Samuli Kangaslampi, PhD, is a University Lecturer in clinical psychology at Tampere University, Finland. He is also Chairperson of the Finnish Psychotrauma Society and Vice Chairperson of the Finnish Association for Psychedelic Research. Apart from psychedelics, he studies autobiographical memory, as well as trauma and PTSD.

Can you really remember your birth on LSD? Memory experiences under psychedelics

Psychedelics have repeatedly been claimed to provide unique access to our earliest, avoided, or forgotten memories and allow for intense reliving and processing of such memories. Here, I explore and discuss the often astonishing claims of psychedelics enhancing memory, especially from early LSD research. I then present six crucial open questions on how psychedelics affect memory, ideas on how we should study them, and my own on-going research to do so. Finally, I report novel findings from a longitudinal online study on memory experiences under psychedelics and their relevance for therapeutic effects.