When sleep won’t come in this era of pervasive anxiety and exhaustion, it’s tempting to turn to any number of promising sleep aids. But the majority of options — from herbal supplements to sleeping pills — range from unproven to ineffective to outright dangerous. Meanwhile, scientists are looking into tiny doses of psychedelics — the stuff of the 1960s hippie movement and ’80s raves — to see if they might help insomniacs and others who struggle with sleep.
While the research remains far from conclusive, psychedelics do show some preliminary promise.
Let’s first understand what we’re talking about. Stimulants amp you up. Depressants wind you down. Psychedelics, also called hallucinogens, cause fundamental shifts in how the brain processes information.