Psychedelics continue to gain acceptance in mainstream media and culture. From Prince Harry sharing how psychedelics helped his mental health, to Jada and Jaden Smith discussing them publicly as a family, to John Oliver devoting an entire episode to psychedelics — we’ve had an ever-increasing stream of celebrities coming out about their personal psychedelic experiences and advocating for their healing potential.
Now we can add CNN and the one and only Oprah to the list.
Last night, CNN aired a special documentary episode called The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper Investigates “Magic Mushrooms: Can They Change Your Mind?”
In this episode, CNN follows a group of everyday Americans who travel to Jamaica to try psilocybin in an effort to reconnect with themselves, curb addiction, and find inner healing. The episode also goes to Oregon, the first state to legalize psilocybin for therapeutic purposes, and CNN Correspondent David Culver shares what lessons can be taken from his own experiences on this journey.
The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper will stream for pay TV subscribers via CNN.com and will also be available On Demand beginning Monday, June 19 to pay TV subscribers via
CNN.com. See the trailer below.
And then we have the queen of daytime television and darling of mainstream audiences, Oprah Winfrey, devoting an entire episode to Roland Griffiths, one of the beloved elders of the modern psychedelic renaissance.
Oprah sat down with Dr. Griffiths to discuss his long career of psychedelic research and advocacy for mainstream academic acceptance — and to talk about his recent diagnosis of terminal cancer. Roland Griffiths founded the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and has been crucial in legitimizing psychedelic research.
It’s a heart-wrenching and hope-filled conversation, with Dr. Griffiths showing how his life experience and perspectives from psychedelics have given him a deep sense of gratitude and interconnectedness, even as he faces the ultimate challenge.
A quick Google search of Roland Griffiths shows not only his groundbreaking research but media coverage from the likes of the New York Times and other major publications, demonstrating just how far these cultural in-roads are going.
In other, less dramatic, celebrity psychedelic news, Drew Barrymore recently mused publicly about her desire to try psychedelic therapy for her own personal issues, telling New York magazine:
“I’m curious to examine why I’m not open to a relationship,” she told the magazine. “I really think I have some serious shit buried. And I don’t know if it’s like I need to try an MDMA treatment or psilocybin as a way to get to some state where I could see things in a different way.”
