The Johns Hopkins Story - panel discussion & Q&A featuring Prof Roland Griffiths RECORDING

How did psychedelics, cast aside by the medical community, return to the Western world’s most prestigious research institutions and find their way back into top scientific journals more than 50 years after the “war on drugs” halted almost all research?

How did psychedelics come back into mainstream research? And how is Johns Hopkins pushing the boundaries to reveal the mysteries behind these substances?

Johns Hopkins, one of the leading psychedelic drug research centres globally, is at the forefront of the “psychedelic renaissance. The institution’s influence on the development of our understanding of psychedelic substances for treating mental health conditions is momentous. Their work provides hope for the future of people suffering from conditions such as depression, anorexia and addictions.

In collaboration with Horizons and Breaking Convention, join us for a virtual film screening followed by a live discussion and Q&A with the Johns Hopkins research team themselves. We will learn the stories of the scientists who helped re-open the doors to psychedelic science, and of the new generation of researchers working to explore the potential of psychedelics in science and medicine.

Clinical research is the last step, the final frontier between all this stuff when we’re in the laboratory and making a treatment work in the real world.

Natalie Gukasyan, MD

There were phenomena that opened up to me during meditation, that got me hugely curious about the very nature of transformative experiences and emergent experiences...

Prof Roland Griffiths

I’ve come to think that psychedelics offer a tool with which we can potentially treat some of [mental health] disorders and gain a better understanding of the mind and brain and consciousness overall, which I think has really profound implications for medicine.

Tim Ferris

OUR PANELISTS

Prof. Roland R. Griffiths

Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and founding Director of the Johns Hopkins Center on Psychedelic and Consciousness Research.

His research has investigated the psilocybin to treat cancer-related psychological distress, smoking cessation and major depression. He has also researched the biological actions of psilocybin and the similarities between psilocybin with other mood-altering drugs. His research has been largely supported by grants from the National Institute on Health and he is author of over 400 journal articles and book chapters. He has been a consultant to the National Institutes of Health, to numerous pharmaceutical companies in the development of new psychotropic drugs, and as a member of the Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Dependence for the World Health Organization. 

Dr Matthew W. Johnson

Matthew W. Johnson, Ph.D., Professor at Johns Hopkins, is an expert on psychedelics, other psychoactive drugs, and addiction. Dr Johnson has published 119 scientific manuscripts, including 47 manuscripts focused on psychedelics. Based on a thorough review of known risks of psychedelics, Dr Johnson published psychedelic administration safety guidelines in 2008, helping to resurrect psychedelic research in humans. He published the first research on the psychedelic treatment of tobacco addiction in 2014, and the largest study of psilocybin in treating cancer-related depression and anxiety in 2016. He recently published a comprehensive review of psilocybin abuse liability and he has also published the first blinded research showing the psychoactive effect of salvinorin A, the active agent in Salvia divinorum.

Dr Johnson has personally guided over 100 psychedelic sessions and supervised the administration of over 600 psychedelic sessions. Aside from his psychedelic research, Dr Johnson conducts behavioural economic research on both addiction and sexual risk associated with drug abuse. He is the 2019 President of the Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse Division of the American Psychological Association. He is also President-Elect of the International Society for Research on Psychedelics, playing a lead role in founding this organization.

Dr Natalie Gukasyna

Natalie Gukasyan, M.D. is a psychiatrist and post-doctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University. After receiving her M.D. from Tulane University School of Medicine Dr Gukasyan completed her internship and residency in psychiatry at Johns Hopkins. Her current research focuses on the feasibility and efficacy of novel treatment strategies including psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for mood, addictive, and eating disorders. Dr Gukasyan is also a clinician at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Community Psychiatry Program serving patients with co-occurring mental illness and addictive disorders.

Dr Manoj Doss

Manoj completed his PhD at the University of Chicago broadly researching distortions in episodic memory with a focus on the effects of psychoactive drugs such as MDMA, THC, and alcohol on emotional episodic memory (advised by Professors David Gallo and Harriet de Wit). In his postdoc, he is interested in the cognitive, emotional, and neural mechanisms of psychedelic drugs.

Kevin Balktick

Kevin Balktick is the founder & director of Horizons Media, Inc. In 2007, he convened the first Horizons conference in New York City in order to further the public’s understanding and perception of psychedelics. He has been a cultural entrepreneur for the last fifteen years, with an oeuvre including arts and entertainment experiences, festivals, conferences, exhibitions, across a variety of settings, including churches, warehouses, fortresses, libraries, mansions, prisons, universities, city streets, and the great outdoors. His work has been featured in The New York Times, National Public Radio, The New Yorker, Vogue, WWD, Vice, Hospitality Design, Wired, NHT (Japan), The Guardian (UK), Ha’aretz (Israel), and other publications.

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