The Promise of Psychedelics: Science-Based Hope for Better Mental Health

WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

A fresh, engaging, and easy-to-read psychedelic therapy guide with simple analogies that explain complex concepts. Learn about psychedelics and a promising new mental health therapy program.

Nearly forty years ago, Dr. Peter Silverstone was a young MD who took up a new position in psychopharmacology research at Oxford University. Since then, the field has bloomed into a spectrum of possibilities that includes the use of psychedelics as a treatment for depression, addiction, PTSD, grief, and anxiety.

And Dr. Silverstone has gone on to lead ground-breaking research into things like amphetamine interaction with the brain, mental health’s impact on physical health, psychedelic use in psychotherapy, and to lead award-winning treatment breakthroughs in mental health therapy programs.

The Promise of Psychedelics is for you—if you or someone you know has not received successful treatment despite trying several mental health therapy programs and medication. You are not alone: one in five adults at any one time suffer mental health issues that impact their functioning.

Often, medication alone doesn’t work, especially for conditions like PTSD, grief, depression, anxiety, addictions, or personality issues. Despite the best efforts of clinicians, medications or other psychological treatments are usually only partially effective. Sometimes, treatments don’t help at all.

Psychedelics such as psilocybin, ketamine, MDMA, cannabinoids, and LSD can cause profound, intense changes—not only in what we experience but how we think, how we feel, and what we do.

In The Promise of Psychedelics you’ll learn how psychedelics can mimic psychiatric disorders—sometimes producing the same symptoms and sometimes providing an antidote. There’s a little on neuroscience and neurotransmitters, but Dr. Silverstone avoids scientific language whenever possible, so you won’t feel overwhelmed. You’ll also gain key insights into how the mind and brain differ, what’s normal versus abnormal, how psychiatric diagnoses are made and why that’s a problem.

You’ll be introduced to the most recent advances in our understanding of psychedelics: what they are, how they work, what the risks are, and which ones will transform mental health treatment for millions of patients. You’ll gain an understanding of the complexity of the regulatory approval process and why it takes so long for some of these psychedelics to become legal for therapeutic use.

These psychedelics are rated and ranked as contenders, wannabes, along with the bronze-, silver-, and gold-medal winners. Dr. Silverstone shares the science behind micro-dosing psychedelics, which ones hold the most promise for inclusion into mental health therapies, and why some psychedelics simply aren’t ready for prime time.

In this psychedelic therapy guide you’ll discover why psychedelics, including micro-dosing, are poised to become standard treatment in combination with appropriate therapy for many mental health conditions. They could become standard therapy for depression, for example.

And you’ll also learn about the new form of therapy Dr. Silverstone and his team at Zylorion Health have developed that incorporates psychedelics in a controlled environment. It’s intensive, with many components, or modes, that promise better mental health outcomes.

You’ll walk away from The Promise of Psychedelics with a big dose of hope, if you’ll pardon the pun.

The good news is that we’re on the cusp of a revolution in mental health—one offering hope that many just might soon see the end of mental illness.

Dr. Peter Silverstone is a physician, neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author focused on designing and implementing new solutions to prevent and treat mental health disorders. He is chief executive officer and founder of Zylorion Health, and a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Alberta where he recently served as interim chair.Dr. Silverstone has been an active brain and pharmaceutical researcher in areas including psychopharmacology, self-esteem, bipolar disorder, imaging, depression in medically ill patients, e-mental health, and training police offers in de-escalation techniques. He has received research grants and funding from a wide source of agencies, including Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and other national and international bodies. He was continuously funded by Alberta Innovates Health Solutions (AIHS) and its predecessor Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR) from 1994-2013 and he was the inaugural scientific director for the Strategic Clinical Network in Addiction and Mental Health (SCN) for Alberta Health Services. He has authored over 140 peer-reviewed publications which have been cited more than 3,500 times, viewed online more than 100,000 times, and he has an h-index for research of 46 on Google Scholar. He's actively involved in other initiatives, holding board positions with a strong focus on community outreach to help reduce stigma around mental health issues. Peter lives in Edmonton, Alberta with his wife Millie and their dog Mila. Peter and Millie have three beautiful adult children: Joshua, Olivia, and Jenna. He used to love skiing and soccer, but-reminiscent of Stinger's line in the movie Top Gun, "Your ego is writing cheques your body can't cash,"-he had to stop because of a bad back. Walking the dog, good wine and food, and reading are his current passions.