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Along with a growing scientific corpus supporting the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, several states and most noticeably Massachusetts are seeing the decriminalization of natural substances via local measures.
In reply to what is known to date of psilocybin mushrooms’ potential to treat mental health conditions, psychedelics educator and Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Peter Grinspoon recently told GBH that studies over the past 10 years have been “remarkable,” although he doesn’t believe anything is definitive yet.
Dr. Grinspoon said the psychiatric and activist communities are “on fire,” and that “everybody's very, very excited to get these medications, not just legal, but legal, accessible and affordable.”
As for how to minimize risks that might arise from psilocybin ingestion, the Harvard professor said bad outcomes can happen even within a therapeutic context.
“It's hotly debated if mushrooms should be legal to do with a psychiatrist or if it should be for people walking around in the woods with their friends, doing it responsibly with a trip sitter, someone who's not using the mushrooms,” he said, adding that the debate extends to whether there’s an actual need to be done strictly in a therapeutic context, further including the issue of cost and the need for insurance companies to start covering the treatments.
Grinspoon added that he has helped with the state’s local legalization projects, which “don't just legalize the mushrooms” but also “educate people,” in terms of harm reduction as well as educating the police to help, not arrest, a person if they're having a bad trip.
“If there's less of a climate of fear because these things aren't illegal, people are more likely to get help and people are less anxious about using them in general. You're less likely to have these bad outcomes, which are usually anxiety related in the first place,” Grinspoon told GBH.
In his view and looking ahead, psilocybin mushrooms shouldn’t become legal in the same way as cannabis through dispensary sales, but rather via a state-run shop where they have no criminal penalties attached but without the “‘free for all’ you can get at an alcohol store or a cannabis store.”
Miami University’s Andrew Jones, the successful manufacturer of synthetic psilocybin for which PsyBio Therapeutics (OTC:PSYBF) holds a license, has partnered with the University of Cincinnati’s Eric Wohleb for research around Jones’ newly developed non-hallucinogenic substances, reported NPR network’s WVXU.
Jones used the same original technology of synthetic psilocybin for the development of new derivatives that aim to trigger the receptors that help treat mental health conditions but without including the serotonin receptor, as the latter one generates the psychedelic response.
See also: This Firm Bets On Non-Hallucinogenic Psychedelics, Files Claims For International IP Protection
"We're looking forward to scaling some of those up and getting them to collaborators like Eric and several others around the country that are looking to test them in their models and things they're really good at to see what we can learn," said Jones, adding that psychedelic compounds, while not looking like the Zolofts and Prozacs of the world, give people hope.
With clinical trials on psilocybin derivatives expected within one to two years, Wohled added that this research will be preliminary, in the search for “any sort of beneficial effects of some of the compounds," though the team still needs to jump through “a few hurdles” concerning the DEA and other regulations.
Photo: Benzinga edit with photo by Olia Danilevich on Pexels.
Posted In: PSYBF
