Roland Griffiths

Roland Griffiths, PhD, is Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences and Director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His principal research focus is on the behavioral and subjective effects of mood-altering drugs. He has conducted extensive research with sedative-hypnotics, caffeine, and novel mood-altering drugs. Two decades ago he initiated a research program investigating effects of the classic psychedelic substance psilocybin. Remarkably, many research participants rate their experience of psilocybin as among the most personally meaningful of their lives. Additional studies include those in healthy volunteers, beginning and long-term meditators, and religious leaders. Therapeutic studies with psilocybin include treatment of psychological distress in cancer patients, major depressive disorder, addiction, and other psychiatric disorders. His group also studies naturally-occurring and psychedelic-occasioned transformative experiences including mystical, God-encounter, and Near Death experiences, as well as experiences claimed to reduce depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders.