Psychedelic Renaissance: Hallucinogenic Drugs Return to Psychiatric Treatment

📖 What’s This Paper About?

This article examines the resurgence of psychedelic research in psychiatry, highlighting how hallucinogenic substances like psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, and MDMA are being reconsidered as legitimate therapeutic tools after decades of prohibition. The author describes clinical trials showing promising results for treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, and addiction, with some patients experiencing profound transformative experiences after just one or two sessions.

Why This Matters

After being pushed to the margins in the 1960s, psychedelic research is experiencing what researchers call a “psychedelic renaissance.” These substances may provide breakthroughs for patients who haven’t responded to conventional treatments, offering a radically different approach to mental healthcare that focuses on transformative experiences rather than daily medication.

• Many psychiatric patients don’t respond to conventional treatments and could benefit from alternative approaches
• Psychedelic therapy often requires only a few sessions rather than ongoing medication
• Research centers worldwide, including in Israel, are conducting rigorous clinical trials with promising results

Top 5 Takeaways

2. Promising Clinical Results

Recent studies show remarkable success rates for conditions like treatment-resistant depression. In one Imperial College London study, all participants showed improvement after psilocybin therapy, with two-thirds showing significant reduction in depression symptoms after one week, and one-third maintaining these benefits after three months.

Keep Up with Uncensored Psychedelic Trends

Join our newsletter at Psychedelics Uncensored.

Email*

We respect and protect your privacy. By subscribing your info will be subject to our privacy policy . Unsubscribe easily at any time

The Bigger Picture

The return of psychedelic research represents more than just a new treatment option—it signals a potential paradigm shift in psychiatry. Rather than focusing solely on daily medication to manage symptoms, this approach recognizes the value of profound, meaningful experiences in healing mental illness. This research revival is also changing scientific attitudes, with prestigious journals and professional organizations now embracing the field after decades of stigmatization. As one researcher noted, the failure to protest the prohibition of psychedelic research may be “one of the most troubling failures of scientific leadership in the last century.”

Final Thought

The psychedelic renaissance offers hope for patients who have exhausted conventional treatment options, potentially transforming our approach to mental healthcare through carefully guided experiences rather than ongoing medication regimens.

PSYCHEDELIC RENAISSANCE: HALLUCINOGENIC DRUGS RETURN TO PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT

Ido Efrati

Keep Up with Psychedelic Trends

Get uncensored psychedelic news, events, and updates. Join Psychedelics Uncensored!

Email*

We respect and protect your privacy. By subscribing your info will be subject to our privacy policy . Unsubscribe easily at any time

Keywords: psychedelics, psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, psychiatry, depression, PTSD, clinical trials, therapeutic use

“The darkness descends upon me. I feel frightened and focus on breathing. I feel like I want to escape but it’s impossible. Like an anxiety attack, it’s an internal experience from which there is no escape” — this is how Ian, 37, reconstructs the beginning of his treatment with hallucinogenic mushrooms.

His descriptions of distress are quickly replaced by magnificent visual experiences and changing sensations about himself and his surroundings. “When my demons are completely released, I can look my depression straight in the eyes. I feel completely present, calm, and in the most relaxing state I’ve ever been in,” writes Ian on his blog, after participating in research on psychiatric treatment using hallucinogenic mushrooms. He suffered from treatment-resistant depression and reported that his sister and he were victims of abuse by their father. “I also see my father abusing me again. But instead of avoiding the situation, I look him in the eyes,” he adds.

The experiment in which Ian participated last summer at Imperial College in London is one of the signs of a clear trend in mental health research, which one researcher even called “the psychedelic renaissance.” In the past decade, many articles have begun to appear dealing with psychiatric treatment using hallucinogenic drugs, and the expression of this phenomenon has extended beyond scientific journals to the pages of the press and public discourse.

Ian participated along with 11 other patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression in a study that examined the therapeutic effect of psilocybin — an active hallucinogenic substance found in about a hundred species of mushrooms. The use of this substance has a long history in spiritual worship rituals, and it began to be studied in the United States as early as the late 1950s. The findings of the new research have not yet been officially published and are expected to appear in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, however, the interim findings indicate success: all trial participants responded positively to treatment and their depression level decreased. After a week, most symptoms disappeared in eight of the participants. After three months, their number dropped to five. In his blog, Ian notes that he decided to document his treatment experiences to give hope to others in his situation, whom conventional treatments fail to improve their feeling.

Doctoral student Lior Roseman, who has been part of the research team at Imperial College for the past three years, said in an interview with “Haaretz” that the research included two therapeutic sessions, which lasted as long as the effect of the substance: between four to five hours. During this time, the patient lay on a bed with an eye cover and listened to music through headphones. “If he wants to communicate, he can remove the headphones and the eye cover and talk about things that arise, but in cases where he drifts to things that are not relevant to the process or to the problem itself, the two therapists guide him back to the topic,” explained Roseman.

The trial was supported by psychiatric examinations and brain scans of the participants at the beginning of the process and at the end. The researchers also conducted a six-month follow-up on the psychological effects of the treatment through questionnaires accepted in psychiatric research. According to Roseman, the trials are still preliminary, but look promising. One of the intriguing aspects of them is that it is not about ongoing drug treatment but a single significant event or one that repeats itself only a few times.

Psilocybin, along with the drug LSD (known as acid) and other psychedelic substances, have been researched anew in recent years after being pushed to the margins during the 1960s. Imperial College is one of the prominent research centers, and Professor David Nutt, a neuro-psycho-pharmacology expert, is one of its leaders. Last month, Nutt published research that aroused great interest, in which the effect of LSD was revealed through brain scans. The findings lead scientists to new theories regarding hallucinations and the feeling of “oneness with the universe” reported by many users of the drug.

According to Dr. Ido Hartogsohn, a researcher and sociologist of psychedelic research from Bar-Ilan University, “Research on psychedelic drugs mainly existed in the 1950s and 60s and they showed impressive effectiveness. The research dealt with a wide range of phenomena — from treating addictions, through assistance in psychotherapy, and up to frigidity, schizophrenia, and autism in children.” Hartogsohn notes that “many of the studies included impressive stories of patients that various treatment methods had failed to help for many years, and one psychedelic session led to a transformation in their lives. In parallel, the success rates in treating alcoholism were unprecedented.”

But at the same time, according to Hartogsohn, a change occurred in the attitude of the medical and scientific establishment towards hallucinogenic drugs, among other things due to the thalidomide disaster — “the wonder drug” that was popular against nausea and intended for pregnant women. The drug was removed from the shelves in the early 1960s after it was discovered that it causes birth defects. “This led to a series of legislative changes and directives that redefined the testing processes and approval of drugs. The objectification of psychedelic research was fundamentally problematic since part of the findings are the result of testimony and impression, and also because successful treatment with these materials requires a supportive and positive context. There were researchers who tried to frame this in a supposedly more objective context, but without the appropriate context and conditions required for success in treatment, the results were much less good — which caused skepticism towards the results of many past studies,” he says. In general, the psychedelic experience did not match the perception that was beginning to gain a foothold in the medical world, according to which medications focused on diseases and symptoms are preferable to preparations for improving the person’s sense of well-being. The use of hallucinogenic drugs for non-research purposes was outlawed in most countries of the world, including Israel.

Social and political factors were also added to this. LSD had already become popular in the 1950s among actors and celebrities, which also led to scandals involving rebellious psychiatrists. In the 1960s, LSD became more accessible. At Harvard University, psychologists led “The Harvard Psilocybin Project” and also experimented with LSD. The studies were stopped in 1963, partly due to pressure from students’ parents who feared that the researchers were corrupting their children.

The public concern in the United States around the use of LSD expanded in the second half of the 1960s. “There was an overlap between the movement against the Vietnam War and the psychedelic counter-culture,” says Hartogsohn, “this caused them to be perceived, like the hippies, as a culture that threatens the existing order and the values of old America. At the same time, extensive experimentation by young people began, which led to more hospitalizations in hospitals.” From the mid-1960s, the vast majority of research in the field was halted until in 1970 research was outlawed.

In 1990, psychiatrist Rick Strassman from the University of New Mexico conducted the first research on DMT, the active substance in the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca. “The interest in the trial was not clinical-therapeutic but dealt more with effects on thinking and emotion among the subjects and the extraordinary experiences they went through — mystical experiences, death experiences and encounters with aliens,” reports Hartogsohn. “This was the first study that heralded the return of psychedelic research. Slowly it continued to grow and in the last decade the trickle is beginning to turn into a stream,” he claims. According to a literature review he conducted recently, there are now dozens of studies around the world on substances such as LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, ayahuasca and ibogaine, in which hundreds of subjects participate.

Along with the British research on psilocybin, parallel studies are being conducted at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland regarding its effectiveness in dealing with anxiety, and in weaning from alcohol and nicotine. Another drug, ketamine, is increasingly being used for treating suicide attempts and severe depression, including in emergency rooms in hospitals. Research is being conducted with the shamanic ceremonial drug ayahuasca from the Amazon for treating depression and addiction, and treatment centers using it exist in Peru, Brazil, and even in Holland and Portugal. MDMA, the active ingredient in the drug ecstasy, which is included in the psychedelic group despite its difference, is currently being used for research on treatment of post-traumatic symptoms. The drug ibogaine, derived from the African iboga plant, is currently being used for weaning from heroin.

In Switzerland, which banned therapeutic use of LSD in a sweeping manner since 1993, psychiatric treatment with the drug was recently approved after a pilot conducted with cancer patients showed positive results. “LSD offers a possibility of calmness and reducing anxiety when talking about death,” said psychiatrist Peter Gasser who led the treatment in an interview with VICE.

In Israel, the Beer Yaakov Mental Health Center is participating in an international study together with 12 medical centers worldwide, examining the effectiveness of combining MDMA in psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Recently, the second phase of the research in Israel, in which ten patients participated, was completed. The treatment included 12 meetings with psychiatrists and psychologists where only in two sessions were the patients given MDMA. “The treatment with MDMA was part of the psychotherapeutic process,” says Dafna Bornstein, the research coordinator in Israel. “We are still in the stage of summarizing the data but it seems successful on the face of it, as in the other trial sites. The patients report tremendous improvement and a drastic decrease in symptoms. If previously their condition was defined as moderate to severe, a large part of them are now in a mild condition or not diagnosed as post-traumatic.” The data collected so far on the global trial indicate success rates of 83% in patients whom conventional treatments did not improve their condition.

Alongside the research, there are also several symbolic events indicating the development of the field. Last year Dr. Ram Dass, one of the prominent icons of the psychedelic world, was a guest at the annual conference of the American Psychiatric Association. Representatives of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which celebrated 30 years since its founding, were invited to the same event. Meanwhile, psychedelic researcher Professor Robin Carhart-Harris received an award from the British Association for Psychopharmacology, which a year earlier had even integrated a discussion on the subject in its annual conference.

In 2014, an article by David Nutt was published in the journal of the British Psychological Association bearing the title: “A wonderful new world for psychology?”, in which he argued, among other things, that “responsible and careful use of these drugs can be for the psychologist what the microscope serves for the biologist and the telescope serves for the astrologist.” He added that “the failure of the scientific community, especially of brain sciences, was in not protesting against the denial of hallucinogenic drug research. This is one of the most troubling failures of scientific leadership in the last century and it must be corrected.” It is doubtful whether statements of this type would have been published a few years earlier.

This is informational, not medical advice.