Drugs: Science and medicine rehabilitate psychedelics – 06/17/2023 – Marcelo Leite

To use a commonplace about the psyche, there is a return of the repressed. After half a century of prohibition in the failed war on drugs, psychedelic substances are returning in style to the pharmacopoeia for mental health, as the gigantism of the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference makes clear.

More than 10,000 participants are expected at the mega event, which starts this Monday (19) in Denver, Colorado (USA). It is the climax of the science-based activism begun nearly four decades ago by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

This is the fourth conference organized by Maps. The last one, in 2017, was attended by around 3,000 people interested in preliminary clinical tests that indicated the therapeutic potential of prescribed substances such as psilocybin from mushrooms and ecstasy (MDMA) from raves.

Rehabilitation has progressed since then. A phase 3 trial to treat post-traumatic stress disorder with MDMA in support of psychotherapy has been completed. The results of the Maps-led clinical trials are expected to lead to FDA drug agency authorization of the protocol in 2024.

Psilocybin as an adjunct therapy for depression is close behind on the FDA regulatory trail, but has run aground with city and state legislation authorizing adult use of mushrooms. This is the case in Oregon and Colorado, but the bureaucracy makes the service in accredited centers too expensive.

Mishaps may arise at the federal level, however. Research with psychedelics stumbles on the double-blind system favored by the agency, as volunteers almost always guess whether they have taken a placebo or the active substance, because their effects are evident.

It’s not clear if the FDA will raise the bar to grant authorization. In any case, even if they delay, it seems unlikely that the licenses will not come. Supporters of the official route argue that only with them can treatment be made cheaper, with health insurance coverage.

Another theme should occupy the debates in Denver and could mess up this scheme: the parapsychedelics. I reserve that name for the strategy of developing compounds inspired by consciousness alterers, but which do without their subjective effect (the “trip”).

There is skepticism, in the field, about giving up contents that emerge in the altered state and provide abundant material for psychotherapy. In addition to not betting on the effectiveness of these innovations, critics lament the relapse into the model of supposedly miraculous pills, to be taken every day and thus escape psychic elaboration.

It would be a radicalization of the pharmaceutical industry’s strategy, focused on profits with the mirage of happiness pills. This path finds fierce resistance in the anthropological and community aspects of the psychedelic field, which abhors patents on substances bequeathed by ancestral use by indigenous peoples.

This lack of recognition and respect for traditional knowledge could one day figure among the obstacles to investors’ bet on the resurgence of psychedelics. The capitalist frenzy that followed the 2017 conference has already cooled, startups are in crisis, clinic chains dying before reaching the beach.

Industry reputation issues and over-enthusiasm (hype) will certainly not help these treatments succeed. There are those who are concerned about the risk of a new reversal, such as what happened with prohibitionism, which made research unfeasible for decades.

PS 2023 will make this picture clearer. The expectation with psychedelics is precisely that the repressed returns to release, not necessarily as a symptom of a pathology.

PRESENT LINK: Did you like this text? Subscriber can release five free hits of any link per day. Just click the blue F below.