We’re on the cusp of another psychedelic era. But this time Washington is along for the ride
There’s already a large body of smaller studies with encouraging results, he explained, and now bigger studies are building on them.
“MDMA with PTSD is furthest along the regulatory pipeline, so that seems to be poised to be the first out the gate, and then probably psilocybin for depression will be a couple years after that.”
Still, he added, there are caveats: The trials have not been diverse enough. The workforce to deliver psychedelic treatments is too small. And using psychedelics is not as simple as taking a pill.
“We’re talking about two to three months of talk therapy and maybe between one and three doses of the drug interspersed in that time. The people who just come and take the drug aren’t necessarily going to get the benefits,” he said.
There are at least 245 studies in the U.S. related to psychedelics listed on ClinicalTrials.gov, as well as dozens of publicly traded psychedelics companies. It amounts to big business. And while the biotech sector as a whole, including psychedelics companies, has struggled in 2023, the psychedelics market is projected to be valued at $11.8 billion by 2029, up from $4.9 billion in 2022.
The money flowing into psychedelics and the hype around the drugs has some physicians concerned that patients are being misled about the medical potential.
“It’s reckless at best and potentially harmful at worst,” said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University who coauthored a paper in JAMA Psychiatry last year about rapid investment in psychedelics. “People see this as the next gold rush,” he said of investors.
While the first wave of psychedelics was brought down by a clash between culture and politics, his paper says, this one could be doomed by “entrepreneurial enthusiasm” getting ahead of the scientific process.
Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, expressed similar concerns in a JAMA Psychiatry opinion piece in July. “Despite the promising early results, it is clear that psychedelics are not wonder drugs, but the hype has gotten ahead of the science,” Volkow and her coauthors wrote.
Treating veterans
As Washington considers what to do about psychedelics, the drugs are going mainstream. Everyone from Prince Harry to New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers is talking publicly about using psychedelics to improve mental health.
“In this country, we’re doing catch-up,” Rep. Correa told POLITICO. “[Approving psychedelic therapies] the good-old-fashioned way can sometimes get in the way of really advancing some public health treatments that may be here now.”
In the House, psychedelics have gotten more backing than in the Senate. The House appropriations bill for the VA and the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act both contain language that would require agencies to study psychedelics as treatment for certain mental health conditions, including PTSD. In these trials, participants would take supervised doses of psychedelics like MDMA and undergo therapy sessions.