Australia To Allow Prescription of MDMA and Psilocybin For Medical Use (theguardian.com) 71
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: After decades of "demonization", psychiatrists will be able to prescribe MDMA and psilocybin in Australia from July this year. The Therapeutic Goods Administration made the surprise announcement on Friday afternoon. The drugs will only be allowed to be used in a very limited way, and remain otherwise prohibited, but the move was described as a "very welcome step away from what has been decades of demonization" by Dr David Caldicott, a clinical senior lecturer in emergency medicine at Australian National University.
3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA) is commonly known as ecstasy, while psilocybin is a psychedelic commonly found in so-called magic mushrooms. Both drugs were used experimentally and therapeutically decades ago, before being criminalized. Specifically authorized psychiatrists will be able to prescribe MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder, and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. Caldicott said it had become "abundantly clear" that a controlled supply of both MDMA and psilocybin "can have dramatic effects on conditions often considered refractory to contemporary treatment" and would particularly benefit returned service men and women from the Australian defense force. "The safe 're-medicalization' of certain historically illicit drugs is a very welcome step away from what has been decades of demonization," he said.
"In addition to a clear and evolving therapeutic benefit, it also offers the chance to catch up on the decades of lost opportunity [of] delving into the inner workings of the human mind, abandoned for so long as part of an ill-conceived, ideological "war on drugs.'"
3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA) is commonly known as ecstasy, while psilocybin is a psychedelic commonly found in so-called magic mushrooms. Both drugs were used experimentally and therapeutically decades ago, before being criminalized. Specifically authorized psychiatrists will be able to prescribe MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder, and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. Caldicott said it had become "abundantly clear" that a controlled supply of both MDMA and psilocybin "can have dramatic effects on conditions often considered refractory to contemporary treatment" and would particularly benefit returned service men and women from the Australian defense force. "The safe 're-medicalization' of certain historically illicit drugs is a very welcome step away from what has been decades of demonization," he said.
"In addition to a clear and evolving therapeutic benefit, it also offers the chance to catch up on the decades of lost opportunity [of] delving into the inner workings of the human mind, abandoned for so long as part of an ill-conceived, ideological "war on drugs.'"
Re:To be used ... (Score:5, Interesting)
In both of the specified cases theres pretty extensive research on it. Its not *really* "Guinea Pig" if the particular treatments have 40+ years science behind it.
MDMA has been extensively researched as an adjunct to talkie therapy for PTSD. Basically the concept is, PTSD is hard to treat because even thinking about the trigger (war, sexual assault, a nasty car accident) can casue a giant surge in the HPA axis causing a run-away stress spiral. This means the usual healthy way of working through troubles, reasoning about it and talking about it, is broken and the patient cant get over it. MDMA floods the brain with Serotonin, allowing therapy to take place without triggering the runaway HPA reaction. Prior to the ravers discovering that the drug is *also* very fun in extremely high doeses in the 1980s the drug was already starting to be used as a very effective therapy adjunct treating vietnam war veterans and unfortunately despite MDMAs remarkable safety protocol the usual govt kneejerk reaction of fun=evil=banned killed off one of the most proming treatments dead, leaving millions of screwed up war vets and sexual assault victims to fend for themselves.
I'm not as aware of the research on psychopsyblin other that like LSD its got an excellent safety profile, you *cant* kill yourself with an overdose on the stuff. My understanding is the research on using the drug as an in-hospital adjunct to therapy for people processing extreme grief (the loss of a child, a terminal cancer diagnosis, etc) has been very effective. Personally tripping balls while dying doesnt sound fun at all, but I'm not a psychiatrist so I'm happy to concede I'm not an expert here. But psychpsyblin (however the hell its spelled) has been *extensively* researched so one must assume the docs here know what they are doing.
In either case, what IS known is both of these drugs are highly safe in recomended doses, as in safer than asprin, even safer than vaccines [ie were not talking 1 death in a million like the vaccines, but zero deaths in a million, at least for psycopsyblin and pretty close to that for MDMA. "Unanticipated neurological damage" isn't a concern here.
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Approximately ZERO doctors ever did psilocybin
Uh, yeah, you might want to check your sources on that.
All they do is read studies then make pronouncements what is good for you.
And if you want to make that claim, cool, no problem, just don't turn around later and say that we're not practicing evidence-based medicine. I'm not the biggest fan of EBM, because most of the studies are incredibly weak and probably not really replicable. But you do have to weigh in and place your bet.
It's mostly irrelevant to me; I'm an anesthesiologist. We acknowledge that there are few really good studies because the control arm is necessarily "yo
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> Hello, you dummies: has any one of you ever DONE
> mushrooms/psilocybin???
Yes, many times. LSD as well, but significantly fewer times than mushrooms. Did you forget that the '90s and early 2000s were a thing? Younger GenXers and older millennials were ravers in those days. The Bay Area was one of the places where the scene was strongest, and still is the center of the tech industry. For a few years there, raves were where the dotcom workers played hard after working hard all those stupidly long da
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Re:To be used ...Only by the $$ RICH $$ (Score:2, Informative)
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They always need more funding but it's like this because, you know you dumb fuck, democracy.
Monarchies historically have also often been heavily indebted, so it's not about the system of government.
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Australia's broken close to free public medical system has a critical shortage of bulk billing psychologists. Depending where you live, the waiting list is 4months to 3 years+. So this will be reserved for the rich and neurotic middle class woke set who can afford private fees.
From my understanding, it was only broken precisely because the rich and neurotic middle class were hogging all the appointments.
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From my understanding, it was only broken precisely because the rich and neurotic middle class were hogging all the appointments.
If that's possible then the system is broken.
I can't speak to how it works in Oz, but in the USA various professional lobbying organizations like the AMA and APA apply money to make it extra hard to become a health care professional in order to keep salaries up. It's not the only factor in the personnel shortage, but it's a major one.
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the rich and neurotic middle class were hogging all the appointments
How would one do this with a national healthcare system?
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Prisons and youth detention centers have plenty of needy customers.
And this is where the system will break down. The "carefully controlled conditions" monitored by psychiatric healthcare professionals will end up being "dose all the crazy inmates and have the guard on the night desk page a doctor if someone starts to freak out".
Its not the MDMA/psilocybin/LSD that will get you. It's administering drugs that can induce highly pliable mental states. And then having something (or some asshole) induce a "bad trip".
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So go take your Prozac.
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I suspect that its effects are better known
100,000 native warriors with pointy sticks charged 100 Europeans armed with Lewis guns.
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My own lack of experience (Score:2)
I can't claim knowledge of MDMA used under supervision and in carefully controlled conditions. I do, however, have 500 or more direct examples of the opposite.
My year 2K was fun!
Re:To be used ... (Score:5, Interesting)
In contrast, currently antidepressants have long lists of contraindications, interactions with other drugs & alcohol, & are physically addictive. This is what they're hoping to replace in some cases with the less harmful & potentially more effective MDMA & psilocybin therapies.
But you can keep on pursing your lips & clutching at your pearls in horror at the idea if you like.
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Hundreds of millions of party-goers have been taking MDMA
That's like 30% of the US population. Somewhat less if you count the EU. You can eliminate most of the rest of the world from the control group, as not many people want to risk the long prison sentences or a firing squad (whether deserved or not). Perhaps MDMA damages people's ability to make sound numerical comparisons.
On the other hand, if you look around yourself and come up with a 30% number, perhaps you are associating with the wrong crowd.
Additionally, they're proposing it as a short-term supervised therapy drug rather than a prescription you pick up from the pharmacy & take 3 times a day
Which is what I proposed.
The likely toxic & long-term adverse effects of treating psychological disorders with MDMA are minimal.
So then you won't have any problem wi
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Re:Sackler Family 2.0 (Score:4, Funny)
OldManYellsAtCloud.jpg
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So after all this we've found Hunter liked cocaine and hookers. Three years now and the government still can't find any evidence of crimes.
Re: Second biggest loser on Slashdot folks (Score:1)
That's what happens when you don't investigate.
Re:Sackler Family 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the research indicates one dose every six months or so is enough. Also these drugs are so old as to not be patentable (at least in the US) so the amount "Big Pharma" can make on them is very limited.
What you will probably see are resort-like facilities that charge $30,000 per stay, making money the way drug rehab centers do. But they aren't pharmaceutical companies.
Since one of the indications for psychedelic therapy is drug addiction, I'm sure there are rehab places already scrambling to see how to add this new service to their repertoire.
Re:Sackler Family 2.0 (Score:4, Informative)
No the legislations pretty clear. These will only be available in limited govt run hospital facilities. This is Australia, we dont do suspicious unregulated private clinic stuff , its a mostly he way the americans do. Its a UHC country, there ARE rules.
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Ugh, that sentence doesnt make sense.
This site desparately needs a comment editing function.
I MEAN to say " This is Australia, we dont do suspicious unregulated private clinic stuff the way the americans do. , its a mostly UHC country, there ARE rules."
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What "suspicious unregulated private clinic stuff" do you think Americans do? I live in the US, and can't recall ever seeing an unregulated medical clinic. Both public and private medical facilities are extensively regulated and overseen by state law, federal law, and state medical boards.
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Right? Just legalize weed already and place no more than a modest tax on it, it would solve a lot of these issues.
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Yeah, like how it has solved issues in the US...
Even California is still imprisoning people for cannabis-related offenses. Nobody has really legalized it. We had a real legalization effort in California but it got shot down, then the big money stepped in and lobbied for a shittier bill that destroyed most of the small producers.
Re:Sackler Family 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Whats "legal yet dubious" about vaccines? A medicine thats saved literally millions of lives over the past 3 years, has a safety profile significantly better than common asprin, and bad side effects that are so rare that we cant prove *any* of them where caused by it (Ie the "myocardia" rate is exactly the same in unvaccinated non-covid patients as it is in vaccinated non-covid patients and vastly lower than unvaccinated covid patients. Same goes with blood clots.)
Whats dubious is pfizer jumping up the price of these drugs this year from $20 a dose to $120, but thats not really the question here isnt it?
Its *weird* to lump in a modern miracle of medical science in with a scourge like opiods.
And for reference "Big Pharma" has nothing to do with it. The push came from medical scientists in Australian Universities, which are completely taxpayer funded and outside any "Big Pharma" scheme.
Don't just make shit up to get angry about, its a miserable way to live.
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...and bad side effects that are so rare that we cant prove *any* of them where caused by it (Ie the "myocardia" rate is exactly the same in unvaccinated non-covid patients as it is in vaccinated non-covid patients and vastly lower than unvaccinated covid patients. Same goes with blood clots.)
Triple vaccinated here, and very thankful for the vaccines, but I'd love to see a link to the data on this. How did they find a representative cohort of vaccinated but non-covid patients? Trying to determine if someone has had the vaccine but not covid sounds extremely difficult. AFAIK you have to do much more complex tests for other antigens targeted at different parts of the virus (since the person will have spike antibodies from the vaccine) and these might not exist if the person clears the infection ea
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My guess is that the spike does cause rare myocarditis and hence why there is a faint signal in the safety data, and a much bigger signal in unvaccinated who get COVID
This is way too much speculation. You should really use a search engine to get some good data, and stop the speculation.
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Re:Sackler Family 2.0 (Score:4, Interesting)
This is Australia and we have much stricter laws. Regulators here are even planning to restrict the availability of large quantities of Paracetamol to prevent overdose and abuse.
There is no way the Australian regulators would allow these drugs to be prescribed in a way that lead to rampant abuse. It will be very hard to get a prescription for one (same as is already the case with medical cannabis).
Of course if the US makes prescribing these legal, who knows what will happen. I doubt the US would do that though for the same reasons medical cannabis remains illegal at the federal level (namely the fact that these drugs have been around long enough that its difficult for big pharma to secure patents on them and control them)
I can't see how this is for everybody (Score:2)
I saw a travel show some years back... the traveler was in south america and did auahuacsa
Re:I can't see how this is for everybody (Score:5, Informative)
There's actually quite a bit of evidence that psilocybin and other psychoactive drugs, even in micro-doses, can help people with psychological problems. The main barrier to full scale scientific research that would answer the question once and for all has been the United States government. For decades America has made it almost impossible to conduct large studies into the effects of such drugs. It has been bribed by the pharmaceutical industry, which knows perfectly well that nobody's going to pay $20 for a pill containing essentially the same medicine an average person can grow for free in their back yard.
Have you never wondered why marijuana is still put in the same class as heroin (in the United States), even though literally millions of people have smoked multiple millions of joints decade after decade with no real problems?
Re:I can't see how this is for everybody (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Psilocybin isn't toxic and nobody gets addicted to it. Alcohol on the other hand is legal everywhere and kills people daily.
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You should probably consider a name change.
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Hey, don't hate on Archie Bunker. He was quite the racist jerk for years, but he recovered by the end.
Re:I can't see how this is for everybody (Score:4, Insightful)
The takeaway from that show should not be "be scared pf psychadelics" but "don't take a highly potent shamanic ritual brew as your first or second or third experience". You're gonna have a bad time, that's psychonaut shit. Never raced a car before? Let's put you in a Forumla 1 to get started.
2g of mushrooms or 75mg of MDMA is nowhere close to something like that. Start small kids
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This is pretty interesting reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
vs. US goes backward in treatments (Score:3)
As a way to break supposed opioid problems, US is forcing health care providers to stop treating pain with opioids and use anti-depressants and anti-psychotics instead, with suicide considered preferable to opioid use for pain treatment. Now US guidelines only allow opioid for pain use for those with end-stage cancer and fatal illnesses so as to limit opioid use among patients unless they are dying.
US feels that pain is all in your head, unless you are dying, with rules from Kaiser forcing all their patients off opioids because they don't want the long term cost provided by the DEA who's been controlling supply, causing shortages, and disallowing use of generics where brand versions have fallen off patent (like Oxycontin). Purdue is still getting sole access to the long-term pain market via the DEA prohibiting generic imports. A drug that should cost $5.00 for a 1 mo supply costs over $300.00, forcing insurers to force patients off pain meds with the result that many either go to street drugs, or suicide as alternative.
Doctors are forced to obey their parent company rules or risk being fired.
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A decade ago there was a prescription for 8 out of 10 people. Now it is half that. I know some places, like Vermont and West Virginia, are hell heroes but I donâ(TM)t think that 4 out of 10 scripts per capital is particularly limiting.
The other side of this is what created this whole drug w
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We aren't talking stubbed toes, but pain in feet, for example that prevents getting out of bed, or back pain that also prevents getting out of bed. The overdoses, in the majority of cases are due to people having to substitute street heroin and fentanyl for script oxycodone. Also because Purdue pharma lied on their studies to get a patent on their new version of Oxycontin (which generics were available for 4-5 years before Purdue came out with their new version with the DEA giving Purdue the market by dis
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And while preventing people from killing themselves is not really all that costly, we must act if it is just result from our superstitious roots. Why is some one in such extreme pain not just allowed to meet a
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You don't need a script for 2 out of 5, that's why I said script isn't a valid means of pushing an issue. A script can mean 1 person takes a minimal dose 4 times per day -- so they average that over 10 people -- and get 4/scripts per person. It's bullshit because they are specifying 1 person's dose over 10 people -- it means nothing but to get people riled up over bullshit statistics. It makes for a bullshit sound bite, but means nothing. By some guidelines, the minimum Oxy dose is 5-10 mg 4/times per d
History comes full circle (Score:2)
The original use of LSD was by psychiatrists and psychologists to be used instead of e.g. lobotomies. Then they decided it was fun to use it. Timothy Leary was a psychologist.
"Returned service men and women"? (Score:1)
a controlled supply of both MDMA and psilocybin "can have dramatic effects on conditions often considered refractory to contemporary treatment" and would particularly benefit returned service men and women from the Australian defense force.
Hang on. Maybe I'm uninformed, so correct me if I'm wrong... but based on a quick google search, it looks like the Australian military hasn't seen combat for at least 8 years. Why are there so many "returned service men and women" with PTSD?
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Hang on. Maybe I'm uninformed, so correct me if I'm wrong.
Glad to oblige.
PTSD is a lifelong affliction so that anybody who got it in combat will suffer from it for the rest of their lives. So any living Australian former soldier population will be afflicted. Perusing this page will show significant combat deployments in every decade going back to, and including, WWII). Nearly all of that oldest lot have passed on, but will be living survivors from every conflict since.
Why are there so many "returned service men and women" with PTSD?
How many is that, and how many do you feel are acceptable to have such a program? Any at all woul
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To clarify: When I said I was "uninformed", I meant that I was uninformed about Australia's military history. I wasn't saying that I needed you to educate me about PTSD. I'm a board certified psychiatrist and I've treated some pretty hair-raising cases of PTSD in my time. (But, y'know, thanks for the info.)
To clarify even further: I was not suggesting that PTSD cannot be a persistent or chronic disorder (even persisting in some cases for a lifetime). Sometimes it's persistent and chronic, sometimes it
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The flashbacks must be horrific.
Just think about that poor F-22 pilot re-living his balloon experience over and over.
MDMA Can Heal, But Needs People to Work (Score:2)