By Victoria Turk — 2016
The scientists hope their long-awaited study on LSD in humans will open the floodgates to further research into psychedelics.
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The mind-altering drug has been shown to help people suffering from anxiety and depression. But how it helps, who it will serve, and who will profit are open questions.
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People of color are dealing with racism all the time, in large and small ways, and even dealing with racism in healthcare, even dealing with racism in therapy.
While we can now begin to glimpse an end to the drug war, it is much harder to envision what the drug peace will look like. How will we fold these powerful substances into our society and our lives so as to minimize their risks and use them most constructively?
After decades of demonization and criminalization, psychedelic drugs are on the cusp of entering mainstream psychiatry, with profound implications for a field that in recent decades has seen few pharmacological advancements for the treatment of mental disorders and addiction.
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The last time I was on ketamine, I was hooked up to an IV following surgery. This time, the drug—in general medical use as an anesthetic since 1970—arrived on my doorstep courtesy of Mindbloom, a new telemedicine company specializing in ketamine-based psychedelic therapy.
Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is now yielding exciting results.
Now, as a handful of patients and more recently doctors and therapists have been granted exemptions to use psilocybin, the nation’s federal health agency is considering making changes to existing policies that could open the door to much more than magic mushrooms.
Williams is the co-lead author of a recent retrospective study that found those who tried doses of psilocybin (more commonly known as magic mushrooms), LSD, or MDMA (the pure substance found in Ecstasy or Molly) reported a decrease in trauma symptoms, depression and anxiety after 30 days.
Regulators will soon grapple with how to safely administer powerful psychedelics for treating depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Psychedelic drugs—once promising research subjects that were decades ago relegated to illicit experimentation in dorm rooms—have been steadily making their way back into the lab for a revamped 21st-century-style look.