182 SEPTEMBER 2019
psychedelics. She’d never actually taken any (“I was the nerdy, video
game-playing, science-loving kid,” she says), but she was intrigued by
the research.
Then, in her final year of university, she was sexually assaulted, a
trauma that left her with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“My mind and personality completely changed; I became insular and
disconnected. I dropped out of uni for a time,” she explains. “I tried
conventional psychotherapy, but I couldn’t go back to the memory
without having a panic attack.”
This is something that’s common for PTSD sufferers, and one of the
key reasons therapy can fail. Knowing that the rate of success for
antidepressants and PTSD was only around 20 to 30 per cent, she
convinced her parents she should go to Portugal, a country where
psychedelics have been decriminalised, to take part in a MDMA-
assisted therapy session. She describes the aftermath of the experience
as waking up from a deep, dark nightmare.
“I hadn’t realised how trapped I was at the moment of my trauma,”
she says. “With the MDMA-assisted therapy, I was able to reconnect to
myself. I no longer had flashbacks and could talk about the trauma.
It became an inspiration to help others.”
This is because MDMA acts on serotonin receptors, which are
triggered when we feel happy and relaxed. “When the brain recalls
something, it doesn’t just take it out of the filing cabinet, read it and put
it back. It takes it out, shreds it and rewrites it,” says Warner. “By
remembering a traumatic memory on MDMA, which induces those
feelings of safety and compassion, you re-encode that memory, altering
the emotional tone.
“It’s not a panacea; I still had to do work to get my confidence back
and my trust back, but it helped me to break through the biggest
hurdle,” she says.
Two major trials on MDMA-assisted therapy and PTSD are now
wrapping up in North America and Europe. In the US study, an
incredible 68 per cent of treatment-resistant patients no longer had
PTSD one year after their MDMA-assisted therapy sessions. Some of
them had been suffering for decades.
Phase III trials are about to begin overseas, and Mind Medicine
Australia predicts that by 2021 MDMA could be approved by the FDA
in the US – and Australia may not be far behind.
We’ve already seen how quickly things can shift in the case of
ketamine. While not a psychedelic, it has traditionally been considered
a party drug, and yet reports published in 2013 showed that ketamine
could ease symptoms of severe depression in up to 75 per cent of cases,
compared to roughly 60 per cent for current antidepressants. Cut to this
year and a new nasal spray antidepressant based on ketamine was
approved by the FDA.
If MDMA does get approved as a medicine, it’ll open the door for
further psychedelic research – and not just on mental illness, but overall
wellness and creativity, just like the self-prescribed experiments
currently happening in Silicon Valley.
LSD microdosing is a particularly interesting phenomenon, because
it only involves taking around 1/10th of a dose of LSD daily, which on
paper shouldn’t do much to brain activity. Of course, impacts may
vary, depending on the individual. While self-reporting suggests
microdosing can have profound effects, there are still very few clinical
trials that have been published on the topic, which means it’s still
too early to know if they’re effective. But, interestingly, some of the
earliest results suggests it can alter
people’s neuroticism, one of the five
key personality traits scientists have
traditionally thought were fixed
throughout a lifetime.
One advocate of microdosing is
Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss
and March, and founder of the Beckley
Foundation in the UK. She’s widely
known as the driving force behind the
psychedelic renaissance: it was her
foundation that helped fund the first
brain scans of research subjects under
the influence of LSD.
Now aged 76 and running the institute
out of her family manor in Oxfordshire,
she’s made no secret of regularly
experimenting with psychedelics and
being blown away by their incredible
potential to improve cognition and creativity.
“I’ve always used myself as a test subject,” says Feilding. “Psychedelics
can offer a new kind of paradigm shift to how we approach and treat
mental illnesses but also wellbeing – and that’s something that we as
a society desperately need.”
She says microdosing is one of her favourite ways to take the drug. It’s
something she did often in her 20s, and found that it gave her a much
greater edge in creative pursuits and also mental tasks. She’s now
funding several controlled trials aiming to properly test and understand
exactly how the process works, and how it can be optimised.
“My current hypothesis is that it basically changes your brain in the
same way as a full dose but to a much reduced extent. So instead of
really shaking your brain’s control system, you’re just slightly nudging
it. It’s like a psycho-vitamin,” she says.
But Feilding also warns against self-experimentation, especially with
the amount of rogue substances out there. “What we need now is much
more quality research to work out what these drugs can do and how we
can best harness them,” she says.
While the current research is already offering hope to many with
mental health issues, it’s still only the beginning. There are dozens
more studies in the works on psychedelics, involving addiction, anxiety
and mental sharpness.
Feilding would also like to test whether the drugs could benefit the
ageing population and alleviate some of the symptoms of dementia and
Parkinson’s disease.
It’s been almost 50 years since the war on drugs shut down research
on these curious substances. That’s long enough for most of us to forget
they were ever more than the backdrop to the free love and good vibes
of the 60s. But perhaps now scientists finally have the tools to study
what the drugs can do and explore their possibilities for good.
“I compare taking LSD to being a good rider of a powerful horse,” says
Feilding. “In the right, carefully controlled, setting and with the right
intention, you could use the psychedelic to achieve whatever you want.
“In my case back in the 60s, it was enhancing cognitive function
and wellbeing and vitality, but we don’t yet know what the real
potential is. I thought then and I still think now that’s an amazing
ability for humanity.” ■“Psychedelics
can offer a new
kind of paradigm
shift to how we
approach and
treat mental
illnesses but
also wellbeing- and that’s
something that
we as a society
desperately
need”