Classic psychedelics and entactogens are promising candidates for treating psychiatric and neurological disorders, driving renewed research into their pharmacology, mechanisms, and safety. Classic psychedelics (psilocybin, LSD, DMT, mescaline) primarily act as 5-HT2A receptor agonists but differ in secondary receptor interactions. Entactogens like MDMA act mainly through serotonin transporter inhibition and neurotransmitter release. Despite clinical interest, the relationship between receptor binding and behavioral effects remains unclear. Understanding dose equivalence, drug interactions, pharmacokinetics, and safety is essential for therapeutic application. This talk will examine key aspects of the clinical pharmacology of psychedelics and entactogens, emphasizing dosing, comparative effects, and implications for individualized treatment.

Michelle Olofsson is a PhD student at Karolinska Institutet and the National Institutes of Health. Her research focuses on understanding specific risks and therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs in adults with histories of early life stress. Psychedelic use is rising globally, yet much of our knowledge regarding safety of these substances comes from controlled clinical trials. These studies often involve highly screened participants, leaving a gap in our understanding of the risks associated with psychedelic use in real-world settings. This talk addresses questions such as: How common are psychedelic-related difficulties? How long do they last? What do these challenges consist of, and what factors predict them? Drawing on a recent large-scale survey project, this lecture will present data on the complexities of difficult psychedelic experiences. The talk is structured into two parts: Part I: Defining Psychedelic-Related Difficulties. An overview of the types of difficulties people report after using psychedelics, including estimated prevalence rates and duration of difficulties. Part II: The Impact of Early Life Stress. This part will take a specific focus on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) as a potential risk factor, discussing how history of childhood adversity may increase vulnerability to lasting psychedelic-related difficulties. The session will conclude by exploring how these findings can inform practical harm reduction and safety guidelines in clinical research.

This talk explores the transdiagnostic effects and mechanisms of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT), focusing on changes that may cut across diagnostic categories and symptom clusters. Rather than looking only at symptom reduction, it asks how PAT may transform the way people relate to themselves, their emotions, others, and the world. The talk will consider how psychedelic experiences may loosen rigid patterns of perception and emotional responding, thereby opening a window for new learning, reappraisal, and integration. Particular attention will be given to experiences of connectedness, shifts in self-perception and self-relation, increased emotional access, broadened emotional range, and changes in meaning-making, and psychological flexibility. Alongside current conceptual and clinical perspectives, first data from our real-world-setting, brief case vignettes and anecdotes will illustrate how such processes may unfold in real therapeutic work and how they may contribute to meaningful psychological change.

Psychedelics can induce self-transcendent experiences—experiences that involve a bond or fusion with a larger whole, in which the boundary between the everyday self (ego) and this larger whole is backgrounded or resolved. Psychedelically induced self-transcendence is often framed as involving “ego dissolution” or even “ego death,” typically characterized as a temporary loss of one’s sense of identity. But does one really lose one’s sense of identity in such experiences—or does something more nuanced happen? In this talk, Kurt Stocker will present a new model of psychedelically induced self-transcendence that emerged from the qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews in controlled studies with LSD & DMT in healthy participants (>100 hours of interviews; >1 million words), including a very-high-dose condition. The qualitative analysis suggests that while self-transcendence can take on different forms across different domains in dose-sensitive ways, aspects of an intact minimal self remainidentifiable in all cases, including in disintegrative experiences induced by very high doses. The new model subsumes key aspects of existing self-transcendence models, which in turn only partially capture its full structure. It thus broadens our understanding of psychedelically induced self-transcendence, with implications for conceptualizations of self, comparative mysticism, and psychedelic-assisted therapy.

What stays after a psychedelic experience ends? We're thrilled to welcome Tomislav Majic, MD, psychiatrist and researcher whose work explores the clinical and phenomenological effects of classic psychedelics, including their longer-term psychological impact. His research has contributed to understanding how psychedelic experiences may be followed by a transient period of improved mood, well-being, and cognitive flexibility, often referred to as the "afterglow." In his talk, he will explore what characterizes this phenomenon, how it has been studied in both clinical and naturalistic settings, and what role it may play in therapeutic outcomes.

What role can altered states of consciousness play in healing, meaning-making, and the experience of dying? We're deeply honored to welcome William (Bill) Richards, one of the pioneering figures in psychedelic research and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Involved in the field since the early 1960s, his work has contributed profoundly to our understanding of mystical experiences, altered states of consciousness, and their therapeutic potential. As psychologist and researcher at Johns Hopkins, Bill Richards has been closely involved in some of the most influential modern studies on psychedelics and end-of-life anxiety. He is also the author of the book Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, which explores the phenomenology and meaning of psychedelic states across clinical, spiritual, and existential dimensions. In this talk, "Death and Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics, Palliative Care, and the Religious Dimensions of Healing", he will reflect on the varieties of alternative states of consciousness, their phenomenology, and how such experiences may support psychological and existential healing in palliative care settings. Bridging decades of clinical research, psychotherapy, and contemplative inquiry, this talk invites us to reconsider the relationship between consciousness, suffering, meaning, and care at the end of life.

In this talk, Dila Suay will explore the relationship between psychedelics and creativity through both historical and neuroscientific perspectives. Beginning with a brief overview of the historical relationship between psychedelic substances and creative expression, the talk will then focus on recent experimental research investigating creativity under psychedelic states. Drawing on her PhD research using an ayahuasca-inspired DMT/harmine (DMT/HAR) formulation in controlled laboratory settings, the presentation will discuss how psychedelics may shape different components of creative cognition, including divergent thinking, convergent thinking, artistic expression and broader phenomenological dimensions of the creative process. By bridging neuroscience, psychology and art, the presentation aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how altered states may influence human creativity and perception.