Are Psychedelics Our Most Promising New Treatments for Depression, Anxiety, and Addiction?
Researching an illegal substance requires mounds of approvals. MindMed’s intention is to conduct all its clinical trials to the standards of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. “We went to Switzerland,” Rahn explains, “because Dr. Liechti is the world leader in LSD research.” Not just anyone can conduct a trial using LSD. “So it’s logical to work with him—you can get started more efficiently.”
MindMed is also working on a compound derived from ibogaine, a psychedelic that comes from the bark of a tree that grows in central Africa, to treat opioid addiction. Ibogaine was extolled by the late banking heir and Bitcoin billionaire Matthew Mellon, ex-husband of Jimmy Choo co-founder Tamara Mellon; he said it cured him of his opioid addiction.
Meanwhile ketamine, which at certain doses is used as a general anesthetic for children (and as a club drug by slightly older children), is already available by prescription for treatment-resistant depression. MDMA (aka ecstasy or molly) has been used illegally in psychotherapy for decades, but it can now legally be given to select patients with PTSD outside a clinical trial—even though it’s still a DEA Schedule I drug “with no currently accepted medical use.”
Compass Pathways, the London company testing whether psilocybin helps with treatment-resistant depression, seems to be on the brink of something too. “The best available evidence” of whether it works, or whether previous studies conducted without a control group taking a placebo were a fluke, “will come from this study,” says Metten Somers, a psychiatrist who runs one of the trial’s 21 sites, at University Medical Center–Utrecht in the Netherlands.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/a31930814/psychedelic-drugs-promising-treatment-for-anxiety-depression-addiction/
“When we started researching psychedelics, other researchers attacked us,” Liechti says. “A few years later they were doing the same type of research.”
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