To serve an organizational role that you describe, you would not necessarily need to be trained in science, psychology, or medicine, but you would need to work very closely with such folks.
Dr. Matthew W. Johnson
Karma: 125
Yes, I see a potential danger, and I’ve described it in at least of couple of previous posts here. But I think with the right framing we can minimize such harms and maximize benefits. And yes, I absolutely see therapeutic potential in DMT. DMT will surely be developed into an approved medicine in my opinion, although we need to follow the data of course.
Sure. Most of the modern therapeutic research has in fact used a “heroic dose” of psilocybin, or close to it. Most of our high dose work at Hopkins has used 30 mg/70 kg (154 lbs) bodyweight of the person (e.g., a 200 lbs. person would get 39 mg). According to analysis of cultivated mushrooms, the classic “heroic dose” that Terrence McKenna would speak of (5 dried grams of psilocybe cubensis mushrooms) contains on average about 30 mg psilocybin. So our high dose is a “heroic dose” or even higher in some cases for heavier people. 5 grams is about half way between an eight and a quarter ounce of mushrooms (as a reference since ounces are the units of typical sale in the illicit market in the US). For a typical recreational dose that one might take at a concert, for example, people might split a eight ounce between two or three people. So a heroic dose is indeed much higher than the dose many folks have used recreationally. The entire history of the “psychedelic therapy” method of using psychedelics, dating back to the 1950s, rests upon using a very large (heroic) dose. For LSD this would be 300 micrograms or above, sometimes up to 800 micrograms or more.
I think LSD might have even greater potential for therapeutics, but this is untested. I will be doing upcoming research with LSD in treating chronic pain with an eye for reducing or stopping opioid use. Some people say LSD is more likely to bring attention to one’s personal issues. It is also a longer experience which might help as there is a variability to experiences and not all of the experience is going to be meaningful. Sometimes the meaningful part of a psilocybin experience only starts 4 or 5 hours in, leaving little time. That would be less of an issue with LSD.
Yes, I believe there are several groups working on preparing trials. We at Johns Hopkins are one of them. I think it is worth investigation for sure.
We have conducted extensive research on healthy people (without disorders) at Johns Hopkins. Yes, sometimes these are extremely therapeutic for issues that didn’t have anything to do with why they volunteers. Several instances of past trauma being relieved and processed, for example.
The only research that I’m aware of is going on in North American, Europe, and South America. I’m assuming stigma is the reason it is not more broadly studied.
Yes there is some research on this. We found in survey research the personality trait of neuroticism is associated with more difficult psychedelic experiences: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5540159/
The Vollenweider lab has found that the personality trait of absorption in lab research was associated with greater pleasant and mystical experiences, and emotional excitability was associated with unpleasant and anxious reactions.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3281871/
Copying part of a response I made to another question:
Another point is that I think there is a role for nonprofits to play in monitoring and litigating the patent landscape. I support the appropriate use of IP, and when it works this incentivizes innovation that pushes advances that wouldn’t have been made otherwise. But there is a need to make sure the system is not abused, and that patents are not awarded to ideas that truly don’t meet the legal standards such as non-intuitiveness and originality.
MDMA for PTSD. Then psilocybin for depression. Then psilocybin for tobacco and alcohol use disorder (they are on a similar timeline).
There is no research on this with regard to psilocybin. Our approach has been to tapper, as this is the general consensus for getting off these drugs in general, regardless of psychedelics.
We need to test all the variations. Shorter or longer lasting compounds could be better, and for different purposes. And work may move into the direction of tailoring duration, like the older work that Gouzoulis-Mayfrank did with continuously infused intravenous DMT, in which the duration and intensity can be adjusted. There may be compounds that have less chance of a particularly difficult experience. It is another question whether this would improve treatment. It would certainly make it more attractive to a broader array of patients. Shulgin was particularly interested in 4-OH-DIPT as a therapeutic, as a somewhat shorter acting psilocybin-like compound. Lots to explore!
Redemption: How Psilocybin, LSD, and MDMA Became Approved Medicines Across the Globe.
Sounds like a fascinating thing to try but I would not want anybody to hang their PhD work up on it. I tell folks to get their degree as soon as possible and not languish. If there is another path you might want to consider crowdsourcing future research with psychedelics. You’ll find that many PhD programs have funding available through either research or teaching assistantships.
I think there are many frontiers. One is neurological, of which headaches are only a subset. There are compelling reports of athletes with repetitive impact head injuries who claim the psychedelics have helped restore cognitive function. That will be fascinating to study, as it could potentially build a bridge between the neuroplastic effects seen in nonhuman research and human therapeutic effects. Ultimately one thing I’d like to study is treating people convicted of antisocial crimes. Essentially picking up on Leary’s Concord prison study which was rather flawed in execution and analysis. I’m not saying it will work, and it will take more than the drug, but this would be absolutely fascinating.
I’m half joking, but the answer is by joining a study at Hopkins or another university. Otherwise, I don’t give advice regarding the underground.
We are running a trial now for psilocybin and early stage Alzheimer’s disease. https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/alzheimers
#1 if you mean regulated, non-research use, for healthy people without disorders, I’m not sure but I think a decent chance within your lifetime. Treatment for suffering (mental disorders) is the priority in my opinion. But society may move quickly.
#2 No. I certainly don’t think psychedelics are necessary for humans to survive and flourish. Hopefully they can help. But if psychedelics never existed, I still think there would be hope for us.
All the existing evidence is for higher doses. But who know?
For the blinding question, I think we need to examine a broader range of active comparators. Oral THC would be a more credible comparator in terms of fooling folks that they got psilocybin. Amphetamine is a good comparator for MDMA. We also need to do a better job reporting on how well the blind works or not.