Drop acid to treat anxiety
An LSD formulation has been given breakthrough therapy status by the Food and Drug Administration, reports CNN.com, after a clinical trial suggested it can alleviate anxiety. A potent hallucinogen developed in a lab in 1938, LSD is banned as a Schedule 1 controlled substance. But the new double-blind trial found that a single dose of the LSD formulation MM120 resulted in a 48 percent remission rate for generalized anxiety disorder after 12 weeks, and improvement in 65 percent of the patients over the same period. Unlike most recent research into MDMA (ecstasy) and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, the MM120 trial didn’t involve therapists actively guiding the patients through the trip. Monitors did sit by in case of adverse effects, but no “bad trips” were reported—possibly because the pharmacological-grade drug was so pure. “The clinical improvement for many patients was more than double what we see with today’s standard of care,” says Daniel Karlin, chief medical officer for the drug’s developer, MindMed. “This occurred at all levels of anxiety, from moderate all the way up to severe.” Generalized anxiety disorder, characterized by excessive distressing thoughts and catastrophizing, is one of the most common mental disorders in the U.S., affecting nearly 7 million adults each year.