Psychedelic trips
aid anxiety treatments in studyExcerpt:
"There is now more psychedelic research taking place in the world
than at any time in the last 40 years," said Rick Doblin, executive
director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies,
which funds some of the work. "We're at the end of the beginning of the
renaissance."
He said that more than 1,200 people attended a conference in
California last weekend on psychedelic science.
But doing the research is not easy, Doblin and others say, with
government funders still leery and drug companies not interested in the
compounds they can't patent. That pretty much leaves private donors.
"There's still a lot of resistance to it," said David Nichols, a
Purdue University professor of medicinal chemistry and president of the
Heffter Institute, which is supporting the NYU study. "The whole hippie
thing in the 60s" and media coverage at the time "has kind of left a bad
taste in the mouth of the public at large.
"When you tell people you're treating people with psychedelics, the
first thing that comes to mind is Day-Glo art and tie-dyed shirts."
Nothing like that was in evidence the other day when Edlich revisited
the room at NYU where she'd taken psilocybin. Landscape photos and
abstract art hung on the walls, flowers and a bowl of fruit adorned a
table near the window. At the foot of the couch lay an Oriental rug.
"The whole idea was to create a living room-like setting" that would
be relaxing, said study leader Dr. Stephen Ross.
Edlich, whose cancer forced her to retire from teaching French at a
private school, had plenty of reason to seek help through the NYU
project. Several recurrences of her ovarian cancer had provoked fears about suffering
and dying and how her death would affect her family. She felt "profound
sadness that my life was going to be cut short." And she faced
existential questions: Why live? What does it all mean? How can I go on?
"These things were in my head and I wanted them to take a back seat
to living in the moment," she said. So when she heard NYU researchers
speak about the project at her cancer support group, she was interested.
Psilocybin has been shown to invoke powerful spiritual experiences
during the four to six hours it affects the brain. A study published in
2008, in fact, found that even 14 months after healthy volunteers had
taken a single dose, most said they were still feeling and behaving
better because of the experience. They also said the drug had produced
one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever
had.
Experts emphasize people shouldn't try psilocybin on their own
because it can be harmful, sometimes causing bouts of anxiety and
paranoia.
The NYU study is testing whether that drug experience can help with
the nine months of psychotherapy each participant also gets.
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