Psychedelics – News and Features

At its best, the drug ketamine relieves depression within two hours and its beneficial effect on patients may last a week. At its worst, ketamine, the party drug "Special K," is addictive and may send recreational users into hallucinations and delusions.

LSD is known to cause changes in consciousness, including "ego-dissolution", or a loss of the sense of self. Despite a detailed knowledge of the action of LSD at specific serotonin receptors, it has not been understood how this these pharmacological effects can translate into such a profound effect on consciousness.

A single dose of psilocybin, the major hallucinogenic component in magic mushrooms, induces long-lasting decreases in anxiety and depression in patients diagnosed with life-threatening cancer according to a new study presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology that took place Dec.

Researchers at the Texas A&M Health Science Center are using ketamine, a drug that already exists as an anesthetic, to treat pain.

Over the past several decades, the pharmaceutical industry has been abandoning the research and development of treatments for psychiatric disorders, despite the ever-growing need for novel, more efficacious, and better targeted therapeutics.

Renewed medical interest in the use of psychedelic drugs for anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and addiction has resulted in small research studies that show some success with the controlled use of these drugs, according to an analysis published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

The acquisition will strengthen Allergan's long-term growth profile with the addition of Naurex's lead development product rapastinel (GLYX-13), a once-weekly intravenous Phase 3-ready molecule that has demonstrated rapid, robust and sustained efficacy in multiple Phase 2 clinical studies in depression.

LSD-induced synesthesia; stress resiliency and susceptibility; bacterial biofilms and MS, and more.

In April 1943, scientist Albert Hoffman ingested 250 micrograms of a substance he had synthesized five years prior. Less than an hour later, he “perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors.

MDMA (3,4-methyenedioxymethamphetamine), a Class A substance that is usually found in a tableted form, is a psychoactive drug which is structurally similar to methylamphetamine and acts as a central nervous system stimulant, producing mood enhancement, increased energy and other empathetic effects.