Roland Griffiths: The Man Who Restarted Psilocybin Research
About This Video
A retrospective on Roland Griffiths (1944–2023) — the behavioral pharmacologist who spent the first half of his career studying sedative reinforcement and the second half rebuilding psilocybin research from nothing after a 40-year absence. Griffiths died in October 2023 from colon cancer, which he received a terminal diagnosis for in 2021.
This documentary covers the arc of his career: his early research on caffeine, alcohol, and sedative drugs; his personal meditation practice and meeting with Bob Jesse (Council on Spiritual Practices) that redirected his scientific attention; the institutional skepticism he faced in proposing psilocybin research in the late 1990s; and the 2006 Psychopharmacology paper that launched the modern research renaissance.
The most affecting sections cover his response to his own terminal diagnosis — his decision to publicly use his dying as a way to model the existential work he had studied professionally, and his final interview in which he described his own psilocybin-assisted dying preparation. The man who spent 15 years studying how psilocybin helps people face death used those tools himself at the end.
Key Takeaways
- Roland Griffiths is the founding scientist of the modern psilocybin research renaissance — his 2006 paper enabled everything that followed.
- His personal meditation practice and meeting with Bob Jesse were the catalysts for redirecting his research attention from conventional pharmacology to psilocybin.
- The institutional barriers he faced in 1999-2006 were substantial — DEA licensing, IRB skepticism, NIH funding refusals — making his achievement more significant.
- His cancer diagnosis in 2021 became a public extension of his research — he explored psilocybin-assisted dying personally and advocated for this application.
- His final interview, given months before his 2023 death, is widely considered one of the most significant public communications in the field's modern history.
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