Full transcript
0:00It was the most peaceful, joyous, incredible, life changing experience I've ever had in
0:08my life. There were scary parts, foreboding parts … I always knew there was beautiful
0:13and joy and peace on the other side of it. It was freeing, it was really freeing.
0:21This is Alana. She’s describing what she felt after she took a dose of this stuff — psilocybin.
0:26It’s a naturally occurring psychedelic compound, the kind you find in magic mushrooms.
0:30But she wasn’t tripping in a dorm room or at Woodstock — it actually wasn’t recreational
0:36at all. If anything became unreal or I was feeling
0:40nervous or not in touch with reality, I would squeeze his hand and he would squeeze mine
0:45back just to reassure me that I was okay and everything was alright.
0:50It was part of a controlled medical test to see if psychedelics could be useful in helping
0:54people quit cigarettes. Alana had been smoking for 37 years before her session with psilocybin,
0:59and she hasn’t had a cigarette since.
1:03Research on psychedelics for medical use is preliminary. Most studies suffer from really small
1:08sample sizes. That’s partly because the federal government lists LSD and psilocybin
1:12as Schedule 1 drugs. So researchers face extra red tape, and funding is really hard to come by.
1:17Vox writer German Lopez reviewed dozens of studies that have been done. He found that
1:21psychedelics show promise for treating addiction, OCD, anxiety, and in some cases, depression.
1:28One small study of 15 smokers found that 80 percent were able to abstain from smoking
1:32for six months after a psilocybin treatment. In a pilot study of 12 advanced cancer patients
1:37suffering from end-of-life anxiety, participants who took psilocybin generally showed lower
1:41scores on a test of depression. And smaller study suggested psilocybin treatment
1:45could also help people with alcohol dependence cut back on their drinking days.
1:49We don’t have all the answers as to what exactly these treatments are doing in the
1:53brain. But they seem to work by providing a meaningful, even mystical experience that
1:58leads to lasting changes in a patient's life.
2:00The issues that I talked about, or thought about, or went into during my experience
2:06were transformative in the sense that I got to look at them through a different lens.
2:12I know this sounds weird, I feel like I have
2:14more connections in my brain that I couldn't access before
2:18That feeling that Alana is describing is actually pretty spot-on.
2:22When you take LSD
2:24your brain looks something like this.
2:27You can actually see a higher degree of connectivity between various parts of the brain, it’s
2:32not limited to the visual cortex.
2:33This communication inside the brain helps explain visual hallucinations
2:37— and the researchers argue that it could also explain why psychedelics can help people
2:41overcome serious mental issues. They wrote that you can think of psychiatric
2:45disorders as the brain being “entrenched in pathology.” Harmful patterns become automated
2:49and hard to change, and that’s what can make things like anxiety, addiction and depression
2:54very hard to treat.
3:04That’s Albert Garcia-Romeu, he’s a Johns
3:06Hopkins researcher who worked on studies of of psilocybin and smoking addiction, like the
3:09one that Alana's involved with.
3:11He says that when participants take psychedelics,
3:32One of the big remaining questions here is how long these benefits actually last after just
3:37the one-time treatment. A review of research on LSD-assisted psychotherapy
3:41and alcoholism found no statistically significant benefits after 12 months.
3:46And a recent study on psilocybin and depression found that benefits significantly dropped
3:49off after three months.
3:52And of course are some big risks to using psychedelic drugs.
3:55It’s hard to predict a patient’s reaction and some might actually endanger themselves.
3:59Those predisposed to psychotic conditions are especially at risk for having a traumatic
4:03experience while on the drug. It’s difficult to draw solid conclusions
4:07from the existing studies. But there’s more than enough promise here
4:10to merit further research and further funding for that research.
4:13As Matthew Johnson of Johns Hopkins said, "These are among the most debilitating and
4:18costly disorders known to humankind.” For some people, no existing treatments help.
4:23But psychedelics might.
4:26One thing you might still be wondering is why so much of this research is so new, when we've known
4:29when we've known about psychedelics for thousands of years.
4:32Well since these drugs are so old, they can't be patented, which means that pharmaceutical companies
4:37don't really have any incentive to fund any research into them.
4:41So that really leaves it up to governments and private contributors to fund all these studies.
4:45And there actually was a lot of research done into these drugs in the 50s and 60s, but there was a big enough
4:49backlash to the abuse of psychedelics in that period, especially around events like Woodstock,
4:54that funding really dried up, and research stopped.
4:57And that's why it's only now that we see this research happening, with private, not government contributions.