ObjectiveUsing a patient-informed regimen, we conducted an exploratory randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to systematically investigate the effects of psilocybin in cluster headache.BackgroundSustained reductions in cluster headache burden after limited quantities of psilocybin-containing mushrooms are anecdotally reported, although to date t...
The beneficial effects of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy on alcohol use disorder (AUD) are significant, based on a study published in JAMA Psychiatry last month. In general, psychedelic medications have been a focus of research, but less is known about psilocybin, and it has been 40 years since the studies with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) provided do...
Following a decades long period of investigational dormancy, there is renewed interest in employing psychedelics as psychiatric treatments. The academic journals, institutions, and countries that have helped sustain clinical psychedelic research and the evolution of the literature on clinical studies of psychedelics have only recently begun to be investigate...
Research on the therapeutic potential of psychedelic substances is expanding. A limitation within this field is the unpredictability of individual responses to psychedelics. Better understanding of factors predicting psychedelic experience is essential to clinical progress and wider harm reduction frameworks. Ketamine, MDMA, LSD and psilocybin were selected ...
IntroductionMajor depressive disorder remains a prevalent world-wide health problem. Currently available antidepressant medications take weeks of dosing, do not produce antidepressant response in all patients, and have undesirable ancillary effects.Areas coveredThe present opinion piece focuses on the major inroads to the creation of new antidepressants. The...
BackgroundEvidence points to an incongruence between international drug policy and expert opinion about safety, abuse potential, and therapeutic potential of specific drugs. However, no prior studies have directly explored psychiatrists' attitudes about the current drug schedule. Therefore, we examined whether American psychiatrists' perceptions of four psyc...
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is known to induce powerful psychoactive effects in humans, which cemented its status as an important tool for clinical research. A range of analogues and derivatives has been investigated over the years, including those classified as new psychoactive substances. This study presents the characterization of the novel lysergami...
IntroductionA limited number of preliminary open-label (n = 3) and placebo-controlled clinical trials (n = 5) have suggested psilocybin and LSD as potential rapid antidepressants. In this context, there is a growing need to verify and document their safety and tolerability as therapeutic agents, discuss the challenges associated with their administration, an...
4-Acetoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (4-AcO-DMT, psilacetin, O-acetylpsilocin) is a synthetic tryptamine with psychedelic properties. Psilacetin may also act as precursor drug of psilocin, similar to psilocybin, but little is known about its metabolism. In this study, the phase I and phase II in vitro metabolism of 4-AcO-DMT was investigated with pooled human li...
Promising outcomes of Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy (PAT) for depression have generated concerted efforts to replicate, extend, and refine protocols to maximize efficacy. Psychotherapy research reveals that clients benefit most when important components of treatment align with their personal preferences. One open question related to PAT concerns the importance...
Psychedelics such as psilocybin have recently gained remarkable interest in both the specialist literature and the lay press because studies suggest that these substances may have great therapeutic potential in various psychiatric disorders, including major depression. However, clinical trials with psychedelic drugs pose particular methodological challenges ...
Fibromyalgia (FM) is a difficult to treat chronic pain condition for which there is strong interest in alternative treatments. There is growing interest in the potential of psychedelic substances (e.g., psilocybin) in conjunction with psychotherapy to treat chronic pain. Via a cross-sectional, anonymous, online survey, we aimed to characterize knowledge, per...
Depression treatments succeed with many but leave others unimproved, and they can generate concerns about side effects, time, and cost. Psilocybin has generated media attention and empirical support for antidepressant effects, but lay impressions of its effectiveness are unclear. Although perceptions of treatment credibility contribute to outcome, beliefs ab...
A49-year-old woman was diagnosed with an ER +, PR-, HER2 +, BRCA- invasive ductal carcinoma which progressed metastatically to include bone, liver, and lymph node involvement. Standardised care included a 26-month treatment period with targeted chemotherapy and a ketogenic diet. The patient also began a course of cannabinoid-based therapy, consisting initial...
Veterans are at increased risk of experiencing symptoms of trauma. Although many benefit from available treatments, some find treatment inaccessible or ineffective and explore alternative substances. One such substance is psilocybin. This Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis study aimed to provide an initial insight into the experiences of veterans who h...
Lifetime psychedelic substance use has previously been linked to nature relatedness and pro-environmental behaviour. Yet, participants’ responses to the self-report measures in these studies may have been affected by stereotypical associations or confirmation bias. We therefore re-examined this link by measuring three pro-environmental dependent variables: n...
With nicotine being one of the most addictive substances and the available treatments for nicotine addiction leading to no better than a 30% success rate, it's no wonder that a newly announced multisite study of the psychedelic psilocybin for smoking cessation is generating excitement. While taking care not to oversell the potential of this strategy, those i...
First it was the plant, cannabis. How could this be made into a saleable profit-making commodity when it grows in the ground? Witness the marijuana (a chemical from the plant) industry, which lobbied to make sure laws in states that legalized it banned people from growing more than a few plants.
There is a growing body of research suggesting that palliative care patients coping with existential distress may benefit from psilocybin. However, there is a large gap regarding the perceptions of palliative care providers who may provide education, counseling services, recommendations, and/or prescriptions for psilocybin if it is decriminalized, commercial...
