The many facets of psychedelic psychiatry: Colloquium on psychedelic psychiatry 2018
Sweden’s first ever international scientific conference on psychedelic psychiatry showed the growing diversity of medical uses for psychedelics and MDMA.
“Some of you may be wondering: When did Sweden become a superpower in psychedelic science? I’m sorry to tell you: We are not.”
Filip Bromberg, chairman on the swedish Nätverket för Psykedelisk Vetenskap opened the conference with a nod to the paradoxical notion of having a big conference on psychedelic psychiatry in… Sweden?
In fact, it’s a testament to how much can be done starting pretty much from scratch. No substantial research has been done in Sweden on this topic, and the speakers were an impressive all-star lineup of professors, researchers and doctors, mostly from US and Europe. If this conference is a gauge, Sweden probably WILL become a superpower on the field in no time. Indeed, it seems there are a lot of initiatives and projects brooding on the swedish Karolinska Institute.
A new paradigm
The most discussed research revolved around the rather widely reported studies MDMA-assisted treatment for PTSD, and psilocybin-assisted treatment for depression. But that was just the beginning. There were also talks about treatments for addictions, chronic pain conditions, cluster headaches, existential distress related to Cancer Diagnosis and a lot more. The use-cases for psychedelic psychiatry seems endless, and young researchers and psychiatry students seem to have a lot of different paths to follow in this field.
As an example, Rosalind Watts talked about the results from her 2016 preliminary study: After 3 months, one time psilocybin assisted therapy session showed much better result than best current medication taken every day. Given that in Europe alone there are 40 million people with depressive disorders (of which 800000 are considered treatment-resistant), this seems like an exciting lead to follow for a new generation of psychiatrists.
The word «preliminary» was probably one of the most used words on the conference to sober expectations, but it was not hard to see the excitement several speakers had for the future of psychiatry.
Professor David E. Nichols probably spoke on behalf of a lot of the audience when he said «I really believe we’re on the verge of a new paradigm in psychiatric treatment. This is a great time to be alive». In the words of Dr. Ben Sessa: «Psychedelics and MDMA can change the paradigm from treatment to cure. ‘Cure’ is not a word we really use in psychiatry today». Dr. Anne Wagner shared some of the testimonials from her study of MDMA-assited couples therapy for PTSD «Thank you for giving me my life back»
The betterment of well people
In addition to treatments, there were also sessions that overlapped into “the betterment of well people”, that is, not solely for therapists working with people with psychiatric diagnosis, but also people who use psychedelics for personal development. There were discussions on psychedelic’s effect on creativity and memory processing. Practical tips from Mendel Kaelen on how to select music for a session, and how to help people set intentions before the session. “When asking ‘what is your intention for this session?’, participants will often try to find the clever thing they are «supposed» to say. It’s a skill to help participants better to help set intentions.”
David Erritzøe had a fascinating talk on how the use of psychedelics seem to reduce neuroticism and increase openness to experience. As noted on the conference Personality is not “supposed to change”. Usually only ageing or major life events seem to change personality, and personality change has not been something that has been possible to reproduce in experiments.
Dr Elizabeth Nielson talked about psychedelic harm reduction, for example the use of test kits. Professor David Nichols gave a history lesson on how LSD catalysed the interest of serotonin effect on behaviour and the brain. Dr Ben Sessa remarked: “This is not fringe research, It’s cutting-edge neuroscience.”
The state of psychedelic science
Alicia Danforth suggested that Tuckmans 4-step model of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing is a useful framework for thinking about phases psychedelic science is going through. Danforth remarked that “we will see a lot of storming” in the following years, while several of the presenters later picked up on the framework and said that already a lot of “norming” is going on already.
At least 7–8 presenters mentioned Michael Pollan and how his book “How To Change Your Mind” has huge impact and created a lot of interest for a whole new part of the population. Several of the speakers mentioned how people had approached them to do psychedelic sessions based on the book, and wanted to take part in the research.
Challenges for psychedelic science
Several of the speakers touched on the challenging incentives for research on psychedelic therapy. The big pharmaceutical companies does not have any incentives. There were however several good news during the conference about public health services in several countries now really starting to pick up the lead.
Another problem, as pointed out by Fredrik von Kieseritzky, is that just getting access to the drugs is likely to both challenging, expensive and a huge time sink.
During the panel debate on “what went wrong” in the 60’s and 70’s, some in the panel expressed optimism in terms of psychedelic science have already «won». Others expressed more caution.
Nevertheless, if only half of the promising results presented on Colloquium on Psychedelic Psychiatry turns out to deliver on larger population studies, it’s reason to believe that western medical science and psychiatry might look back and wonder:
«We banned research on these substances for over four decades. What on earth were we thinking?»
