Matthew W. Johnson

He received a B.S. in psychology from Eastern Oregon University in 1998, and an M.A. (2002) and PhD (2004) in general/experimental psychology from the University of Vermont.⁠[1]

From 2004 to 2007 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he then became instructor (2007), assistant professor (2009), associate professor (2013) and professor (2020).⁠[1]

He has conducted scientific research on psychedelics since 2004 and has published numerous studies on their potential therapeutic effects and risks.⁠[2]

In August 2008 he, William Richards and Roland Griffiths published “Human hallucinogen research: guidelines for safety” in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, noting that hallucinogens are relatively safe physiologically but carry psychological risks such as acute distress (a “bad trip”) and rare prolonged psychoses, and recommending safeguards such as excluding volunteers with a personal or family history of psychotic disorders and having at least two monitors present.⁠[3]

In September 2011 he, Katherine A. MacLean and Griffiths found that openness increased significantly after a high-dose psilocybin session, and that in participants who had mystical experiences during the session openness remained above baseline more than a year later.⁠[4]

In November 2011 he and Natalie R. Bruner published a study of 62 cocaine-dependent people introducing the “Sexual Discounting Task,” which found that delay strongly decreased condom use and concluded that delay is a critical variable in HIV sexual risk behavior.⁠[5]

In September 2014 his open-label pilot study was published: 15 nicotine-dependent smokers received moderate and high doses of psilocybin within a 15-week cessation program, and at 6-month follow-up 12 (80%) were biologically confirmed abstinent, above the rates of under 35% typically seen with other therapies.⁠[6]

In July 2016 he published long-term follow-up results of the pilot: 10 participants (67%) were confirmed abstinent at 12 months and nine (60%) at a long-term follow-up averaging 30 months, and 13 rated their psilocybin experiences among the five most meaningful of their lives.⁠[7]

In September 2018 he and colleagues published an analysis in Neuropharmacology recommending that, if psilocybin clears phase III trials, it be moved from Schedule I to Schedule IV under tight controls; he said psilocybin is not without risk but comes off as the least harmful compared with other legal and illegal drugs, and that clinical use should be monitored in a health care setting.⁠[8]

In 2019 he was president of the American Psychological Association’s Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse Division, and in 2020 president of the International Society for Research on Psychedelics.⁠[9]

On September 4, 2019, Johns Hopkins announced a psychedelic research center funded with $17 million from private donors and led by Roland Griffiths, with Johnson, then an associate professor of psychiatry, as associate director; he said the center would study opioid addiction and combined alcoholism and depression, among other topics.⁠[10]

On December 14, 2020, he appeared on episode 145 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing psychedelics, DMT, drug addiction, legalization and prohibition, cocaine and risky sexual decisions, psilocybin for smoking cessation, consciousness and panpsychism.⁠[11]

On October 18, 2021, Johns Hopkins Medicine announced a three-year grant of nearly $4 million from the National Institute on Drug Abuse—the first federal grant for psychedelic treatment research in 50 years—with Johnson, the Susan Hill Ward Professor in Psychedelics and Consciousness, as principal investigator of a double-blind randomized trial of psilocybin plus cognitive behavioral therapy for smoking cessation at Johns Hopkins, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and New York University.⁠[12]

His collaborators on the study included Peter Hendricks of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Michael Bogenschutz, director of the NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine.⁠[13]

On January 18, 2024, Sheppard Pratt announced that Johnson would join its Institute for Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics in February as a senior researcher at its Center of Excellence for Psilocybin Research and Treatment; he had most recently been a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins.⁠[9]

As of October 2026 he conducts psychedelic science at Sheppard Pratt and writes a Substack newsletter; he describes himself as having led research at Johns Hopkins from 2004 to 2024 on psychedelics and tobacco addiction, cancer, depression and safety.⁠[14]

Personal website: Public link: https://mattjohnson98.substack.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[14]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Drug_Researcher (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine: Official website: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

Sheppard Pratt: Official website: https://www.sheppardpratt.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[14]