Reinventing Yourself – How psychedelics can assist in changing unwanted behavior. (Quitting smoking).

People were able to quit smoking by seeing themselves as non-smokers.

Individuals succeeded in quitting smoking by envisioning themselves as non-smokers. Psychedelic substances have the potential to help individuals modify unwanted behavior by facilitating a reconsideration and reimagining of their self-perception.

A team of researchers from the University of Cincinnati analysed post-treatment journals of participants in a 2014 smoking cessation study. The conclusion was that psychedelics were successful in assisting some individuals in quitting smoking for years.

In a new article published in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, researchers analysed the participants' own words and found that psychedelics, combined with talk therapy, often helped long-term smokers see themselves as non-smokers. This new core identity may help explain why 80% of the participants were able to quit smoking for six months and 60% remained smoke-free after five years.

The 2014 study by researchers from Johns Hopkins University found that participants who wanted to quit smoking and used psilocybin, the active hallucinogenic component in psychedelic mushrooms, in combination with cognitive-behavioral therapy, were much more likely to succeed than those trying other traditional methods.

Lead author and postdoctoral researcher Neşe Devenot from the University of Cincinnati said the results demonstrate the potential psychedelics have to rearrange self-perceptions and help people break old habits or addictions in the face of the daily stimuli and temptations of life.

"We saw time and again that people felt like they were done with smoking and that they were non-smokers now," said Devenot.

During the smoking cessation study, therapists provided participants with guided imagination exercises in which they were asked to envision smoking as a behavior outside their core identity. Participants documented their experiences in writing.

One guided imagination exercise from the study framed nicotine addiction as an external force manipulating behavior for its own purposes, akin to the zombie-creating fungus in the popular HBO series "The Last of Us."

"Much like the Cordyceps fungus functionally transforms insects into 'zombified' puppets to serve the reproductive goals of the fungus, smoking behavior is characterized as a form of parasitic manipulation," the study found.

Albert Garcia-Romeu, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University, said psilocybin could serve as a catalyst to help motivate and inspire people to make a change using cognitive-behavioral therapy.

"Cognitive-behavioral therapy asks us to tune into the thoughts and feelings we experience in our daily lives and how those relate to our behaviors," Garcia-Romeu said. "In turn, people often tend to build a narrative or a sense of self around those cognitions and behaviors.

"This paves the way for actually having the psilocybin experience, which can provide both new insights and perspectives and can serve as a marker of that identity change, like a rite of passage, indicating the shift from, for example, smoker to non-smoker."

Devenot said the sample size of the experiment was relatively small, with only 15 participants. But the results are encouraging.

"I feel like I am somehow fundamentally different from yesterday," wrote one participant. "I feel like some kind of metamorphosis has taken place!"

Some participants indicated that the psilocybin treatment made quitting feel easier compared to previous experiences. Another said that the urge for nicotine used to be unbearable. But during the dosing session, the participant couldn't even imagine wanting a cigarette.

"The concept seems firmly anchored in my reality, even today, that cravings aren't real," said another.

How do psychedelics contribute to this transformation?

Devenot says people often get stuck in the same behavioral patterns, reacting in the same way to stressors or other triggers. She compares it to a downhill skier taking the same grooved path down that they've used a thousand times before.

"It's not that simple, but it's a metaphor for how we talk about psychedelics," Devenot said.

"Psychedelics are compared to skiing in fresh snow. Some researchers suggest you have more freedom to maneuver your skis anywhere," she said. "The ingrained grooves of bad habits may not have as much influence on our skis, allowing us to take different paths.

"We are looking for ways to help people change behavior and overcome the inertia of their habits that are more in line with their goals and aspirations," Devenot said. "That's why psychedelics have broader interest among researchers."