Reflections on Psychiatry, Therapy, and Mental Health

No doubt smoking is a major health scourge, and given that success rates with various interventions are surprisingly low, few patients come to our office seeking help for the serious addiction that smoking represents. Regardless, patients who come for other reasons often allow us to talk about it. Just the other day, a woman came in for a routine medication check. She is stable overall and had been treated for PTSD. At this point in her life she is wrestling with more ordina

Roughly a decade before I was born, Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist working with ergot alkaloids, a class of compounds that seemed promising in Ob-Gyn medicine, first synthesized LSD. An accidental exposure to this compound suggested to him that the drug had remarkable psychoactive properties. A few days later he intentionally took what would be considered a heroic dose leading to a legendary moment in the history of psychedelics. Just a few years later, Hofmann would go on

an idiot's guide to AA It’s easy to feel like an idiot when confronted with something entirely new and perhaps intimidating, especially when that newness also involves a social movement with a long history and established culture. The reality, though, is that if a person is considering giving AA a try, they are far from being an idiot. Full disclosure: I am a psychiatrist and addiction specialist, thought not a member of AA I have had a chance to attend some very robust meeti