not exactly what you'll find in the psychedelic community or population at large.  So their results, while encouraging, may not hold up in a broader context.

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Links to all of my TEKs, Videos, Trip music, and frequently asked questions with answers can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/22774475 (everything is made available for FREE, I do not use pay walls, support the work only if you feel like you've benefited from it and you are able to do so).