Monday, Mar. 19, 2007
Taking a Trip for Your Mental Health
Back in the 1950s, Establishment institutions like Harvard and the U.S. military distributed hallucinogens to study their potential. We're not quite so naive today, but there is hard science being conducted that might — if the results prove valid — lead to the legal therapeutic use of psychedelics in the next decade.
MDMA (3,4-methylene-dioxymethamphetamine), better known as ecstasy, is being tested in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder and anxiety. Last year two peer-reviewed journals ran articles demonstrating beneficial effects of psilocybin ("mushrooms") in obsessive-compulsive patients and ketamine ("Special K") in people with major depression. Timothy Leary would have been proud.