Psychedelics in Palliative Care

This edited volume brings together a diverse team of palliative physicians, therapists, researchers, spiritual guides, and entrepreneurs, to explore for the first time the use of psychedelic medicines in palliative care and addiction medicine. This robust team collaborated to write eight chapters exploring the history, cultural significance, science, and legal status of eight major psychedelic medications. Each medication holds fascinating promise for treatment of symptoms such as pain, depression, PTSD, and existential distress, making them some of the most interesting drugs on the horizon currently. Psychedelics in Palliative Care presents some of the most novel medications that exist in medicine. These are drugs that were rarely studied until recently and are currently undergoing a renaissance in medical research and development. They hold huge potential for treatment of the symptoms experienced in those with terminal illness, debilitating chronic illnesses, and addiction. Many will find the book both fascinating and useful, including patients, providers, students, and those in the general population curious to learn more about this new and exciting field.

Dr. Marcia Glass is Professor of Internal Medicine at University of California, San Francisco. She has worked internationally with Doctors without Borders, the Yale/Stanford Johnson and Johnson GH Program, Columbia, and Partners in Health. Her domestic volunteer work includes Ozanam Inn, UCSF/USF Clinica Martin-Baro, asylum work in Louisiana, and volunteer work in Navajo Nation. She was a 2019 Fulbright Specialist with Pallium in India. Her most recent global-health work has been an ongoing palliative care collaboration in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her work has been published in Annals of Internal Medicine, The Lancet, NEJM, and the Washington Post. She co-edited A Field Manual for Palliative Care in Humanitarian Crises (OUP, 2019), which won a first-place award in the 2021 British Medical Association Medical Book Awards. She is certified in psychedelic-assisted therapy through the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research.