Whilst you may have heard about the growing evidence that psychedelics can provide effective treatment for depression, researchers now believe that psilocybin – the active compound in magic mushrooms – could also help tackle alcoholism.
US scientists recruited 95 adults who had been diagnosed with alcohol dependancy. Nearly half of those who took psilocybin as part of a 12-week therapy programme had stopped drinking eight months later, compared to a quarter for the placebo group.
Everyone in the group went through a 12-week therapy programme. Most weeks, they had a roughly 1-hour long session with a therapist and a psychiatrist where they received cognitive behavioural therapy for alcohol use disorder.
The study is the largest to date on psilocybin and addiction. It was led by the NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine in New York.
“Our findings strongly suggest that psilocybin therapy is a promising means of treating alcohol use disorder, a complex disease that has proven notoriously difficult to manage,” said study lead Michael Bogenschutz.
While the mechanism for how psychedelics could treat addiction is still unclear, there are a few possibilities, says David Yaden at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. Animal studies have found that psychedelics may increase neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to change and adapt. This could explain why they can help people change their behaviours, he says.