It’s time to let scientists study whether LSD, marijuana and ecstasy can ease psychiatric disorders
Discovery of new psychiatric medication, whether for the treatment of depression, autism or schizophrenia, is at a virtual standstill. As just one example, the antidepressants on the market today are no more effective at reversing the mood disorder than those that first became available in the 1950s.
New thinking is desperately needed to aid the estimated 14 million American adults who suffer from severe mental illness. Innovation would likely accelerate if pharmacologists did not have to confront an antiquated legal framework that, in effect, declares off-limits a set of familiar compounds that could potentially serve as the chemical basis for entire new classes of drugs.
LSD, ecstasy (MDMA), psilocybin and marijuana have, for decades, been designated as drugs of abuse. But they had their origins in the medical pharmacopeia. Through the mid-1960s, more than 1,000 scientific publications chronicled the ways that LSD could be used as an aid to make psychotherapy more effective. Similarly, MDMA began to be used as a complement to talk therapy in the 1970s. Marijuana has logged thousands of years as a medicament for diseases and conditions ranging from malaria to rheumatism.
National laws and international conventions put a stop to all that. The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 declared that these drugs have “no currently accepted medical use” and classified them in the most stringently regulated category of controlled substances: Schedule I. The resulting restrictions create a de facto ban on their use in both laboratories and clinical trials, setting up a catch-22: these drugs are banned because they have no accepted medical use, but researchers cannot explore their therapeutic potential because they are banned. Three United Nations treaties extend similar restrictions to much of the rest of the world.
The decades-long research hiatus has taken its toll. Psychologists would like to know whether MDMA can help with intractable post-traumatic stress disorder, whether LSD or psilocybin can provide relief for cluster headaches or obsessive-compulsive disorder, and whether the particular docking receptors on brain cells that many psychedelics latch onto are critical sites for regulating conscious states that go awry in schizophrenia and depression.
The Latest on: Psychoactive Drug Research
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Psychoactive Drug Research” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Psychoactive Drug Research
- Patients prescribed gabapentinoids at increased risk of drug misuse or overdose, researchers findon April 26, 2024 at 10:47 am
Doctors and clinicians must exercise extreme caution when selecting patients to prescribe gabapentinoids to, Keele researchers have said, after finding a link between gabapentinoid prescriptions and a ...
- Tech bros love talking about microdosing - but the legality of psychedelics is a messy grey areaon April 26, 2024 at 4:00 am
Despite surging social and scientific support for drugs such as psilocybin, many advocates still live in fear of jail or personal ruin. Io Dodds reports on the psychedelic community’s long struggle ou ...
- Do Americans Have a Constitutional Right to Use Drugs?on April 26, 2024 at 2:43 am
Although few recall it now, the same basic approach almost won out a half-century ago—in the courts. Litigants brought hundreds of constitutional challenges to punitive drug laws during the 1960s and ...
- It's possible to consume too much caffeine – but it takes a lot of coffeeon April 24, 2024 at 11:00 pm
Research shows that moderate coffee consumption has many health benefits. Drinking two to three cups of coffee a day has been associated with a lower risk of heart disease and death from ...
- The Therapeutic Evolution of THC: From Recreational Use to Pharmaceutical Ingredienton April 24, 2024 at 1:30 pm
As the field of THC-based medicine continues to evolve, the possibilities for improving patient outcomes and quality of life are endless.
- Breathtaking News for Depression and Schizophreniaon April 23, 2024 at 8:19 am
As long as there's breath in our lungs our story is still being written.” –Bart Millard Two chemicals from breath samples, butyrate and trimethylamine, are sufficient to distinguish depression and ...
- Can delta-8 cannabis help with arthritis? UConn researchers say it appears to work for miceon April 22, 2024 at 2:00 am
One UConn researcher is studying the medial benefits of a substance the state attorney general is cracking down on.
- Why smoking pot gives you the munchies, according to cannabis researchon April 19, 2024 at 12:26 pm
Horvath and his team discovered that THC flipped a switch in the mouse’s hypothalamus, with a cluster of neurons, called the POMC neurons, telling the hypothalamus you’re hungry rather than producing ...
- Chemical found naturally in cannabis may reduce anxiety-inducing effects of THC, researchers showon April 17, 2024 at 7:45 pm
New research adds to evidence that a chemical found naturally in cannabis can -- in the right amounts -- lessen the anxiety-inducing effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive ...
- Here comes an illicit drug 40 times more potent than fentanylon April 16, 2024 at 10:14 am
Nitazene first appeared in 2019 in the Midwest as a white powdery substance similar to cocaine. It later appeared on the streets of Washington, D.C., as yellow, brown and white powders. Since 2022, ...
via Bing News