Roland Griffiths

Roland Griffiths was a professor of psychiatry and neurosciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. His 2006 study of psilocybin and mystical experience is widely credited with reopening rigorous psychedelic research in the United States.

His work included trials of psilocybin for depression, addiction and the existential distress of people facing life-threatening cancer, alongside decades of research on caffeine and other drugs. After receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, he spoke publicly about gratitude, meaning and his own dying. He died on October 16, 2023, at 77.