Compassionate Imagery Priming for Psilocybin ceremonies: a Large Scale Field Experiment Performed in Argentina.

CARLA PALLAVICINI; LORENA LLOBENES; CAVANNA, FEDERICO; MULLER, STEPHANIE; NATALI GUMIY; MARIA COSTA; DE LA FUENTE, LAURA; NICOLAS BRUNO; TOMÁS D'AMELIO; SILVINA SONZOGNI; EDUARDO CANEPA; PAUL GILBERT; ENZO TAGLIAZUCCHI

Congreso; ACNP Annual Meeting 2022; 2022

Psilocybin is now being promoted as a potential treatment for depression and anxiety and is said to improve well being markers in general for a healthy population. Great effort is seen in developed countries to assess the different dimensions of psychedelic promotion of human health, including basic science, observational and clinical trials. However, most of the published works present a small pool of subjects and/or are limited to a few measured variables. Latin American countries, like Argentina, present cheaper costs in all the dimensions of experimental work and should be considered for further projects, this work is a testament of what is possible in our Country. Also, due to lack of funding for these kind of experiments in Latin America, many high value scientists are migrating to perform their jobs, vacating a very promising land for psychedelic research, which is why we stress that high quality experimental work in Latin America is not only possible, but necessary. In addition it is important to point out that most psychedelic substances were originally found and incorporated into native cultures in Latin America.We present a very ambitious experimental design, where the combination of compassionate imagery practices and the ceremony is studied. In total 107 subjects were studied for which we performed the following measurements: fMRI and EEG before and after the ceremony,  Blood and saliva samples, before, after and 2 months follow up, to perform epigenetic studies, as well as other biochemical markers. Actigraphy,  heart rate, and sleep patterns comprising one week before and one week after, including the ceremony itself. Scales and questionnaires on several occasions before and after. Recorded interviews on the day of the ceremony: 3 individual and one group session.