Doctors at top hospitals and universities in Canada, the U.S. and abroad are experimenting with LSD, MDMA (“ecstasy”) and psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound in “magic mushrooms,” as treatments for, variously, tobacco addiction, cluster headaches, obsessive-compulsive disorder and suicidal thoughts — as well as anxiety and depression in people with end-stage cancer.
Other research is being conducted with the prescription sedative ketamine, known on the street as “Special K.”
Doctors are testing these drugs because effective treatments either don't exist or simply don't work for some patients. “It's basically an unmet need in medicine,” says Dr. Pierre Blier, Canada Research Chair in Psychopharmacology at the University of Ottawa.
He's been conducting pilot studies with ketamine which have so far proven successful with the severely depressed who might otherwise be subjected to electroconvulsive — or shock — treatments.
“A ketamine infusion is so much more benign than using ECT,” he says, adding that a small dose helps most patients, at least for seven to 10 days. Now he's seeking ways to prolong that effect.
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