Excerpt:
The preliminary study picks up where investigators left off. It
explores the possible therapeutic effects of the drug on the intense
anxiety experienced by patients with life-threatening disease, such as cancer.
A number of the hundreds of studies conducted on lysergic acid
diethylamide-25 from the 1940s into the 1970s (many of poor quality by
contemporary standards) delved into the personal insights the drug
supplied that enabled patients to reconcile themselves with their own
mortality. In recent years some researchers have studied psilocybin (the
active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”) and MDMA (Ecstasy), among
others, as possible treatments for this “existential anxiety,” but not
LSD.
Gasser, head of the Swiss Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy,
which he joined after his own therapist-administered LSD experience, has
only recently begun to discuss his research, revealing the challenges
of studying psychedelics. The $190,000 study approved by Swiss medical
authorities, was almost entirely funded by the Multidisciplinary
Association for Psychedelic Studies, a U.S. nonprofit that sponsors
research toward the goal of making psychedelics and marijuana into
prescription drugs. Begun in 2008, the study intends to treat 12
patients (eight who will receive LSD and four a placebo). Finding
eligible candidates has been difficult—after 18 months only five
patients had been recruited, and just four had gone through the trial’s
regimen of a pair of all-day sessions. “Because LSD is not a usual
treatment, an oncologist will not recommend it to a patient,” Gasser
laments.
The patients who received the drug found the experience aided them
emotionally, and none experienced panic reactions or other untoward
events. One patient, Udo Schulz, told the German weekly Der Spiegel
that the therapy with LSD helped him overcome anxious feelings after
being diagnosed with stomach cancer, and the experience with the drug
aided his reentry into the workplace.
The trials follow a strict protocol—“all LSD treatment sessions will
begin at 11 a.m.”—and the researchers are scrupulous about avoiding
mistakes that, at times, occurred during older psychedelic trials, when
investigators would leave subjects alone during a drug session. Both
Gasser and a female co-therapist are present throughout the eight-hour
sessions that take place in quiet, darkened rooms, with emergency
medical equipment close at hand. Before receiving LSD, subjects have to
undergo psychological testing and preliminary psychotherapy sessions.
Another group is also pursuing LSD research. The British-based
Beckley Foundation is funding and collaborating on a 12-person pilot
study at the University of California, Berkeley, that is assessing how
the drug may foster creativity and what changes in neural activity go
along with altered conscious experience induced by the chemical. Whether
LSD will one day become the drug of choice for psychedelic
psychotherapy remains in question because there may be better solutions.
“We chose psilocybin over LSD because it is gentler and generally less
intense,” says Charles S. Grob, a professor of psychiatry at the
University of California, Los Angeles, who conducted a trial to test
psilocybin’s effects on anxiety in terminal cancer patients. Moreover,
“it is associated with fewer panic reactions and less chance of paranoia
and, most important, over the past half a century psilocybin has
attracted far less negative publicity and carries far less cultural
baggage than LSD.”
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