Shayla Love writes for The Guardian:
In many ways, the renaissance in psychedelic research was born from the studies on terminal cancer patients at Johns Hopkins and New York University (NYU). The writer Michael Pollan covered one such study in the New Yorker, and his subsequent book, How to Change Your Mind, shot up bestseller lists and re-introduced the mainstream to the idea of psychedelics as medical treatments.
Psychedelic drugs, like psilocybin, are currently the subject of intensive scientific research for their benefits in treating depression, PTSD and addiction. In cancer patients, like the studies Hartle came across, psilocybin has been shown to reduce existential distress.
But a question remains: how?