"It's Pretty Sad If You Get Used to It": A Qualitative Study of First Responder Experiences with Opioid Overdose Emergencies.

Background: First responders play a vital role in the United States opioid drug overdose crisis, a public health emergency that has claimed many lives.

Objective: We sought to investigate first responders' experiences and attitudes toward opioid overdose emergencies and the ongoing crisis, as well as emotional effects, coping strategies, and support systems.

Methods: A convenience sample of first responders ( = 18) at the Columbus Fire Division, with experience responding to opioid emergencies, participated in semi-structured telephone interviews between September 2018 and February 2019.

Psychedelics, Meaningfulness, and the "Proper Scope" of Medicine: Continuing the Conversation.

Psychedelics such as psilocybin reliably produce significantly altered states of consciousness with a variety of subjectively experienced effects. These include certain changes to perception, cognition, and affect, which we refer to here as the acute subjective effects of psychedelics. In recent years, psychedelics such as psilocybin have also shown considerable promise as therapeutic agents when combined with talk therapy, for example, in the treatment of major depression or substance use disorder.