There is a resurgence, some say renaissance, of clinical research on psychedelic substances after decades of dormancy. Recent studies have produced findings suggesting psychedelics may demonstrate substantial efficacy for serious psychiatric conditions such as mood and substance use disorders. As a result, ongoing clinical trials with the psychedelic psilocybin have been given the Breakthrough Therapy designation by the US Food and Drug Administration that could result in medical approval for major depressive disorder and/or treatmentresistant depression.This new period of psychedelic research, ongoing since at least 2006, has now lasted for about the same length of time as psychedelic research in the 1950s and 1960s did before it ground to a halt. As contemporary psychedelic research results accrue, the field may be facing a fork in the road to clinical applications. One path forward allows for the same kinds of exuberance, utopian thinking, and uneven clinical approaches that contributed to ending the previous period of research. Combined with the contemporary tendency to politicize science, the possibility of a repeat of the 1960s represents a significant concern. Another path forward, a more careful and systematic one, involves the appropriate integration of psychedelic treatments into existing evidence-based psychiatric paradigms such as psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy.This Viewpoint offers perspectives on how the psychedelic research renaissance can stay on the path that leads to the integration of these medications into the standard of care rather than recapitulating the ethical and sociopolitical problems that led to the previous period of research going off the rails.
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