Psychedelic drugs can be fun, but they are not often recognized for their positive medical effects. Now, they may be used to treat terminally ill patients.
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Three cancer patients have successfully been treated with psychedelic drugs in a study led by Dr. Stephen Ross, clinical director of the NYU Langone Medical Center of Excellence on Addiction. Ross is the principal investigator of the NYU Psilocybin Cancer Project. The study treats patients with terminal illnesses, like cancer, with psilocybin, a hallucinogen produced by fungi more commonly referred to as shrooms.
"Human beings have parts of their brain that help us mediate connections to higher powers and help us make meaning out of life. Psilocybin seems to induce and enhance spiritual states, providing a way to pharmacologically treat the spiritual distress that cancer patients face," Ross said.
Psychedelics such as LSD, MDMA and psilocybin acquired a negative reputation after being abused during the '60s and '70s. But in early civilizations they were used as sacred healing tools.
The NYU School of Medicine is one of only a few academic that have tried to integrate this healing mechanism into mainstream medicine. The others include Johns Hopkins and Harvard universities, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
To facilitate the spiritual healing, patients are treated in a pleasing, colorful living room where they lie down with eyeshades and headphones.
"We want them to go deep into the experience. We don't want them to get up and chat with the therapist, because we feel it diminishes the deeper, intense, mystical experience, which is where we think the therapeutic effect is," Ross said. "Our objective is to see if psilocybin-assisted therapy can diminish anxiety associated with the diagnosis of terminal cancer."
In addition to anxiety, the study also measures depressive symptoms, pain, improvement of quality of life and acceptance of death related to cancer.
Gallatin junior Kevin Cook believes psilocybin may be just the treatment to address these symptoms.
"This noninvasive therapeutic experience allows for the healing to come from within the patient which, in my opinion, is paramount to the healing process induced by psilocybin," he said.
Ross assures that the treatment is safe for both the brain and the cardiovascular system. The potential dangers of psilocybin are in the psychological realm, and for that reason the study excludes those with a personal or family history of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
"We're careful about minimizing adverse events. Through rapport building and bonding with two therapists and the patient, we try to increase the safety profile and decrease the risk of bad psychological events," he said. "Psilocybin is not harmful for a patient in a supervised study."
The metaphysical aspect of this study is hard for many to grasp. But according to Ross, we are hardwired for spiritual experiences.
"We're talking people who are just stuck, anxious, mad at God, at life, and they can't be dislodged from this stuck precept. This treatment is an attempt to dislodge them from this state and reintroduce them to the meaningful aspects of their life," he said.
Dr. Ross and his team are looking for more patients (inclusion/exclusion criteria are listed at clinicaltrials.gov) to participate in this study. Dr. Ross' research coordinator, Krystallia Kalliontzi, may be reached at 212.998.9252.
