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Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin are back in human trials to treat people with mental health conditions. It's a second revolution for a class of drugs shunned by 1960s society. But more research is needed. Here's why.
Psilocybin was shunned by mainstream society in the 1960s as "Substance 1" — dangerous and of no medical use. And for decades, evidence suggesting that psilocybin could be therapeutic lay buried in books. But over the past decade, a resurgence in psychedelic research has yielded new insights, with some labs running human trials.
David Nutt calls it the "brave new world of psychedelic psychiatry." Nutt is a neuro-psycho-pharmacologist and professor at Imperial College London. He suggests psychiatry is slowly emerging from a 30-year dark age, during which anti-depressants were the only accepted medicinal treatment for mental health conditions.
Apart from being costly, Nutt says anti-depressants help only a small percentage of the people who take them. Side effects can include a blunting of the emotions.
"I like to think of it as a force field," says Nutt. "They protect you. They cocoon you from the stresses of life, which are many and repeated, and they allow your brain to heal."
www.dw.com
Psilocybin was shunned by mainstream society in the 1960s as "Substance 1" — dangerous and of no medical use. And for decades, evidence suggesting that psilocybin could be therapeutic lay buried in books. But over the past decade, a resurgence in psychedelic research has yielded new insights, with some labs running human trials.
David Nutt calls it the "brave new world of psychedelic psychiatry." Nutt is a neuro-psycho-pharmacologist and professor at Imperial College London. He suggests psychiatry is slowly emerging from a 30-year dark age, during which anti-depressants were the only accepted medicinal treatment for mental health conditions.
Apart from being costly, Nutt says anti-depressants help only a small percentage of the people who take them. Side effects can include a blunting of the emotions.
"I like to think of it as a force field," says Nutt. "They protect you. They cocoon you from the stresses of life, which are many and repeated, and they allow your brain to heal."
Psychedelic mushrooms for depression – DW – 04/24/2020
Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin are back in human trials to treat people with mental health conditions. It's a second revolution for a class of drugs shunned by 1960s society. But more research is needed. Here's why.
www.dw.com
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