Researchers hope their study could lead to more effective treatments for depression, anxiety and even chronic pain.
By Thomas Moore, health and science correspondent,
Image:Researchers are testing whether 'microdosing' with an illegal drug enhances performance and mood
Scientists are testing the impact on brain function of small
regular doses of LSD in what they say is a "renaissance" for psychedelic
drugs.
In one of the first studies of its kind, Dutch researchers
are testing whether 'microdosing' with the illegal drug enhances mental
performance and mood.
Significantly, the doses are too low to induce hallucinations.
They hope their research could ultimately lead to new, more effective treatments for depression, anxiety and even chronic pain.
Jan
Ramaekers, professor of psychopharmacology at Maastricht University,
said positive anecdotal reports on social media warranted rigorous
scientific assessment.
He told Sky News: "We are going through what people call a
psychedelic renaissance and the time really has come now to take the
psychedelic drugs into our laboratory and find out if there's any
therapeutic potential in using them."
Sky News was given rare access to the Maastricht Psychedelic Research
Programme at the university, which is being run in conjunction with the
Beckley Foundation, a British think-tank that advocates evidence-based
drug policy reform.
Volunteers are given placebo or microdoses of LSD to confirm whether the effect is real or all in the mind.
They are then put through a battery of cognitive ability tests.
Their pain tolerance is also assessed by timing how long they can keep their hand in iced water.
Nadia
Hutten, one of the researchers, said: "The definition of microdosing is
that you don't feel it but it improves your mood and creativity.
"Such small doses can easily be a placebo effect because you're not supposed to feel anything.
"We want to have a really proper experimental setting where we can see if we can back up what people report."
Image:Juliane Mueller took microdoses of an LSD derivative 1P-LSD before it was illegal
Juliane Mueller, from London, isn't part of the study but took
microdoses of an LSD derivative called 1P-LSD before it was made
illegal.
She had depression and took the drug every three days to
change the pattern of her thinking. It worked, even on the days she
wasn't taking a dose.
"It's similar to a cup of coffee, a cosmic cup of coffee.
"I felt more alert, more motivated. I had a brighter outlook to the day ahead."
Juliane
is now a conversational sex therapist at the Psychedelic Society, but
used to work in marketing. She found microdosing helped her to juggle
tasks.
"It helped my focus.
"Anti-depressants would take me
away from myself and suppress something, whereas microdosing tuned me
back into myself. I felt less overwhelmed."
The volunteers in the
Maastricht study are also having blood tests to see whether there is any
biochemical evidence that new neurones are growing in their brains - in
other worlds that they are rewiring.
Image:Jan Ramaekers, professor of psychopharmacology at Maastricht University
Prof Ramaekers said: "So if you're in a depressive state, you may fall back on rigid habitual thinking.
"You
may have lost some of the flexibility that is really needed to cope
with any day to day operations and treatment with psychedelics may
actually bring this flexibility of your mind back."
He added that psychedelics appear to be "much safer" than other medicines used to treat mental health problems.
Researchers elsewhere are also beginning to look at psychedelics.
Imperial
College in London is running an online study in which participants are
unaware whether they are taking placebo or a micro-dose of LSD.
Researchers at Imperial have also shown that psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, can treat severe depression.
Amanda Fielding started the Beckley Foundation in 1998 in the hope
that scientific evidence could convince the authorities to ease
restrictions on psychedelics.
"We desperately need them," she said.
"We are heading fast into a mental health epidemic - suicide, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, dementias.
"(Psychedelics) are incredibly valuable gifts of the gods, of nature. We made a mistake criminalising them."
Under UK law, LSD and other psychedelics are classified as class A drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
The Home Office said: "We have no intention of changing the law to legalise illicit drugs."
