WEBVTT - Magic Mushrooms Could Be the Next Big Treatment for Addiction

0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:04.120
<v Speaker 1>It's Thursday, April fourteen. I'm Oscarramrrors from the Daily Dive

0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:08.400
<v Speaker 1>podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. The

0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:12.200
<v Speaker 1>next big treatment for addiction may have presented itself. Several

0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:15.320
<v Speaker 1>psychedelic drugs have been touted as effective treatments for alcohol

0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:19.040
<v Speaker 1>and drug abuse, but psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms,

0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:22.040
<v Speaker 1>seems to be the most effective when combined with therapy.

0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:25.760
<v Speaker 1>Psilocybin still remains illegal under federal law, but there are

0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:28.560
<v Speaker 1>some clinical trials running to study the drug and how

0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:32.360
<v Speaker 1>it can address the psychological needs of addiction. Brendan Barrell,

0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:35.280
<v Speaker 1>contributor to The New York Times, joins us for more.

0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:38.680
<v Speaker 1>Thanks for joining us, Brendan, Thanks for having me well.

0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:41.920
<v Speaker 1>Researchers are getting a little bit excited about what could

0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:45.879
<v Speaker 1>be the next big treatment for addiction. There's been not

0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:48.880
<v Speaker 1>very much research done in this in this sector when

0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:51.920
<v Speaker 1>it comes to using psychedelic drugs. There's limited things that

0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:54.960
<v Speaker 1>have been going on, but they're trying to use these

0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:58.840
<v Speaker 1>things to help manage conditions like depression, anxiety, chronic pain,

0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:01.960
<v Speaker 1>even eating disorders. And the one thing that kind of

0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:06.800
<v Speaker 1>has been standing out above other things is psilocybin, which

0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:09.280
<v Speaker 1>is also known as magic mushrooms, and some of the

0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:12.000
<v Speaker 1>studies that they've been doing, they're showing that it has

0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:16.199
<v Speaker 1>some really good potential to help, especially when it comes

0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.759
<v Speaker 1>to alcohol and harder drugs, also nicotine. So Brendan tell

0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:24.880
<v Speaker 1>us more about this, please, So, yeah, the psychedelic drugs

0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:27.640
<v Speaker 1>had sort of been studied back in like the nineteen

0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:30.800
<v Speaker 1>fifties and sixties, kind of the heyday of l s

0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:34.280
<v Speaker 1>D era, and with sort of the passage of the

0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:38.120
<v Speaker 1>Controlled Substances Act, all that stuff was made illegal the

0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:42.600
<v Speaker 1>highest sort of category of of illegal drugs, basically Schedule one,

0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:46.200
<v Speaker 1>and so research came to halt. But some you know,

0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:48.480
<v Speaker 1>over the last twenty years, there have been sort of

0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:51.840
<v Speaker 1>some looking in the archives and noticing some of these

0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:56.960
<v Speaker 1>promising early studies showing that LSD could help people quit

0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:01.320
<v Speaker 1>alcohol maybe. And so now we're seeing this the incredible resurgence,

0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:04.600
<v Speaker 1>and a lot of it has focused on ketamine, which

0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:08.400
<v Speaker 1>is this anesthetic drug special K and so on that

0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:12.200
<v Speaker 1>creates some some psychedelic effects, and that's that's showing promise

0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:16.359
<v Speaker 1>in sort of ending alcohol abuse. But psilocybin is the

0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:20.480
<v Speaker 1>next horizon and it has an even more profound psychedelic

0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:24.440
<v Speaker 1>trip and people scientists feel like this is critical to

0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:27.840
<v Speaker 1>having allowing people to change their lives. And you know,

0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:32.040
<v Speaker 1>there's a clinical trials going on with psilocybin to the

0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:35.079
<v Speaker 1>point of how things have progressed, right the John Hopkins

0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:38.400
<v Speaker 1>Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. I mean, you know

0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:41.240
<v Speaker 1>these are the whole departments now set up looking to this,

0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:43.840
<v Speaker 1>and you know it's helping people. Right. There was a

0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:46.200
<v Speaker 1>small example that you had in the article about a

0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:49.440
<v Speaker 1>woman who had a smoking habit she wanted to kick that.

0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:52.800
<v Speaker 1>She got involved in one of these clinical trials and

0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:57.080
<v Speaker 1>she took the psilocybin in accompaniment with a therapy session

0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.320
<v Speaker 1>and she was able to kick her smoking habits. So

0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:01.280
<v Speaker 1>these are the kinds of things that they're seeing with

0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:04.080
<v Speaker 1>these types of treatments. Now, yeah, she had a really

0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:07.720
<v Speaker 1>profound experience. I mean, she's a an investor, lives part

0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.280
<v Speaker 1>time in Boston, who you just never expect is going

0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:15.000
<v Speaker 1>to be taking up hallucinogenic mushrooms, right, And so she

0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:18.360
<v Speaker 1>goes into this clinic, lays down and sort of she

0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:21.160
<v Speaker 1>described to me her trip is like climbing up this

0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:25.000
<v Speaker 1>series of interconnected ladders looking out to these pools that

0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.120
<v Speaker 1>sort of for her were these psychological problems that she

0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:30.720
<v Speaker 1>was facing, and it was like she comes back from

0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:32.920
<v Speaker 1>the trip. It lasted about five hours and she's like

0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:35.640
<v Speaker 1>tells the two therapists in the room, like, I understand

0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:38.360
<v Speaker 1>why I smoked, and I don't need to do that anymore.

0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:41.400
<v Speaker 1>And yeah, I mean, so far the the early results,

0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:43.200
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I think we have to be cautious here

0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:47.160
<v Speaker 1>because these trials have still been sort of small trials

0:03:47.240 --> 0:03:50.720
<v Speaker 1>and we're seeing sort of eight percent success rate in

0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:54.760
<v Speaker 1>about fifteen smokers. Was that that trial that Amy participated in,

0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:57.520
<v Speaker 1>And that's I mean compared to current sort of best

0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:00.920
<v Speaker 1>outcomes is about thirty percent. So these these things are

0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:03.800
<v Speaker 1>very exciting, but we don't know that they work for everybody,

0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:06.320
<v Speaker 1>and even if they're just a little bit effective, it

0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:09.720
<v Speaker 1>can have a huge public health impact. Definitely. Yeah, And

0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:11.920
<v Speaker 1>you know, recently on the podcast, we even did a

0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:14.920
<v Speaker 1>story about how some of these drugs are being adopted

0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:18.440
<v Speaker 1>by like wellness culture, right, the whole micro dosing things,

0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.000
<v Speaker 1>and obviously what we're talking about right now, we're done

0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:24.280
<v Speaker 1>in clinical settings. Johns Hopkins, Right, they just received a

0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:26.640
<v Speaker 1>four million grant from the National Institutes of Health to

0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:30.680
<v Speaker 1>keep on studying these things. But even in in people's

0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:34.560
<v Speaker 1>everyday lives, they're approaching psilocybin is something that can help

0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.120
<v Speaker 1>them out with So they're looking at this for more

0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:39.800
<v Speaker 1>of the more than just chemical dependency to when you're

0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:42.400
<v Speaker 1>you know, when we're talking about drugs and alcohol and

0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:46.200
<v Speaker 1>cigarettes and the nicotine and them, they're even looking for

0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:49.359
<v Speaker 1>it to help with other psychological needs. I think the

0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:52.760
<v Speaker 1>point there is when we think about people have an

0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:57.200
<v Speaker 1>addiction to cocaine or alcohol and you try to quit that,

0:04:57.360 --> 0:04:59.800
<v Speaker 1>you're using it every day, your body goes through just

0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:03.840
<v Speaker 1>this physical withdrawal. You get the shakes, and your heart

0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:08.120
<v Speaker 1>rate is high, you feel anxiety and all of that.

0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:10.919
<v Speaker 1>That tends to go away within a few weeks after

0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:14.560
<v Speaker 1>quitting a drug or alcohol, right, But why is it

0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:18.040
<v Speaker 1>that people then go back and take that drug again.

0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:22.520
<v Speaker 1>The physical symptoms are gone, and that is where you

0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:26.840
<v Speaker 1>need something to sort of flip a psychological switch. And

0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:31.680
<v Speaker 1>what these researchers believe is that psilocybin or other psychedelic

0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:36.160
<v Speaker 1>drugs give people this kind of profound spiritual experience in

0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:39.640
<v Speaker 1>some sense, and that helps the therapy they're going through

0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:42.360
<v Speaker 1>sort of stick and give them sort of the mental

0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:46.080
<v Speaker 1>flexibility that they can reconfigure their life and move away

0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:48.719
<v Speaker 1>from their addiction. And so what are next steps with

0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:50.360
<v Speaker 1>all of this that you know, some are saying that

0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:54.280
<v Speaker 1>they worry that they're not studying evaluating psilocybin and poor

0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:58.520
<v Speaker 1>communities where you know, people might have greater addictions and

0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:01.520
<v Speaker 1>you know, just the number of them. So people are saying,

0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:04.440
<v Speaker 1>maybe we should move clinical trials there or at least

0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:06.760
<v Speaker 1>leave it open to people like that. So these are

0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:08.800
<v Speaker 1>might be some next steps that in in the study

0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:11.839
<v Speaker 1>of all this. Yeah, I think the point is that

0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:14.599
<v Speaker 1>that the author Michael Pollen has written a very well

0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:17.360
<v Speaker 1>received book about the you know, the future of psychedelics

0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:19.320
<v Speaker 1>and how they change your mind and so on. So

0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:22.080
<v Speaker 1>there's like lots of white people out there who are

0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:24.840
<v Speaker 1>very well read and are like, sign me up, I

0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.839
<v Speaker 1>want to do this, um. But the impact of addictions

0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:31.240
<v Speaker 1>is actually is, as you point out, most profound and

0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:35.280
<v Speaker 1>and poorer communities and communities color and some of these

0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:38.200
<v Speaker 1>people are not as sort of well first in these

0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:42.279
<v Speaker 1>potential benefits. And so if we really want to value

0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:44.760
<v Speaker 1>how well these things work, yes we should be testing

0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:48.040
<v Speaker 1>them in places and like Berkeley, but we should also

0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:51.680
<v Speaker 1>be testing them in Birmingham, Alabama to really get a

0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:53.800
<v Speaker 1>full picture of how well they work and to help

0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:56.760
<v Speaker 1>the people most at need. It'll be interesting to keep

0:06:56.760 --> 0:06:59.479
<v Speaker 1>following this, say, you know, attitudes around a lot of

0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:02.719
<v Speaker 1>different up of drugs have been changing very much recently,

0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:06.640
<v Speaker 1>so we'll see what continues with this. Brendan Barrell, contributor

0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:08.440
<v Speaker 1>to The New York Times. Thank you very much for

0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:13.440
<v Speaker 1>joining us. Thanks a lot for having me. I'm Oscar

0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:16.920
<v Speaker 1>Ramires and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort

0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:18.680
<v Speaker 1>today's big news stories. You can check me out on

0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:22.040
<v Speaker 1>the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow

0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:24.800
<v Speaker 1>us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.