Psychedelics in Medicine: A Renaissance in Mental Health Treatment

When Tom Solis, a renowned chef and baker, fell ill with AIDS in the 1990s, he believed he would soon die. But breakthrough drugs called protease inhibitors quickly put him back on a path to a fairly normal life. Still, he struggled for years with the challenges of managing his disease and the deaths of loved ones in his community. In 2016, a doctor suggested he look into a clinical trial at UC San Francisco that had just begun recruiting patients for a study of psychedelic therapy in long-term AIDS survivors experiencing demoralization, a kind of existential distress. Solis jumped at the chance.

The trial marked the beginning of the university’s foray into the fast-growing field of psychedelic medicine. In preliminary trials, researchers at UCSF and other institutions around the world are finding that these once-villainized substances show promise in treating a remarkably wide range of mental health disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and addiction.

Indigenous cultures have used naturally occurring psychedelics for millennia. In the 1950s, after chemists had isolated and synthesized several psychedelic compounds in the lab, Western researchers began studying their effects on a plethora of health conditions. But in 1970, after the Controlled Substances Act put hallucinogens in the Schedule I category, many of the early pioneers in the field turned away from studying psychedelic therapies.

Psychedelics seem to help patients break down personal barriers and access new perspectives. For Tom Solis, the experience was one of the most profound of his life, allowing him to break free of the stigma, depression, and loneliness he’d carried with him for so long. The trial ended in early 2019, and the results were published in October 2020 in the Lancet journal eClinicalMedicine.

Psychedelics research is now booming, with UCSF researchers investigating psychedelics for a variety of disorders. The decision to study Parkinson’s — a degenerative brain disorder marked by uncontrollable movements, loss of coordination, and difficulty with balance — may seem puzzling. But depression and anxiety, in particular, plague many people with Parkinson’s, but such patients don’t tend to respond well to antidepressant or anti-anxiety medications.

Some researchers worry that the hype around the medical use of psychedelics will cause people to misuse them. Early studies suggest that the drugs can work as therapies, but only for certain conditions and only when taken under professional supervision. The work is also expensive, with investigators relying primarily on individual philanthropists.

Despite the challenges, those who have benefited from experimental psychedelic therapy see its promise for helping others. For many study participants, the experience has had long-lasting effects, offering new perspectives on life and death, and the true nature of things.