The California two-spot octopus is notoriously anti-social. If you put two octopuses in the same tank, they would probably try to kill each other. But give one of them a dose of MDMA — also known as “molly” or the “love drug” — and it may start doing somersaults and try to wrap its arms around the other octopus.
That was the surprising finding of Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins who’s doing groundbreaking research on psychedelics. The octopus brain is entirely different from the human brain — our last common ancestor lived 650 million years ago — and yet the octopus shows a remarkably similar response to this psychedelic. For Dolen, it’s evidence that MDMA has such powerful effects not because of any special qualities in the human brain; it’s all about the chemicals, like serotonin, that are triggered in psychedelic experiences.
I’ve been covering the psychedelic renaissance for the past few years, and I keep discovering new twists in the science — and new people with fascinating insights. We’re now on the cusp of FDA approval for certain psychedelics, which may revolutionize the treatment of depression, addiction and PTSD. But there’s still so much we don’t know - and many unanswered questions. Can neuroscience explain psychedelics? Do you need a mystical experience to have a transformative psychedelic experience? And given how indigenous knowledge of plant medicines has been extracted and exploited, can psychedelics be decolonized in today’s society?
These are some of the questions I’m exploring in Luminous, our series on psychedelics. You can listen my conversation with Gül Dölen in our Luminous podcast feed. And you’ll find plenty of other interviews with scientists, philosophers and healers at ttbook.org/luminous.
—Steve