Source: Radio New Zealand
Psilocybe Cubensis, a species of psychedelic mushroom Flickr user afgooey74 / CC BY 2.0
Psychedelic drugs, including LSD and magic mushrooms, could help people cope with having a life-threatening illness, an expert in psychological medicines says.
A study involving 93 palliative care doctors in New Zealand and Australia has found strong support for more research into psychedelic medicines being used to treat palliative patients.
It showed cautious optimism among palliative doctors around the use of psychedelics, whilst recognising the importance of innovative, patient-centred care.
Research was already being done on the use of MDMA for the treatment of people with terminal cancer.
Auckland University associate professor David Menkes told RNZ the trials were showing positive signs.
“That’s provided a real strong hint that MDMA can be spectacularly helpful for some individuals who are facing death from cancer,” he said.
“That’s a big deal because, you know, those people really they’re up against it. And so anything we can do to make their journey more manageable and tolerable is all to the good.”
Seventy-five percent of participants respondents disagreed that psychedelics were unsafe and should be prohibited for medical use, while 88 percent agreed clinical use for palliative patients warranted further investigation.
Younger respondents were more likely than their older peers to believe psychedelics may improve clinical outcomes.
Menkes said the use of a psychedelics for treatment could eventually be an alternative for people considering assisted dying.
“We think this may actually reduce the numbers of people who go ahead and have medically assisted dying, which for many people would be considered a good outcome,” he said.
“We have this law in New Zealand now that people can make that informed choice, right, at the end of life. But if they’re doing that because they just find their situation intolerable and they can be relieved of that burden in some other way, then it’s quite possible that they will elect to do that. And then have, perhaps, a few more months to share with family or to do what they need to feel ready to sign off.”
Last year broadcaster Sonia Gray, spoke of how she had been trialling psychedelic drugs as part of an eight-week LSD microdosing trial at the University of Auckland and a University of Otago.
The trial investigated if psychedelics could help people with treatment-resistant mood disorders.
Menkes said advancing research into psychedelics had been plagued for too long by public perception shaped by the United States federal government-led “war on drugs”.
“Psychedelic research, which had been going on in the 50s and 60s, basically stopped for 30 years and has only just been resurrected in the last 10 to 20 years.
“As a result, we don’t really know as much as we need to about what the appropriate use of these medicines might be, who they might benefit, and what the benefit- to-harm ratio might be.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
