2021-03-29 Psychedelics Against Drug Addiction
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Psychedelics against drug addiction
Richard Béliveau
Translated from Le Journal de Montréal, March 29th, 2021 this of useful column content You find the
A study reports that an analogue of the psychedelic drug ibogaine has been shown to be able to treat heroin and alcohol dependence in animal models. our researchour
Psychedelic drugs have long aroused fascination in humans because of their property of producing an altered state of consciousness characterized by distortions of perception, hallucinations and a state of ecstasy. speed upspeed Found naturally in certain plants, such as magic mushrooms of the genus to Psilocybe, these drugs have been used for centuries, if not millennia, in the This structural analogue, called tabernanthalog (TBG), can be synthesized medical and religious practices of many cultures. in a single step and, like ibogaine, has the property of stimulating the growth and networking of neurons, a neuronal reprogramming which The discovery in the 1940s and 1950s that hallucinogenic drugs such as seems to play an important role in the positive effects of addiction drug. lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD, synthesized from lysergic acid in rye ergot) and psilocybin (the active ingredient in Psilocybes) could enhance On the other hand, and unlike ibogaine, the analogue TBG does not seem self-awareness and facilitate recollection and the release of emotionally to cause any hallucinations in treated animals (no repeated contractions of charged memories sparked immense interest at the time in the use of these the head, a sign known to correspond to hallucinations) and is much less ?
drugs in the treatment of various mental disorders. In 1965, there were toxic to the nervous system and cardiovascular system. at a donation Make already more than 1000 published clinical studies that reported promising therapeutic effects in more than 40,000 subjects (1). A series of experiments in animal models of drug addiction also show promising positive effects. For example, mice that had been trained to www.richardbeliveau.org NEW APPLICATIONS drink alcohol and showed signs of dependence reduced their intake after a single dose of TBG. However, the abuse of these drugs (LSD in particular) during the 1960s
and 1970s and the bad experiences (bad trips) they can cause tarnished The same goes for rats that had been trained to press a lever to receive a their image and, over time, considerably diminished the interest in using dose of heroin in response to a light signal: when the opiate is removed, the rats develop signs of withdrawal and continue to press the lever after
these drugs for therapeutic purposes. www.richardbeliveau.org each stimulation, a sign of drug addiction. This interest has been revived over the past decade, however, with the publication of results from clinical studies showing that the administration Following treatment of the rats with TBG, the animals completely stopped Make donationa at pressing the lever, even two weeks after being weaned from heroin. This
? of hallucinogenic drugs, such as psilocybin, alleviates certain mental disorders, such as treatment-resistant depression, stress, post-traumatic suggests that TBG may be particularly useful in preventing relapses in stress disorder or anxiety and depression affecting people with terminal people seeking to break their opioid addiction. As the authors point out, cancer (2, 3). these results are only a first step and much work remains to be done before these analogues can be used clinically. Another drug of current interest is ibogaine, an alkaloid similar in structure to LSD and psilocybin, which comes from the roots of Tabernanthe iboga, On the other hand, the experimental approach used in this work opens new a tropical shrub from West Africa (Gabon). ways of conceiving analogues of psychedelic compounds that retain their
therapeutic potential, while minimizing the undesirable side effects. to
Preclinical data and small-scale studies suggest that ibogaine may be speed up (1) helpful in opioid and alcohol addiction by reducing cravings, withdrawal Vollenweider FX and M Kometer.The neurobiology of symptoms and the risk of relapse in people addicted to these drugs. psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 2010 ; 11 : 642-651. (2) Carhart-Harris RL et al. Psilocybin with psychological
MORE EFFICIENT support for treatment-resistant depression: an open-label our research However, the clinical use of ibogaine is complicated by the fact that it is feasibility study. Lancet Psychiatry 2016; 3 : 619-627. (3) very difficult to synthesize in the laboratory, produces very intense and Ross S et al. Rapid and sustained symptom reduction prolonged hallucinations (>24h) at the doses administered, is neurotoxic following psilocybin treatment for anxiety and depression in (in the cerebellum, in particular) and can cause fatal cardiac arrhythmias. patients with life-threatening cancer: a randomized controlled trial. J. Psychopharmacol. 2016 ; 30 : 1165-1180. You find the find You content column ofuseful this Work carried out by a team of American researchers, and recently (4) Cameron LP et al. A non-hallucinogenic psychedelic published in the prestigious Nature, suggests that these limitations of analogue with therapeutic potential. Nature 2021 ; 589 : 474- ibogaine could be circumvented by using a synthetic analogue of the 479. molecule (4).
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