MAPS

MAPS is a nonprofit research and educational organization founded in 1986 by Rick Doblin with the mission of developing psychedelics and marijuana into prescription medicines, and to educate the public honestly about the risks and benefits of these substances. MAPS has pioneered FDA-approved clinical trials of MDMA-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder and has been instrumental in the global renaissance of psychedelic research now underway across major academic medical centers.

Beyond its clinical research, MAPS supports a broader cultural and policy agenda — working to shift the legal and institutional frameworks that have historically prevented scientific investigation of psychedelic substances. Its public benefit corporation, MAPS PBC, is developing training programs for therapists and working to make psychedelic-assisted therapy accessible beyond elite clinical settings.

MAPS represents one of the most significant intersections of scientific rigor and consciousness research in contemporary institutional life. The clinical evidence it has generated for the therapeutic potential of psychedelic-assisted treatment is reshaping psychiatry, end-of-life care, and the mainstream understanding of consciousness itself. For the transition, MAPS matters because it is demonstrating, within the most demanding institutional frameworks available, that altered states of consciousness are not peripheral to human flourishing but potentially central to healing the psychological wounds that drive destructive individual and collective behavior.