Psychology: LSD and Co. – Drugs as the new silver bullet in therapy?

The day after the trip, psychiatry professor Gregor Hasler is exhausted. He doesn’t have the psychedelic Dry LSD ingested, but one of his subjects. But it takes twelve hours for the person to travel through sensory illusions, emotional reviews, periods of oneness and loneliness.

Patients described it as the most frightening experience of their lives psychedelic psychotherapy to the inventor of the concept, Matthew Johnson of Johns Hopkins University. “You don’t want to have that again right away,” confirms Hasler from the University of Friborg in Switzerland. “Once a week is enough for me, too, because I or my supervisors have to stay with the person.”

LSD therapy: Swiss people administer drugs under supervision

Hasler is one of three dozen psychiatrists in Switzerland who are allowed to give psychedelics under supervision to selected mentally ill people by exemption from the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health. The hallucinogenic intoxication is said to be embedded in an existing traumatization or depression psychotherapy solve. For this purpose, the drugs are also being researched in the case of anxiety disorders or addiction.

Since more and more individual cases and studies have documented that psychedelic Drying can help with mental illnesses, research is booming. The synthetic drug LSD, which resembles a fungal toxin found in grain, psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, and mescaline from peyote cactus are thought to be potential future psychotropic drugs.

“In our experience, psychedelics are well suited when psychotherapy has become bogged down and those affected keep telling the same thing,” says Hasler, describing his experience. However, the drugs are not suitable for acute emergencies.

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LSD and Co. for healing: “Hype is even bigger than the results”

However, published scientific data on how and which groups of people psychedelics could help are still largely lacking. “At the moment the hype is greater than the results,” says Franz Vollenweider, a psychiatrist at the University of Zurich. In total, an estimated two dozen are randomized clinical studies published on LSD and psilocybin. Psychedelic substances are still a long way from approval or even a jump into standard care.

Nevertheless, the expectations of the patients are often immense – perhaps also because there is something mystical about the forbidden psychedelic drugs. In addition, there are individual case reports from mentally ill people who are after their Trip as miraculously healed.

Psychedelics are by no means new to medical history

In the 1950s and 60s, psychiatrists researched psychedelic substances for various mental ailments before they became the party drug of the hippie movement and they finally in the Appendix 1 of the Narcotics Act landed. However, research suggests that therapeutic potential hin.

By far the largest study appeared in November 2022 in the New England Journal of Medicine. 233 subjects with treatment-resistant depression received either a placebo or a one-off Psilocybin. At the highest dose of 25 milligrams, depressive symptoms, which include depression and social withdrawal, decreased in 29 percent of participants.

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The response to the study was divided. On the one hand, the effects were far less strong than in the previous smaller surveys. On the other hand, observers such as the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim welcome the fact that, despite the moderate effects registration study should be prepared.

Drugs work quickly – but there is a downside

Psychedelics are rushing into research with the promise that they could overcome the psychotropic drug dilemma. These relieve some of the symptoms of depression after the first few weeks. But about 30 to 40 percent of people continue to feel bad despite medication and psychotherapy.

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“Psychedelics act quickly. That’s what everyone jumps at,” says Franz Vollenweider. A study lasting several years by the psychiatrist Torsten Passie from the Medical University of Hanover reports on deeper self-insights as a result of the trip and – unsurprisingly – on mystical experiences. At the same time, she revealed that the substances cause not inconsiderable stresses such as temporary states of anxiety, misjudgment of reality and Our brothers and sisters entail. “That calls for caution,” Passie concludes.

Medical professionals: LSD therapy is not suitable for everyone

Hasler explains that psychedelics are not suitable for everyone. If they were “not so emotionally intelligent” and “not so open mentally”, it wouldn’t be the right thing. People who are troubled by any sensory illusion, such as when the clouds move in a picture, would not do well with psychedelics.

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They then called after the trip and said the clouds in their picture were moving again. A “hallucinogenic perception disorder caused by LSD” – and thus a well-known consequence of psychedelic drugs. Hasler says: “It’s exhausting.”

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