Michael Bogenschutz

Michael Bogenschutz is an addiction researcher who helped renew clinical investigation of psychedelics for alcohol dependence. His pilot study at the University of New Mexico combined psilocybin with motivational enhancement therapy and reported sustained decreases in drinking; the work then led to a larger trial at New York University. The book presents his research through both its promising results and the uneven, deeply personal experience of one participant, Terry McDaniels, whom he connected with the author.

Research on Alcohol Dependence

Bogenschutz led a 2015 pilot study in which ten people with alcohol dependence received psilocybin alongside motivational enhancement therapy, a form of cognitive behavioral therapy designed for addiction treatment. The distinction between the therapy and the drug mattered: motivational enhancement therapy by itself had little effect on drinking behavior, while drinking decreased significantly after the psilocybin session. The improvement persisted through the thirty-six weeks of follow-up.

Bogenschutz also reported a strong correlation between the strength of participants’ experiences and the effect on their drinking. This was an association within a small pilot study, not proof that the intensity of an experience caused the change. Still, the result offered a possible clue about how the intervention worked and helped justify testing the approach with a larger group.

A Participant’s Uneven Progress

Bogenschutz put the author in touch with Terry McDaniels, a volunteer in the New Mexico study. Her account was notable precisely because it did not offer an uncomplicated recovery narrative. McDaniels had lived with serious difficulties, including memory problems after her former husband struck her head with a cast-iron skillet. She described lasting regret and guilt toward her children, and said that she had been unable to work since the assault.

Before entering the trial, McDaniels had tried rehabilitation, therapy, and Alcoholics Anonymous, but repeatedly returned to drinking. She had never used a psychedelic and worried that her head injury might make her ineligible; she was accepted and had a powerful spiritual experience during the session. At first, she saw her children and wept for the life she felt they had missed. The experience later shifted: she recalled seeing Jesus on the cross, who gathered her in his hands as one might comfort a child. She described a great weight lifting and feeling at peace.

The aftermath was progress, but not abstinence. McDaniels disclosed that she had recently gone on a one-day binge after feeling hurt by her daughter. Before the session, she said, binges could involve hard liquor for two weeks, ending only when she blacked out; the shorter episode, involving beer and wine, marked a meaningful change for her. Her story gives the pilot’s reported improvement a concrete but qualified shape: reduced drinking could matter without amounting to a definitive cure.

From Pilot to Larger Trial

The New Mexico findings were encouraging enough to support a much larger phase 2 trial involving 180 volunteers. At the time described in the book, Bogenschutz was conducting that study at New York University in collaboration with Stephen Ross and Jeffrey Guss. The move from ten participants to a much larger study marked an effort to test whether the early signal would hold beyond a small pilot.

That caution matters in the longer history of psychedelic treatment for alcohol problems. Earlier LSD studies had produced sharply different results: treatment became a standard option in Saskatchewan, while a Toronto replication using neutral rooms, minimal clinician engagement, and restraints or blindfolds produced more distressing experiences and weaker outcomes. Later analysis of the historical research found evidence of benefit, but the record also made clear that clinical conditions and therapeutic support could shape what happened. Bogenschutz’s study belongs to a renewed research effort in which both the treatment and the circumstances surrounding it require careful evaluation.

Promise and Limits

The pilot’s small size makes its findings preliminary. The book’s broader warning about early psychedelic research applies here: small studies can produce promising signals without establishing how well a treatment will work in larger populations. The reported association between experience strength and reduced drinking is suggestive, but it does not by itself settle the mechanism or establish durable recovery for every participant.

McDaniels’s account underscores the difference between a measurable change and a cleanly resolved life. Her drinking pattern improved by her own comparison, yet she still experienced a binge; the spiritual force of her session coexisted with an unfinished struggle. Bogenschutz’s contribution is therefore presented not as a final answer to alcohol dependence but as a research program moving from an encouraging pilot toward a larger test, with individual outcomes that remain more complicated than a simple success-or-failure label.