Psychedelics 101
Ketamine
- “This is a game-changer,” says John Krystal, MD, chief psychiatrist at Yale Medicine and one of the pioneers of ketamine research in the country.
- The study “demonstrated that 100% of patients treated with ketamine demonstrated a reduction in dyskinesias (LID)”.
- Studies have shown up to a 71% response rate for ketamine administration in MDD and a up to a 64% response rate in patients with TRD.
- Awaken Life Sciences will be carrying out a follow-on behavioral study to focus on gambling disorder following its recent successful pilot study and patent filing.
- SPRAVATO®, a ketamine analog developed by Johnson and Johnson for use in patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression.
Medicinal Use
- Anthropological research indicates that these mushrooms have been used by several indigenous cultures and societies for millennia.
- 67% of participants in the MDMA group no longer qualified for a diagnosis of PTSD, compared with 32% in the placebo group.
- There is evidence that, under the right circumstances, psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin can rapidly alleviate core symptoms of diverse psychiatric illnesses, for example depression, even in severe cases which are resistant to current treatments.
- Diagnoses that psychedelics are currently being tested to treat include: Alcohol Use Disorder, Parkinsons, Autism, Depression, Bipolar, Substance Use Disorder, Fibromyalgia, Migraine Headaches, Anxiety, PTSD, OCD, Binge Eating Disorder, Pancreatic Cancer, and Alzheimers.
- Psychedelics regulate inflammatory pathways via novel mechanisms, and may represent a new and exciting treatment strategy for several inflammatory disorders.
MDMA
- Whitewashing psychedelics: racial equity in the emerging field of psychedelic-assisted mental health research and treatment.
- 10 Calls to Action: Toward an LGBTQ-Affirmative Psychedelic Therapy.
- MDMA-AT provided to patients with severe or extreme chronic PTSD is cost-savings from a payer’s perspective, while delivering substantial clinical benefit.
- FDA designated MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD as a "breakthrough therapy," meaning the administration believes it may prove more beneficial than current
Psilocybin
- One of the most well-known studies in psychedelic therapy is the Concord Prison Experiment headed by Dr. Timothy Leary. A follow up study ~30 years later reconfirmed it was an important step forward for psychedelic research in showing that hallucinogenic substances like psilocybin can have immense healing potential, but only with the right context and follow-through.
- Over 27,000 scientific articles have been published on psychedelic drugs, with over 1000 particularly on psilocybin.
- There is adequate evidence to support direct clinical study of psilocybin-assisted therapy for the treatment of PTSD.
- Proprietary psilocybin has the ability to target visceral fat, effectively reducing weight gain in obese subjects.
- Antidepressant effects of psilocybin-assisted therapy may be durable at least through 12 months following acute intervention in some patients.
- How 4 Indigenous Cultures Currently Use Psychedelics.
LSD
- Transcendent Therapeutics aims to use compounds like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT to develop what it calls “Coma Resurrection Therapy”.
- Potential therapeutic agent in psychiatry; the evidence to date is strongest for the use of LSD in the treatment of alcoholism.
This trial, the first commercial study of LSD in more than 40 years, builds on productive discussions with FDA and provides an opportunity to explore improvements in anxiety symptoms.