“Intuitively, one would not take a recreational drug to treat an excessive addiction to another form of drug, notes the US site Stat. Yet a new study shows that psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms, could be a promising treatment for alcohol use disorder.
According to the results of the double-blind trial conducted with 93 participants – and published on August 24 in Jama Psychiatry –, psilocybin given in combination with psychotherapy produced a greater decrease in the percentage of heavy drinking days than therapy including placebo plus psychotherapy. “Eight months after the first dose of psilocybin, nearly half (48%) of those who had psilocybin in their treatment stopped drinking completely, twice as many as the 24% in the placebo group,” reports Stat.
Jon Kostas, a 32-year-old volunteer, credits this treatment with saving his life. During the press conference presenting the results, he said:
“I was counting on this to help me manage my cravings, but the treatment exceeded all my expectations by eliminating the urge to drink in me.”
“Excessive alcohol consumption is really very difficult to treat, and the few drugs available have limited long-term effectiveness,” falls in Stat Charles Marmar, chair of psychiatry at NYU Langone Health Medical Center in New York, who was not involved in the study. For him, these results represent an important step forward.
Larger trial to come
Boris Heifets, who studies psychedelics at Stanford and was also not involved in this work, agrees. “Alcoholism being difficult to treat, any progress is to be marked with a white stone”, he insists.
To confirm these results, a trial involving more than 200 participants is expected to start early next year and, depending on its outcome, the experimental treatment could be submitted to the FDA, the US drug agency, for approval. .
While this is the first placebo-controlled trial of psilocybin used as a treatment for alcohol use disorders, it’s not the first time psychedelics have been studied to treat alcoholism. In the 1950s and 1960s, studies involving LSD had shown promising results against alcohol addiction and its consumption in large quantities. However, these studies did not meet the standards expected of this type of research today.