SCIENCE 

03/06/2014 10:37 pm ET Updated Mar 06, 2014

First LSD Study In 40 Years Shows

Promising Medical Uses
By Emily Thomas

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS: BEN MILLS

After a decades-long pause on LSD medical research, the results of the first
LSD study approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 40 years
have put the drug’s potential medical benefits back in the spotlight.

Picking up where the medical community left off in the ‘60s, scientists recently
investigated the effects of LSD-assisted therapy on 12 terminally ill patients
approaching death. The findings of this controlled study, published Tuesday in
the peer-reviewed Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, showed that LSD
paired with psychotherapy alleviated end-of-life anxiety in patients suffering
from terminal illnesses.

Conducted in Switzerland, where scientist Albert Hoffman first synthesized

LSD in 1938, the study separated the 12 patients into two groups that
underwent two preparatory therapy sessions before being administered LSD.
For the trial, patients stopped taking any anti-anxiety or antidepressant
medications and avoided alcohol for 24 hours prior to the study. One group
was administered 200 micrograms of LSD and the other group 20 micrograms
(a barely noticeable dosing). Each individual underwent two dosing sessions
separated by a few weeks and were assisted by therapists, who walked them
through their experiences with the psychedelic’s effects. No prolonged
negative effects of the drug were reported.

The low-dosage group reported that their anxiety got worse, while the higher-
dosage group said their drug-therapy sessions had profound positive effects
on their anxiety — a clinical indication that psychedelic therapy may have
potential as a medical treatment. In follow-up sessions, patients reported their
reduced anxiety levels were maintained.

“People are more scared of dying than they are of using drugs. That’s why we
were able to start LSD research with people who were anxious about dying,
that and the combination of Albert Hoffman and good contacts with the Swiss
equivalent of the FDA,” Rick Doblin, founder of the Multidisciplinary
Association for Psychedelic Studies, which largely funded the study, told The
Huffington Post over the phone.

Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D., a New York-based psychotherapist and author of

the book Psychedelic Healing, explained the significance of this research to
HuffPost. “It has long-term implications for society. In the short term it’s going
to help patients, people. So the question really becomes, what’s the benefit of
a spiritual epiphany or relief or relaxation? And what’s the effect of that on a
dying patient?” he said. “We’re going to be a better society once we learn to
reintegrate psychedelics. It both requires changes in society and it creates
changes.”

While it is unknown from a medical standpoint what exactly happens to the

brain under the effects of LSD, Doblin said the psychoactive ingredients
interact with the brain’s filtering system and allow for suppressed thoughts and
feelings to reveal themselves, making way for confrontation and potentially for
healing.

Doblin said LSD-assisted therapy is partly a cathartic and mystical

experience, a transcendence of time and space that helps patients fearing
death shift their thinking from focusing on the time they don’t have left to the
time they do have.
“Something is fundamentally changed by successful LSD-assisted
psychotherapy,” he said. “That’s not to say it works in everybody, but there
can be permanent changes in people’s attitudes and in their brains.”

A patient named Peter, who was involved in the study, told The New York
Times about his experiences. “I had what you would call a mystical
experience, I guess, lasting for some time, and the major part was pure
distress at all these memories I had successfully forgotten for decades,” he
said. “These painful feelings, regrets, this fear of death. I remember feeling
very cold for a long time. I was shivering, even though I was sweating. It was
a mental coldness, I think, a memory of neglect.”

That sentiment of the psychedelic’s effects on the psyche is not isolated to

this trial. A 2012 study, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology,
showed that LSD had a “significant beneficial effect” on alcohol abuse. In that
trial of 500 patients, 59 percent of those who were administered LSD showed
reduced levels of alcohol misuse.

LSD was officially made illegal in the U.S. in 1966 as a result of “increased

nonmedical use,” shutting down all research of its potential medical benefits.
Now LSD is classified as a Schedule I substance alongside heroin and
marijuana, meaning it is considered to serve no legitimate medical purpose
and has a high potential for abuse.

As the FDA begins to loosen its restrictions on researching psychedelics’

therapeutic capabilities, studies are emerging from many major university
medical research communities. Johns Hopkins University is conducting a
study of psilocybin (the psychedelic compound found in certain mushroom
species) and its effects on cancer patients to find out if the substance can
produce personally and spiritually meaningful experiences. New York
University’s Psilocybin Cancer Project is also investigating the psychedelic’s
effect on reducing depression and anxiety in cancer patients. At Harvard
Medical School, a study of MDMA sessions with cancer patients suffering
from end-of-life anxiety is in the works.

“LSD was the last of the drugs to re-enter the lab, because it’s the
quintessential symbol of the ‘60s. So our ability to do this study and the
publication of the article in The New York Times is the culmination of the end
of the suppression of psychedelic research,” Doblin told HuffPost.
The Swiss group’s first clinical trial is just a small step toward what some
scientists hope will bring psychedelic therapy to the mainstream through a
medical route, following the decades-long halt in research. A larger study
pool, Doblin said, would prove that LSD has a place in the medical
community.

“Let’s say that we had the money to have studies that were just like we did
that had 400 subjects, two large scale phase-three studies. The results of this
study, if we could show with that many people, would be enough to prescribe
[LSD] as medicine,” Doblin said. “The political suppression of this research is
over. I don’t think the genie is going to be put back in the bottle.”