I simultaneously believe two things are likely true:
1. Psychedelic research holds some interesting possibilities for advancing the fields of psychiatry and drug development.
2. Psychedelics are currently at near the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" in the Gartner hype cycle.
I've seen a lot of these glowing articles about Ayahuasca, LSD, and Mushrooms lately. The claims within are, frankly, out of control and verging on anti-psychiatry babble. Does anyone really believe that a single dose of Ayahuasca is "Like 10 Years of Therapy in One Evening" as stated in this article? Or that all of the people taking LSD, mushrooms, and other psychedelics before the current hype wave simply forgot to notice that these drugs were miracle cures?
I get the impression that many of these psychedelic success stories are deeply intertwined with the placebo effect. When people spend months or even years reading stories about psychedelics are miracle cures they build an anticipation that they, too, will be cured just as soon as they receive that psychedelic experience. Many of the people interviewed are investing thousands of dollars in these psychedelic retreats. They travel to distant locations where a shaman confirms their expectations that they are about to be cured. They then take a psychedelic and have a wild mental experience that confirms their expectations of something dramatic happening. For some time afterward, they are convinced they have been cured and proceed as if they are living a new life.
And hey, maybe it's working for some of them for a while! Maybe showering people in high expectations for a long time and then shocking their system with a psychedelic punch can cement those placebo effects for a while and kick-start their new look on life. But I think the hyperbole is also a strong filtering mechanism to select for those most susceptible to the placebo effect, similar to how Nigerian Prince scam e-mails are so over-the-top as to only select for the most gullible.
This would explain why past recreational users didn't notice the same idyllic cure-all psychiatric effects: They weren't primed to expect them. It also helps that many of these people are spending thousands of dollars to do this and being encouraged by people posing as professionals:
> In February 2020, Whalen spent $3,000 to attend a seven-day ayahuasca retreat at the Soltara Healing Center in Costa Rica. On four of the seven nights, she participated in ayahuasca ceremonies with 16 other participants and two shamans.
The expectations surrounding this psychedelic hype are so deep into hyperbole that they seem to self-select for people who are believers. For example:
> But Craig had read about a 2004 Johns Hopkins study on psilocybin, which is chemically similar to DMT. He found it "truly fascinating" that people could take a single psychedelic dose and rate it years later as among the most profound experiences of their lives, on par with getting married and having children.
Again, we're detached from reality. Estimates of lifetime psychedelic use in the United States approach 10% of the population. Does 10% of the population really rank their past psychedelic experiences as being on par with getting married or having children? I seriously doubt it. These sound bites are starting to feel like weird pro-drug propaganda that has latched on to a thread of hope that drugs can have positive effect.
If this is anything like past hype cycle topics, we're in for a "trough of disillusionment" where the media takes the other side and starts demonizing psychedelics. Instead of glowing stories of people being cured, we'll be getting stories about the sketchy Ayahuasca retreat operations charging people $3K and making them sick, or the people who tried psychedelics that ended up triggering extended depressive or anxiety episodes (which is a thing that happens, no matter how much anyone insists these are perfectly safe).
Take these stories with a grain of salt.