Here’s the introduction..
Doblin is today the founder and executive of a non-profit organisation called the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (Maps), which aims to bring psychedelic drugs closer to mainstream use in medicine and beyond. It advises scientists how to conduct trials and win funding, as well as working closely with regulators.
Now the efforts of Doblin and others are finally paying off. In the last 10 years, psychedelic drugs like LSD, magic mushrooms, DMT, a host of “plant medicines” – including ayahuasca, iboga, salvia, peyote – and related compounds like MDMA and ketamine have begun to lose much of their 1960s-driven stigma. Promising clinical trials suggest that psychedelics may prove game-changing treatments for depression, PTSD and addiction. The response from the psychiatric community, far from dismissive or even sceptical, has been largely open-armed. The drugs may well mark the field’s first paradigm shift since SSRIs in the 1980s.
The “psychedelic renaissance” promises to change far more about our societies than simply the medical treatments that doctors prescribe
In 2017, for example, the US Food and Drug Administration designated MDMA a “breakthrough therapy“, which meant it would be fast-tracked through to the second stage of Phase-3 trials. Doblin, whose organisation was instrumental in achieving the designation, hopes it will achieve FDA approval by 2023.
Psychedelics remain Schedule-1 drugs federally in the US and Class-A in the UK, but rules are relaxing. Along with Austria and Spain in the EU, psilocybin mushrooms have been decriminalised in Washington DC and a host of other US cities, and legalised for therapy in Oregon, where LSD has also been decriminalised. A California bill to decriminalise LSD and psilocybin passed several crucial committee stages and will be decided next year. A vote to federally sponsor psychedelic research recently made its way to Congress.
Read full article
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210906-what-if-everyone-took-psychedelics
