Psychedelic Research

On July 16th 1969, Apollo 11 set off for the Moon. On July 16th 1930, thirty-nine years earlier, humanity first encountered an MDMA-like drug as Gordon Alles began his self-experiments with MDA. Even though it appears in several percent of illicit ‘ecstasy’ tablets, MDA has received little attention in recent years. That just changed. This month, we finished collecting data in the first human study of MDA in over 30 years.
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Glenn Dumont and colleagues have an excellent new paper in social neuroscience showing that 100 mg MDMA increases oxytocin and prosocial feelings in people a controlled laboratory setting. It’s about time someone properly confirmed this theory!
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My pace of posting has slowed as I am deep in dissertation writing.  So I have been remiss in failing to celebrate several good new articles, including a study of MDMA-cannabis interactions from Dumont and colleagues and an exciting article that considers one of my favorite topics: hallucinogens from a Bayesian perspective.  However, my primary motivation for this entry is to note the death of psychedelic researcher Abraham Hoffer.
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Pål Johansen and Teri Krebs have published a short Perspective paper hypothesizing three potential mechanisms by which MDMA might be helpful in anxiety disorders.
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In the UK, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) has written a review of MDMA (‘ecstasy’), its harms and its legal classification.
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Here is a list of four human psychedelic studies that are currently recruiting participants. These are all seeking people with specific illnesses. Most of these details were obtained from ClinicalTrials.gov and maps.org
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Here are two human psychedelic studies that are currently recruiting participants healthy psychedelic-experienced volunteers. (Full disclosure: I am involved in conducting both of these studies.) In a separate entry, I list the studies that are seeking people with specific illnesses who can be psychedelic-naive. Most of the details on these other studies were obtained from ClinicalTrials.gov and maps.org
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Dumont and colleagues have published a paper in which they describe the physiological effects of giving MDMA along with alcohol to people. One of the interesting things about this paper is that they measured plasma concentrations of antidiuretic hormone (ADH). (ADH is the hormone that causes the kidneys to conserve water, thus regulating the water balance in the body.)
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