Science & Health
Feds Fund Research On How Psychedelics Can Treat Meth Addiction With New $2.4 Million Grant
The National Institutes of Health will put $2.4 million toward funding studies on the use of psychedelics to treat methamphetamine use disorders, researchers announced this week. The money comes as federal health officials note sharp increases in deaths from methamphetamine and other psychostimulants in recent years, with fatal overdoses involving the substances rising nearly fivefold between 2015 and 2022.
Recipients of the new five-year grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) include researchers at the University of California San Diego’s (UCSD) Center for Psychedelic Research, Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Shreveport and the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW).
“There are currently no pharmacological treatments for methamphetamine addiction” MCW professor John McCorvy, one of the grant recipients, said in a news release, adding that the project’s findings “could ultimately pave the way for new therapeutic approaches to treat stimulant use disorder, impacting the lives of so many who are coping with addiction.”
Beyond studying whether or not psychedelic treatment might be a promising therapy to treat methamphetamine addiction, the research is also aimed at pinning down the underlying mechanisms behind the beneficial effects of psilocybin and other entheogens. Ultimately, the goal is to develop psychedelics-related drugs that treat underlying health conditions but don’t produce a psychedelic experience.
“Psychedelics appear to have significant therapeutic activity against different types of substance abuse and other psychiatric disorders,” said Adam Halberstadt, director of the UCSD Center for Psychedelic Research and another grant recipient. “However, existing psychedelics induce intensive psychoactive effects and can also induce side-effects in some individuals, complicating the clinical use of these substances and restricting their widespread application.”
“Our project seeks to understand the mechanism for the therapeutic effects of psychedelics against methamphetamine addition,” Halberstadt continued, “potentially enabling development of a new generation of molecules with effects that are much more manageable and better tolerated.”
The team is particularly interested in the serotonin receptor 5-HT2A, which is associated with psychedelic effects.
“Our research aims to unravel the precise mechanisms through which psychedelics influence the 5-HT2A receptor,” McCorvey said, “understanding that could lead to lessening their psychoactive effect and open the door to new treatments.”
Reducing the entheogenic effects of psychedelics, the group says, could facilitate regular or even daily use.
The push for more effective treatment for methamphetamine use disorder comes amid a general uptick in methamphetamine-related overdose deaths. In the U.S. South and West, the release about the research says, methamphetamine was the most common drug detected in overdose deaths in 2017, outpacing opioids.
That’s part of a broader spike in deaths from methamphetamine and other psychostimulants. According to NIDA data, 34,022 people died from overdoses involving the substances in 2022—up from just 5,716 such deaths recorded in 2015.
“For methamphetamine addiction, the current standard of care involves behavioral treatments with limited success rates over multiple cycles of therapy. This creates a public health imperative to research new and deliver effective therapies for methamphetamine addiction,” said Kevin Murnane, a professor at the Louisiana Addiction Research Center at LSU Health Shreveport. “This research project will advance psychedelics as a promising new treatment option based on reported data in initial clinical studies, as well as our own preliminary research. It will also unlock understanding into key physiological mechanisms that drive methamphetamine addiction, as well as therapeutic response mechanisms, allowing the development of second-generation serotonin agents with improved profiles.”
Past studies have suggested that psychedelics could unlock promising new pathways to treat substance use disorder. Last year, for instance, a first-of-its-kind analysis offered novel insights into exactly how psychedelic-assisted therapy works for people addicted to alcohol.
NIDA, the federal agency that provided the new $2.4 million grant, last year announced a $1.5 million funding round to further study psychedelics and addiction.
Earlier this year, meanwhile, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, identified the treatment of alcohol use disorder as one of a number of possible benefits of psilocybin, despite the substance remaining a Schedule I controlled substance under U.S. law.
The agency highlighted a 2022 study that “suggested that psilocybin may be helpful for alcohol use disorder.” The research found people who were in psilocybin-assisted therapy had fewer heavy-drinking days over 32 weeks than the control group, which NCCIH said “suggests that psilocybin may be helpful for alcohol use disorder.”
Findings of another recent study suggest that the use of full-spectrum psychedelic mushroom extract has a more powerful effect than chemically synthesized psilocybin alone, which could have implications for psychedelic-assisted therapy. The findings imply that the experience of entheogenic mushrooms may involve a so-called “entourage effect” similar to what’s observed with cannabis and its many components.
A separate study recently published by the American Medical Association found that single-dose psilocybin use was “not associated with risk of paranoia,” while other adverse effects such as headaches are generally “tolerable and resolved within 48 hours.”
Separately, research from 2019 indicated that CBD may also have the potential to treat substance use disorders involving cocaine, amphetamine and methamphetamine—adding to earlier research showing the cannabinoid has the potential to help people battling substance use disorders involving alcohol and opioids.
Meanwhile, the government has for years been funding research into the development of psychedelics-related drugs that don’t cause a psychedelic trip, working to decouple the potential health benefits of entheogens from the psychedelic experience.
In 2020, for example, a project funded by $26.9 million from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) “aims to create new medications to effectively and rapidly treat depression, anxiety, and substance abuse without major side effects.”
“Although drugs like ketamine and potentially psilocybin have rapid antidepressant actions, their hallucinogenic, addictive, and disorienting side effects make their clinical use limited,” project leader Bryan L. Roth, a professor of pharmacology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said at the time.
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