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Psilocybin is a key ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms
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- Author: Gary Nunn
- Scrolling, from BBC News in Sydney, Australia
3 hours ago
Earlier this year, researchers were stunned when Australia’s traditionally conservative Medicines Agency approved the use of psychedelics to support therapy sessions.
The ruling allows the use of psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, to treat drugresistant depression.
It also allows the use of MDMA, known as ecstasy in pill form, to treat posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The changes go into effect this Saturday (1/7), making Australia the first country to nationally classify psychedelics as medicine.
Although initial access to medicines is limited and expensive, many experts and patients consider the current moment historic.
But leading health organizations also urge caution.
“Shining Again”
Marjane Beaugeois was diagnosed with major depression in 2017. “Within two months I lost my mother, grandmother, my beloved dog and my romantic relationship,” she recalls.
She was unable to eat or shower and was unable to leave her home in Melbourne, Australia. And she says the antidepressants prescribed left her “like a zombie, unable to cry, calm down, or feel better.”
“I went to bed and prayed I wouldn’t wake up,” says the 49yearold.
When her search for alternative therapies led her to a psilocybin clinic in Amsterdam, Netherlands, she was hesitant.
“I have no history of drug or alcohol use. As an addiction counselor, I was always strictly against it,” she says.
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Marjane Beaugeois (centre) says psilocybin has helped her treat major depression
But she was also desperate to break out of her drugresistant depression, so she applied in 2018.
Psilocybin was taken in a tea. “The colors became more vivid. I felt powerfully connected to the world again, warm and fuzzy. I get emotional just talking about it… It was a huge, beautiful experience of unconditional love.”
Three sessions later she felt healed. “I could smile, feel joy and go about my daily life clearly,” she says. “When I got home, friends said they saw my eyes sparkle again.”
microdosing
When Glen Boyes suggested microdosing psychedelics to treat his debilitating depression, his therapist was skeptical.
“He explained that he didn’t do that, but that he couldn’t stop me and would do brain scans to track my progress,” he says.
The 33yearold war veteran says he has suffered from “persistent posttraumatic stress disorder” since serving in the army during Sydney’s Covid19 lockdowns.
But after 10 weeks of microdosing and therapy sessions, the red areas on her first brain scans showing blockages disappeared. “My brain fog is gone. I could think clearly again.”
Because no country before Australia has reclassified these substances for clinical use at a national level, the number of people who have tried psychedelic therapy is small.
Professor David Nutt, Head of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College UK, congratulated Australia on “world leadership in this vital treatment innovation”.
Psychedelics researcher and psychiatrist Ben Sessa called the approval groundbreaking. “This is where the global psychedelic spotlight shines now,” he told the BBC.
Sessa has stepped down from her job as head of the UK’s leading clinical organization for psychedelics and will spend the next 18 months traveling to Australia to conduct a bespoke training program in psychedelics prescribing.
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Glen Boyes says that microdosing psychedelics has helped treat his posttraumatic stress disorder
Other countries have researched psychedelics for compassionate use (socalled special programs created to make experimental substances available to patients), including Switzerland, Canada and Israel.
In these countries, regulators made decisions similar to those in Australia, but not at the national level. Psychedelic clinics also operate legally in countries like Jamaica and Costa Rica.
But how Australia will distribute clinical prescriptions for both drugs, and at what cost, is being closely watched.
Ecstasy was first developed as an appetite suppressant in 1912 and was used in therapy sessions in the United States until it was banned in the mid1970s. It made its way to Australia in the 1980s as a party drug for its energy, emotional and pleasureenhancing effects, and was criminalized in 1987.
However, research slowly picked up steam in the 2000s recent studies have concluded that both MDMA and psilocybin can rapidly improve symptoms of major depression, although little is known about how they do this.
Mind Medicine Australia (MMA), a charity that champions psychedelic treatments, is helping to train health workers tasked with sourcing and prescribing the drugs.
To become an authorized prescriber, psychiatrists must apply to an ethics committee and Australia’s medicines regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). They then need to source and provide MDMA and psilocybin.
When you factor in all the costs including the medication itself, the care of multidisciplinary teams, psychiatrist sessions and hiring a private clinic the cost can be as high as A$30,000 (£30,000) per treatment, according to a psychedelics specialist.
Because of their prohibitive price, Edith Cowan University lecturer Stephen Bright doubts these treatments will be “widespread” in the first 12 to 18 months.
Philanthropist Peter Hunt, chairman of the MMA, disputes these estimates and says patients should expect to pay between A$10,000 (£10,000) for two psilocybinassisted therapy sessions and A$15,000 (£10,000) for two psilocybinassisted therapy sessions . for three MDMAassisted sessions. “We financed the treatments with a psychiatric clinic,” he says.
But without planned government subsidies, treatments in the fivefigure range are likely to remain unaffordable for most patients.
“No miracle cure”
Australia’s leading medical and mental health authorities are among the loudest voices against psychedelic treatments.
“The scientific and medical community is very cautious,” says Kristen Morely, professor of addiction medicine at the University of Sydney.
According to the MMA, the “mass of submissions from thousands of Australians whose current mental health treatments just aren’t working” helped gain regulatory approval over time.
However, the Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) have raised serious concerns.
Both groups called for largescale studies and better research into psychedelic treatments, warning of unknown risks, longterm side effects, and “possibly very limited benefits” of their use in therapy.
“Psychedelic assisted therapy may bring hope to a small number of people where other treatments have failed. But it’s not a miracle cure,” warns Professor Richard Harvey, Chair of the RANZCP Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Steering Group.
He calls for a “cautious, thoughtful, and informed” approach given the “potential that psychedelics can induce fear, panic, and further trauma.”
“Vulnerable people can understandably be concerned if their experience doesn’t match the expectations of this therapy,” he says.
It’s also not clear, he argues, whether the results of psychedelic treatments are due more to the substances themselves or to the psychotherapy.
“Put simply, psychedelic assisted therapy is still in its infancy. We need to know more.”