- The idea of using psychedelics
as a way to treat mental health conditions
can still sound pretty controversial.
In fact, conservative attitudes towards these drugs
stopped research into psychedelics for decades.
But in recent years, this research has absolutely exploded
and it's showing some really promising results
in treating things like depression, addiction, and PTSD.
Australian researchers are now testing whether psilocybin,
the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms,
can help in battling methamphetamine addiction.
The research is a world first,
but there's still a bunch of barriers
for this kind of research, and regulators aren't keen
on making these drugs any more accessible yet.
For the researchers trying to explore
the potential of psychedelics
and for the people who are finding these drugs helpful,
that can be pretty frustrating.
So, what's the deal with psychedelic studies right now
and what needs to happen for Australia
to take these therapies more seriously?
In 1943, a chemist called Albert Hofmann
working in Basel, Switzerland accidentally absorbed
about 20 micrograms of a compound
he'd synthesized a few years earlier.
There's this famous story
about how he then left his research lab on a bike
and became the first person to ever trip on LSD,
or what later widely became known as acid.
By the 1950s, a small group of psychiatrists
had begun investigating LSD as a treatment
for alcohol addiction and some mental health disorders.
Among them was this guy, Humphry Osmond.
He was actually the first person
to coin the term psychedelic,
which basically means mind-manifesting.
LSD, psilocybin, ketamine, and MBMA or ecstasy,
all fall under onto the psychedelics banner today.
Throughout the 50s and 60s, psychiatrists like Osmond
got a whole bunch of funding
for their research into psychedelics
and a whole bunch of media attention, too.
Even back then, psychedelics were looking really promising
as a useful companion to therapy.
By the mid 60s, LSD therapy was being prescribed
to thousands of patients for things like neurosis,
schizophrenia, and psychopathy.
But in the later part of that decade,
all of that came to a grinding halt.
Psychedelics had become synonymous
with drug-using counterculture,
and governments were panicking
about the supposed moral decay
they thought these drugs were causing.
LSD was outlawed across the US in 1968,
and the ban of psilocybin came soon after.
The funding into psychedelics research
dried up for the most part and studies just kind of stopped.
It took until the 90s for that research
to start being revisited.
By then, the moral panic about illicit drugs
had started to subside in the scientific community,
and researchers were kind of looking
to cut through the stigma
and just understand more about them.
Studies with psychedelics
have had a real boon in recent years.
Some modern studies have been foundational in proving
that psychedelics actually seem pretty safe in single doses
and showing some pretty interesting benefits,
like this study from 2006 that evaluated
the psychological effects of psilocybin.
Since then, there's been a whole heap of studies
that have suggested that psychedelics
can be really, really useful.
There was this study in 2014 that showed psilocybin
can be incredibly effective
at helping kick tobacco addictions.
These trials with MDMA
showed its effectiveness in treating PTSD.
This trial suggested MDMA could also be helpful
in treating alcohol addiction.
And this research from last year showed
that even just one or two doses of psilocybin
can be really helpful in treating major depression.
But even though the science is looking promising,
there's still a really long way to go
before psychedelics could actually be integrated
into any kind of established therapies.
Psychedelics are heavily controlled substances.
LSD is still in Schedule 1
of the United Nations classification of drugs,
which means that research into it is still restricted.
And there are still some good reasons
for people to be wary of these substances.
Their effects on people
with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia,
or people with a strong predisposition for them,
can be serious, and the effects can be serious
even in people without these particular disorders.
- You're talking about people with serious mental illness
and are giving them, you know,
very powerful psychoactive drugs.
That's gonna create some extremely
challenging clinical situations.
- Psychedelics are also known to raise blood pressure,
which could be an issue for anybody with hypertension.
But for the most part,
a lot of the fight to continue research into psychedelics
is about breaking through the stigma
and conservatism that surrounds them.
And Australia is really, really conservative
when it comes to illicit drugs,
so much so that some research organizations themselves
are still pretty apprehensive to get near psychedelics.
- The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre,
they are funded by the federal government
to show that drugs are bad, don't use drugs.
So they have a vested interest in perpetuating
the pathological narrative of drug use,
including psychedelic drugs.
- But that's not to say that there hasn't been progress.
Huge, reputable international institutions
like John Hopkins, Imperial College in London, and Yale
have all established their own
psychedelics research programs.
Here in Australia, places like the University of Melbourne
are following suit, and even though
the Therapeutic Goods Administration, or TGA,
rejected a recent bid to change
the classifications of MDME and psilocybin,
which would have made them more accessible to practitioners,
the rejection was pretty optimistic.
The TGA basically just said that they recognize
the emerging evidence of psychedelics,
but they didn't think the research
is quite there yet to establish
their efficacy and safety completely.
After the TGA's rejection, the government announced
that it was going to give $15 million in research grants
for psychedelics research.
So now we're at a point where
even though there are more battles to be had
with regulatory bodies,
research into psychedelics
to try and understand them more is underway.
But while that's happening, there are also people
who are trying to use these substances as medicine,
and they're just not being broadly recognized
by the medical community.
I spoke to one of these people,
a young woman who started microdosing with psilocybin
to help alleviate some of her struggles
with PTSD, anxiety, and depression,
after she read about some
of the supposed benefits of psychedelics.
- I was finding that my triggers
were getting in the way of of my life
and doing things on a daily basis.
And I'd sort of got a bit overwhelming.
Within like sort of six months to a year,
my triggers had drastically reduced.
- Jane has continued to microdose around every fortnight.
She told me that she doesn't get
any psychoactive effect from the psilocybin.
In fact, she said that she barely feels it at all.
And she finds it incredibly beneficial
because it means she can still function throughout the day.
Jane told me she finds it frustrating
that even though she was seeing
all these benefits in her own life,
she can't really discuss it with people
and the progress in the medical world seems so slow.
But this research is still ongoing
and there's still so much caution
that needs to be exercised around these substances
when they're not being used in a clinical setting.
- The literature isn't saying that this is, you know,
some panacea, some magic bullet that's gonna fix everybody.
And the important part is that it's not the drug,
it's the psychotherapy in combination with the drug.
And that psychotherapy involves a lot of hard work.
It's not just going out and taking mushrooms.
- So how do we move forward here?
Well, psychedelics research is looking promising,
but that means that there are things
that the medical community needs to seriously consider.
Studies into psychedelics is still a massive uphill battle
for the researchers trying to conduct them.
And these researchers need to be collaborating
and sharing information
in a productive network as much as possible.
And if we reach a point where psychedelics
are approved as a treatment form in some way in the future,
then we need to be thinking about how these drugs
will actually reach the people who need them.
The cost of some of these therapies
when done through private systems
can add up to tens of thousands of dollars.
These drugs would have much more equitable accessibility
if they were integrated within the public health system.
And when you're talking about drugs being used
to address serious mental health issues,
that's pretty damn important.