repeated.) But the potential of the therapy has regulators and researchers
and much of the mental health community feeling hopeful.
“I believe this could revolutionize mental health care,” Watts told me.
Her conviction is shared by every other psychedelic researcher I
interviewed.
• • •
“IF MANY REMEDIES are prescribed for an illness,” wrote Anton Chekhov,
who was a physician as well as a writer, “you may be certain that the
illness has no cure.” But what about the reverse of Chekhov’s statement?
What are we to make of a single remedy being prescribed for a great
many illnesses? How could it be that psychedelic therapy might be
helpful for disorders as different as depression, addiction, the anxiety of
the cancer patient, not to mention obsessive-compulsive disorder (about
which there has been one encouraging study) and eating disorders (which
Hopkins now plans to study)?
We shouldn’t forget that irrational exuberance has afflicted
psychedelic research since the beginning, and the belief that these
molecules are a panacea for whatever ails us is at least as old as Timothy
Leary. It could well be that the current enthusiasm will eventually give
way to a more modest assessment of their potential. New treatments
always look shiniest and most promising at the beginning. In early
studies with small samples, the researchers, who are usually biased in
favor of finding an effect, have the luxury of selecting the volunteers most
likely to respond. Because their number is so small, these volunteers
benefit from the care and attention of exceptionally well-trained and
dedicated therapists, who are also biased in favor of success. Also, the
placebo effect is usually strongest in a new medicine and tends to fade
over time, as observed in the case of antidepressants; they don’t work
nearly as well today as they did upon their introduction in the 1980s.
None of these psychedelic therapies have yet proven themselves to work
in large populations; what successes have been reported should be taken
as promising signals standing out from the noise of data, rather than as
definitive proofs of cure.