Psychedelic medicine

Mind-bending drugs are entering the therapeutic arena

Drugs under development offer the mental-health benefits of psilocybin and similar substances without inducing strong hallucinatory effects.

Some researchers are finding clues that MDMA might be able to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. But the science has yet to catch up with the optimism.

Gül Dölen explains how psychedelics restore the brain’s capacity for plasticity, which fades with age, and make possible new mental-health therapies.

Clinical trials suggest that psilocybin — the active ingredient in magic mushrooms — can provide durable remission from an increasingly common mental health condition.

After millennia of sacramental use, mescaline is finally entering fully powered clinical trials.

Mind-altering drugs are shaking up medicine — but how they actually work remains a mystery. A flurry of imaging studies could clarify the picture.

Clinical trials of psychedelic drugs impose constraints that make it difficult to judge how effective they will be in treating people.

Recent results cast doubt on claims that small amounts of these drugs can benefit mental health.

Predicting bad trips, treating depression without hallucinations, and other highlights from studies of psychedelics.

Drugs best known for their hallucinogenic properties, such as psilocybin, could help people beat the agony of migraines and other painful maladies.

Volunteers undergo brain scans while being given mind-bending drugs to alter their consciousness.

A panel of researchers and journalists explore the key issues health care must face as the psychedelic wave gathers momentum.

Psychedelics were banned in the United States in 1970. Now, atai Life Sciences, a publicly held clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that is developing therapeutics to treat mental health disorders, is advancing multiple psychedelic compounds through regulatory development. What changed?

New agonists of the serotonin 5-HT_2A receptor (5-HT_2AR) confer high brain permeability and antidepressant activity and—in contrast to classic 5-HT_2AR agonists—lack psychedelic activity.

Results from a phase 3, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial demonstrate that MDMA-assisted therapy is safe and effective in treating severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

Psychedelics have shown great promise in treating mental-health conditions, but their use is severely limited by legal obstacles, which could be overcome.

Psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) have emerging therapeutic potential for neuropsychiatric diseases such as depression and anxiety. In this Perspective, McClure-Begley and Roth discuss the promises and pitfalls of psychedelic pharmacology, including complex activity profiles beyond canonical 5-HT_2A receptor activation that continue to be elucidated. They consider progress and challenges for clinical studies, as well as prospects for parsing the therapeutic from psychedelic effects of this class of compounds to develop ‘cleaner’ drugs.

A resurgence in interest in the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs has boosted research into their neurobiological and cognitive effects. Vollenweider and Preller review recent advances in the field and consider the implications of recent discoveries for the therapeutic use of psychedelics.