Could psychedelic mushrooms quell depression? The answer is maybe.
In October, biological firm Compass Pathways will begin a clinical trial that will examine psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic” mushrooms and LSD, and its potential positive effect on depressed patients.
Magic mushrooms, typically called “shrooms” among partakers, are hallucinogens that have long been associated with hippie culture and jam bands like Phish and Widespread Panic.
Shrooms are the natural alternative to the chemical LSD, first synthesized by a Swiss scientist in 1934. Known colloquially as acid, LSD caught on in the 1960s in the era of Woodstock and The Grateful Dead.
The new clinical trial comes after a study by Imperial College London back in January that involved 19 people, published in the journal Scientific Reports.
At the time, the doctor responsible for the study had this to say: “We have shown for the first time clear changes in brain activity depressed people treated with psilocybin after failing to respond to conventional treatments,” said Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, Head of Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, who conducted the study.
The upcoming trial will have a much more sizeable pool for scientists to inspect, with 216 patients with treatment-resistant depression participating in a phase-two trial starting in the UK soon. There will be 12-15 research sites in Europe and North America.
Tracy Cheung of Compass Pathways spoke to Newsweek in depth about the trial. “If our studies are successful, we could be applying for marketing authorization in two to three years,” Cheung said. She characterized depression as a “huge unmet need with 300 million patients worldwide; 100 million of these have treatment-resistant depression and don’t respond to existing treatments.”
Euphoric recreational drugs like the chemical MDMA are experiencing a newfound heyday. Ecstasy, one form of MDMA, was rampant at raves, all-night electronic dance music parties that occurred from the late 1980s until the ‘90s. In recent days, ecstasy has been rebranded as “Molly,”supposedly a purer and more powerful form of MDMA that is also used by the intelligentsia. And other hallucinogens like peyote and ayahuasca are experiencing a surge in popularity.
I’ve taken mushrooms once in college and got little more than a body buzz. If doctors can figure out a correct dose of psilobyn and a way to help treatment-resistant depression then it could impact at least hundreds of lives. As for the doctors, more power to them.
