Take a trip, feel better
The hippie drugs are coming in from the cold. First, it was marijuana and its CBD derivative that were given a guarded welcome as pain relievers—and now it’s the psychedelics that are being given a second look. Fifty years after they were banned, LSD, “magic” mushrooms and ecstasy are being tested on a range of psychiatric disorders, the conditions for which they were originally intended.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already heralded the psychedelics MDMA (ecstasy) and psilocybin (magic mushrooms) as “breakthrough therapies”to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression that isn’t helped by standard drug therapies like SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).
Last year, the agency approved Spravato (esketamine), made by drug giant Johnson & Johnson, for hard-to-treat depression—and its active ingredient is ketamine, a hallucinogen better known as a“date-rape drug.” More psychedelics are in the pipeline, including a psilocybin-based antidepressant by biotech start-up Brightminds Biosciences.
