Scientists explore using psychedelics to treat alcohol, drug disorders

LOS ANGELES — Melanie Senn's father, long dead, appeared to her as she lay back in the dimly lit room at the Santa Monica clinic, a mask over her closed eyes, and the psychedelic trip began.

More precisely, it was his thumb. It was disembodied and huge, materializing in her mind to wipe away her own image. Just as a parent might lick a thumb, she said, and use it to clean the dirtied cheek of a child.

"It wasn't like an aggressive move," said Senn, 51, recounting the experience. Her father's thumb had appeared right after the word "goodbye" stretched before her, like a banner in the sky.

"It was like, 'Goodbye. We're going somewhere else. And you cannot take this version of yourself,'" she recalled.

Her father had died decades earlier after struggling with alcohol use disorder and bouts of homelessness. She didn't see herself as an alcoholic — it was a word that seemed out of place in her stable life as an educator, wife and mother — but she had begun to think about how much wine she was drinking at night, the sapped energy and headaches she endured by day.

Senn, who lives in San Luis Obispo, said she had signed up for