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Can Psychedelic Drugs help us?

Isha Nagpal

There is hardly ever a positive connotation attached when we talk about someone doing drugs. With several harmful impacts attached to doing drugs, there is a widespread taboo that has been attached to them. This has prevented researchers from trying and studying some of the interesting medical uses that some of these drugs might have. Recently, there has been certain advocacies about researching the medical uses of drugs and that also led to certain revelations about drugs being useful in treating mental illnesses. One of the most important breakthroughs has been research regarding the use of MDMA or Ecstasy in treating symptoms of PTSD along with psychotherapy. 

The Scientific American recently published an article written by Will Stone and Kaiser Health News titled ‘MDMA, or Ecstasy, Shows Promise as a PTSD Treatment’. The article talks about a certain research being currently undertaken which is being privately funded by Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Study (MAPS). The researchers are using MDMA as a method of possible treatment of PTSD along with therapy. With the ongoing research there are multiple cases where a number of positive improvements have been seen among patients using MDMA in their therapy sessions. There are several trials being conducted in several different locations and the psychotherapists who have been working on this seem to have observed positive results so far. (2019)

 

The working of MDMA can be explained by the fact that this psychoactive drug boosts chemicals like serotonin and oxytocin and damps down activity in the amygdala which is a part of the brain that processes fear. The same process can also be involved in taking various other psychedelic drugs as well. For example, one placebo-controlled pilot study by Gasser et.al. aimed at understanding the use of the drug LSD in reducing anxiety. They concluded that, “These results indicate that when administered safely in a methodologically rigorous medically supervised psychotherapeutic setting, LSD can reduce anxiety, suggesting that larger controlled studies are warranted.” (2014) Another study which examined the use of Psilocybin also concluded that the data showed positive improvement in the mood and anxiety of participants and it also recommended further studies into psychedelic therapies. (Grob et.al, 2011)

However, Historically there have been many times where such studies were disrupted and the use of these drugs for research purposes was banned in various countries because of the harmful and long-term effects that their use might have. With the existence of a possible addictive effect of these psychoactive drugs, it is already difficult for researchers to device an experimental design in which these effects can be controlled for. Adding to this problem is the possibility of occurrence of the Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder or HPPD. As the name suggests, HPPD can be a result of hallucinogens like LSD and cause persistent distress to the individual on which the drug is being administered. Even though the persistence rate of HPPD is quite less in the population, it still remains a potential risk and needs to be taken care of in the experimental design itself. (Halpern & Pope, 2003) One way through which this problem can be countered is by excluding participants with a family history of various psychotic disorders or any other major psychiatric disorders to reduce chances of something like HPPD occurring.

Despite such problems related to the study of psychedelic therapy, it is important to look at the kind of benefits that it can bring about in treatment methods of various different kinds of disorders, be it PTSD or anxiety or even addiction. The positive effects of these drugs cannot be completely neglected without first closely studying the effects for which extensive research is very important. Such research requires large amounts of capital investments and several considerations in the experimental design and that is one of the reasons that there have not been more and more scientific studies on this matter. The field of psychotherapy, however, can have a lot to gain from such studies and researches. 


References
Stone, W. (2019, August 21). MDMA, or Ecstasy, Shows Promise as a PTSD Treatment. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mdma-or-ecstasy-shows-promise-as-a-ptsd-treatment/.

Halpern, J., & Pope, H. G. (2003). Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder: what do we know after 50 years? Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 69(2), 109–119. doi: 10.1016/s0376-8716(02)00306-x

Grob, C. S., Danforth, A. L., Chopra, G. S., Hagerty, M., McKay, C. R., Halberstadt, A. L., & Greer, G. R. (2010). Psilocybin Treatment in Advanced-Stage Cancer Patients With Anxiety. PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi: 10.1037/e609412010-001

Gasser, P., Holstein, D., Michel, Y., Doblin, R., Yazar-Klosinski, B., Passie, T., & Brenneisen, R. (2014). Safety and Efficacy of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-Assisted Psychotherapy for Anxiety Associated With Life-threatening Diseases. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 202(7), 513–520. doi: 10.1097/nmd.0000000000000113

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