A National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence titled “National and Regional Trends in Seizures of Shrooms (Psilocybin) in the United States, 2017-2022” reported a significant increase in law enforcement seizures of psilocybin mushrooms, also known as “magic mushrooms” or “shrooms,” in the United S...
Background: To date, few randomized controlled trials of psilocybin with non-directive support exist for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Results and participant feedback from an interim analysis of an ongoing single-dose trial (NCT03356483) converged on the possibility of administering a higher fixed dose and/or more doses of psilocybin in future trials...
“Pretty girls don't buy cocaine,” Greta1 says and laughs as she walks out the front door.My hands and face sting as I stand frozen in the entryway and hear her start the car. I'd asked my twenty-two-year-old daughter where she got the money to feed the addictions she was battling.Over the past three years, she'd chosen a few subpar boyfriends who introduced ...
In recent years, policymakers have proposed and implemented regulatory changes promoting the deprioritization, decriminalization, or state-level legalization of one or more psychedelic substances, usually referencing data from clinical trials as reasons to support liberalizing drug control policies. As psychedelic policies continue to be drafted, personal po...
Background: Psychedelics are receiving growing interest among clinical researchers for their effects on mood and cognition. Psilocybin is one of the most widely studied classic psychedelics which has shown good safety and clinical benefit for major depression and substance use disorders. Athletes frequently sustain concussions and often experience myriad sym...
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is increasingly used to non-invasively study the acute impact of psychedelics on the human brain. While fMRI is a promising tool for measuring brain function in response to psychedelics, it also has known methodological challenges. We conducted a systematic review of fMRI studies examining acute responses to exper...
Patients characterized by stress-related disorders such as depression display elevated circulating concentrations of pro-inflammatory cytokines and a hyperactive HPA axis. Psychedelics are demonstrating promising results in treatment of such disorders, however the mechanisms of their therapeutic effects are still unknown. To date the evidence of acute and pe...
Importance: Psilocybin shows promise as a treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD). Objective: To evaluate the magnitude, timing, and durability of antidepressant effects and safety of a single dose of psilocybin in patients with MDD. Design, Setting, and Participants: In this phase 2 trial conducted between December 2019 and June 2022 at 11 research si...
Introduction: Psilocybin use has been linked to lowered odds of crime-related outcomes across a host of observational studies. No studies have investigated how these associations may differ among those of different races and ethnicities. Methods: Using a nationally-representative sample of 734,061 adults from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2002-...
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a surge in depression cases, a pervasive and debilitating mental illness1. This trend is evident in the increased prescriptions for antidepressants. Depression is a chronic condition that affects a significant proportion of the global population, with ~280 million people, or about 3.8%, suffering from it. As a result, it...
Psychedelics offer a profound window into the functioning of the human brain and mind through their robust acute effects on perception, subjective experience, and brain activity patterns. In recent work using a receptor-informed network control theory framework, we demonstrated that the serotonergic psychedelics lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybi...
Background: Psilocybin may help treat obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). To date, only one open-label study of psilocybin for OCD exists, necessitating further investigation with a randomized controlled design. The neural correlates of psilocybin's effects on OCD have also not been studied. Objectives: This first-of-its-kind trial aims to evaluate the feas...
In 1970, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration passed the Controlled Substances Act. This statute classified and banned a variety of drugs including psilocybin, the psychoactive component found in Psilocybe Cubensis (also known as "Magic Mushrooms"). Though psilocybin was known to possess many medical benefits and cause no serious side effects, t...
Background: Several early phase studies have demonstrated that psilocybin-assisted therapy has rapid-acting and persisting antidepressant effects from just one or two doses. However, methodological limitations (e.g., placebo-control, blinding) limit interpretability of the existing literature. Methods: In an exploratory placebo-controlled, within-subject, fi...
BACKGROUND: COMP360 is a proprietary, synthetic formulation of psilocybin being developed for treatment-resistant depression (TRD), a burdensome, life-threatening illness with high global impact. Here, we expand upon the previous report of primary outcomes from a phase 2 study of COMP360 in individuals with TRD-the largest randomised controlled clinical tria...
Adults with treatment-resistant depression who received a single 25-mg dose of psilocybin saw significant improvement in depressive symptoms relative to a control dose at 3 weeks, a Phase 2b trial has found. A smaller 10-mg dose of psilocybin did not result in significant improvement over the control dose of 1 mg, and adverse events were common in both of th...
Abstract Background and Aims The hallucinogenic drug psilocybin is being widely tested in humans for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. Psilocybin and other psychedelics are proposed to work through serotonin 2a (5-HT2a) receptors, which are tightly linked to immune function. The purpose of the present study was to assess the effects of a single dose of...
Several lines of evidence suggest that classic hallucinogens such as psilocybin can facilitate behavior change in addictions such as alcohol dependence. The proposed investigation is a multi-site, double-blind active-controlled trial (n = 180, 90 per group) contrasting the acute and persisting effects of psilocybin to those of diphenhydramine in the context ...
Mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety are major contributors to the overall global health burden. COVID-19 has further aggravated mental health disorders and also increased substance abuse due to lockdowns1. The Global Burden of Disease reported that the pandemic has led to a 27.6% increase in cases of major depressive disorder (MDD) and a 2...
