Really appreciate your taking the time to do this AMA — I badly want to see this cause area succeed, largely thanks to your writing (Michael), advocacy (Tim), and research (Matthew). Thanks for leading the way.
In a recent conversation with Tim, Hamilton Morris worries out loud about how the psychadelic pendulum has recently swung towards hype, with lots of trendy op-eds and new capital:
Well, what happens when that gets a little bit old, and what happens when, I don’t know, someone has a bad experience? Maybe a celebrity has a bad experience and they decide that mushrooms caused their psychosis. And then what?
How do you think about setting expectations here? Are you concerned about this resurgence in interest repeating some of the mistakes of the 60s? And, this time, what can we be doing to establish things for the much longer term?
I share Hamilton’s concerns that psychedelic therapy can be over-hyped. Many of the researchers are sounding a more cautious note, but there’s so much capital chasing so few good ideas right now, and the media is so positively disposed to psychedelics that a correct is bound to happen, and should. Some of these over-valued new companies will crash; there will be adverse events in the drug trials: if you trial hundreds of depressed patients, some of them are likely to commit suicide, and because the pre-existing narratives about psychedelics, this will be a big media story, even though suicides happen getting on and off SSRI’s all the time.
But in the end, it is the research that will determine whether psychedelic therapy earns a place in mental health treatment or not. I don’t think we’ll see a disabling backlash as we did in the 1960s. The need for new therapeutic tools is so desperate that the mental health establishment will embrace psychedelic therapy if the phase II trials are anywhere near as good as the phase II.
Really appreciate your taking the time to do this AMA — I badly want to see this cause area succeed, largely thanks to your writing (Michael), advocacy (Tim), and research (Matthew). Thanks for leading the way.
In a recent conversation with Tim, Hamilton Morris worries out loud about how the psychadelic pendulum has recently swung towards hype, with lots of trendy op-eds and new capital:
How do you think about setting expectations here? Are you concerned about this resurgence in interest repeating some of the mistakes of the 60s? And, this time, what can we be doing to establish things for the much longer term?
I share Hamilton’s concerns that psychedelic therapy can be over-hyped. Many of the researchers are sounding a more cautious note, but there’s so much capital chasing so few good ideas right now, and the media is so positively disposed to psychedelics that a correct is bound to happen, and should. Some of these over-valued new companies will crash; there will be adverse events in the drug trials: if you trial hundreds of depressed patients, some of them are likely to commit suicide, and because the pre-existing narratives about psychedelics, this will be a big media story, even though suicides happen getting on and off SSRI’s all the time.
But in the end, it is the research that will determine whether psychedelic therapy earns a place in mental health treatment or not. I don’t think we’ll see a disabling backlash as we did in the 1960s. The need for new therapeutic tools is so desperate that the mental health establishment will embrace psychedelic therapy if the phase II trials are anywhere near as good as the phase II.
I think you have a typo here? :)
This is a concern, and perhaps the most important thing we can do about it is make sure the FDA require a solid REMS program (https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/risk-evaluation-and-mitigation-strategies-rems) that mandates that treatments follow similar safety guidelines that are being used in clinical research (e.g., https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5259182_Human_Hallucinogen_Research_Guidelines_for_Safety ). Another thing we need to do it always acknowledge and address mitigation strategies for risks when interfacing with the public or other scientists. Many will not do this, so it is on us who recognize the risks and their implications for leveraging these treatments to help the greatest number of people to keep awareness of them in public discourse.