Psychedelics might revolutionize therapy.

Oshan Jarow

Jul 25, 2023

Today’s psychedelic renaissance is thriving thanks to a list of drugs that you could count on just one hand. MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and DMT are driving a revolution in psychiatry while opening new frontiers in the exploration of consciousness. If you expand to your other hand with drugs like ketamine and ibogaine, there’s enough mystery in that small gang of substances to keep researchers busy for decades.

But what if there were hundreds, or thousands, more? Drugs are like tiny Legos that can be rearranged in a staggering variety of ways. Chemists have hardly begun to discover all the endless molecular forms contained within the psychedelic arena. In the 1960s, the biochemist Alexander Shulgin, who introduced MDMA to the world, invented nearly 200 psychedelics (largely in his backyard laboratory, where he used sheet metal to keep the squirrels out).

When President Richard Nixon outlawed psychedelics in 1970, drug discovery went dark.

Nearly two decades into a revival of psychedelic research, the doors of drug discovery have swung wide open once again, and the latest development is roiling psychedelia, revealing fault lines that split the field into two.

The question: Can we tinker just enough with the molecular structure of psychedelic compounds so as to retain their therapeutic benefits, but ditch the trip? And should we? For many, the trip is the point. Cutting it out would be, to use 1960s terminology, a major bummer. Beyond a stream of unusual and profound experiences, many researchers believe that the insights people have on their trips are necessary for securing the long-term benefits, which can range from personally meaningful experiences to treating conditions such as depression or addiction.

Read the article at Vox, here.