Speaker 1: It's Thursday, April fourteen. I'm Oscarramrrors from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. The
Speaker 1: next big treatment for addiction may have presented itself. Several
Speaker 1: psychedelic drugs have been touted as effective treatments for alcohol
Speaker 1: and drug abuse, but psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms,
Speaker 1: seems to be the most effective when combined with therapy.
Speaker 1: Psilocybin still remains illegal under federal law, but there are
Speaker 1: some clinical trials running to study the drug and how
Speaker 1: it can address the psychological needs of addiction. Brendan Barrell,
Speaker 1: contributor to The New York Times, joins us for more.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Brendan, Thanks for having me well.
Speaker 1: Researchers are getting a little bit excited about what could
Speaker 1: be the next big treatment for addiction. There's been not
Speaker 1: very much research done in this in this sector when
Speaker 1: it comes to using psychedelic drugs. There's limited things that
Speaker 1: have been going on, but they're trying to use these
Speaker 1: things to help manage conditions like depression, anxiety, chronic pain,
Speaker 1: even eating disorders. And the one thing that kind of
Speaker 1: has been standing out above other things is psilocybin, which
Speaker 1: is also known as magic mushrooms, and some of the
Speaker 1: studies that they've been doing, they're showing that it has
Speaker 1: some really good potential to help, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to alcohol and harder drugs, also nicotine. So Brendan tell
Speaker 1: us more about this, please, So, yeah, the psychedelic drugs
Speaker 1: had sort of been studied back in like the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, kind of the heyday of l s
Speaker 1: D era, and with sort of the passage of the
Speaker 1: Controlled Substances Act, all that stuff was made illegal the
Speaker 1: highest sort of category of of illegal drugs, basically Schedule one,
Speaker 1: and so research came to halt. But some you know,
Speaker 1: over the last twenty years, there have been sort of
Speaker 1: some looking in the archives and noticing some of these
Speaker 1: promising early studies showing that LSD could help people quit
Speaker 1: alcohol maybe. And so now we're seeing this the incredible resurgence,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it has focused on ketamine, which
Speaker 1: is this anesthetic drug special K and so on that
Speaker 1: creates some some psychedelic effects, and that's that's showing promise
Speaker 1: in sort of ending alcohol abuse. But psilocybin is the
Speaker 1: next horizon and it has an even more profound psychedelic
Speaker 1: trip and people scientists feel like this is critical to
Speaker 1: having allowing people to change their lives. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's a clinical trials going on with psilocybin to the
Speaker 1: point of how things have progressed, right the John Hopkins
Speaker 1: Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. I mean, you know
Speaker 1: these are the whole departments now set up looking to this,
Speaker 1: and you know it's helping people. Right. There was a
Speaker 1: small example that you had in the article about a
Speaker 1: woman who had a smoking habit she wanted to kick that.
Speaker 1: She got involved in one of these clinical trials and
Speaker 1: she took the psilocybin in accompaniment with a therapy session
Speaker 1: and she was able to kick her smoking habits. So
Speaker 1: these are the kinds of things that they're seeing with
Speaker 1: these types of treatments. Now, yeah, she had a really
Speaker 1: profound experience. I mean, she's a an investor, lives part
Speaker 1: time in Boston, who you just never expect is going
Speaker 1: to be taking up hallucinogenic mushrooms, right, And so she
Speaker 1: goes into this clinic, lays down and sort of she
Speaker 1: described to me her trip is like climbing up this
Speaker 1: series of interconnected ladders looking out to these pools that
Speaker 1: sort of for her were these psychological problems that she
Speaker 1: was facing, and it was like she comes back from
Speaker 1: the trip. It lasted about five hours and she's like
Speaker 1: tells the two therapists in the room, like, I understand
Speaker 1: why I smoked, and I don't need to do that anymore.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean, so far the the early results,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we have to be cautious here
Speaker 1: because these trials have still been sort of small trials
Speaker 1: and we're seeing sort of eight percent success rate in
Speaker 1: about fifteen smokers. Was that that trial that Amy participated in,
Speaker 1: And that's I mean compared to current sort of best
Speaker 1: outcomes is about thirty percent. So these these things are
Speaker 1: very exciting, but we don't know that they work for everybody,
Speaker 1: and even if they're just a little bit effective, it
Speaker 1: can have a huge public health impact. Definitely. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know, recently on the podcast, we even did a
Speaker 1: story about how some of these drugs are being adopted
Speaker 1: by like wellness culture, right, the whole micro dosing things,
Speaker 1: and obviously what we're talking about right now, we're done
Speaker 1: in clinical settings. Johns Hopkins, Right, they just received a
Speaker 1: four million grant from the National Institutes of Health to
Speaker 1: keep on studying these things. But even in in people's
Speaker 1: everyday lives, they're approaching psilocybin is something that can help
Speaker 1: them out with So they're looking at this for more
Speaker 1: of the more than just chemical dependency to when you're
Speaker 1: you know, when we're talking about drugs and alcohol and
Speaker 1: cigarettes and the nicotine and them, they're even looking for
Speaker 1: it to help with other psychological needs. I think the
Speaker 1: point there is when we think about people have an
Speaker 1: addiction to cocaine or alcohol and you try to quit that,
Speaker 1: you're using it every day, your body goes through just
Speaker 1: this physical withdrawal. You get the shakes, and your heart
Speaker 1: rate is high, you feel anxiety and all of that.
Speaker 1: That tends to go away within a few weeks after
Speaker 1: quitting a drug or alcohol, right, But why is it
Speaker 1: that people then go back and take that drug again.
Speaker 1: The physical symptoms are gone, and that is where you
Speaker 1: need something to sort of flip a psychological switch. And
Speaker 1: what these researchers believe is that psilocybin or other psychedelic
Speaker 1: drugs give people this kind of profound spiritual experience in
Speaker 1: some sense, and that helps the therapy they're going through
Speaker 1: sort of stick and give them sort of the mental
Speaker 1: flexibility that they can reconfigure their life and move away
Speaker 1: from their addiction. And so what are next steps with
Speaker 1: all of this that you know, some are saying that
Speaker 1: they worry that they're not studying evaluating psilocybin and poor
Speaker 1: communities where you know, people might have greater addictions and
Speaker 1: you know, just the number of them. So people are saying,
Speaker 1: maybe we should move clinical trials there or at least
Speaker 1: leave it open to people like that. So these are
Speaker 1: might be some next steps that in in the study
Speaker 1: of all this. Yeah, I think the point is that
Speaker 1: that the author Michael Pollen has written a very well
Speaker 1: received book about the you know, the future of psychedelics
Speaker 1: and how they change your mind and so on. So
Speaker 1: there's like lots of white people out there who are
Speaker 1: very well read and are like, sign me up, I
Speaker 1: want to do this, um. But the impact of addictions
Speaker 1: is actually is, as you point out, most profound and
Speaker 1: and poorer communities and communities color and some of these
Speaker 1: people are not as sort of well first in these
Speaker 1: potential benefits. And so if we really want to value
Speaker 1: how well these things work, yes we should be testing
Speaker 1: them in places and like Berkeley, but we should also
Speaker 1: be testing them in Birmingham, Alabama to really get a
Speaker 1: full picture of how well they work and to help
Speaker 1: the people most at need. It'll be interesting to keep
Speaker 1: following this, say, you know, attitudes around a lot of
Speaker 1: different up of drugs have been changing very much recently,
Speaker 1: so we'll see what continues with this. Brendan Barrell, contributor
Speaker 1: to The New York Times. Thank you very much for
Speaker 1: joining us. Thanks a lot for having me. I'm Oscar
Speaker 1: Ramires and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort
Speaker 1: today's big news stories. You can check me out on
Speaker 1: the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow
Speaker 1: us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.