New Study Offers More Evidence That LSD Can Treat Anxiety

In a 2017 article for The Guardian about the documentary Becoming Cary Grant, writer Xan Brooks noted one of the film’s more curious aspects: the way it highlighted an overlooked part of 20th century medical history. “Between 1950 and 1965, around 40,000 patients were prescribed lysergic acid to treat conditions as diverse as alcoholism, schizophrenia and PTSD,” Brooks wrote — a reminder that before its countercultural cachet, LSD was used as a way to address mental health issues.

As the saying goes, everything old is new again. A growing number of research studies have documented LSD’s abilities to treat various psychological conditions. The latest of these, published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, explored the effects of MM120 — described by pharmaceutical company MindMed as “a proprietary, pharmaceutically optimized form of LSD” — on generalized anxiety disorder.

What did these researchers find? As the paper’s authors phrased it, “In participants with moderate to severe [generalized anxiety disorder], a single dose of MM120 produced a dose-dependent reduction in anxiety.” In cases where the participants received 100- or 200-microgram doses, the effects outperformed the effects of those given a placebo.

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In an article on the study and its results, NPR’s Jon Hamilton noted that the dosing was accompanied by, well, what you’d expect if you took a psychedelic substance: hallucinations. Interestingly, the study also shows that 10.3% of participants who received the placebo experienced “illusion, pseudo-hallucination and visual hallucination.”

Among the questions that remain, Hamilton reports, are the effects of the environment where the studies took place on the results. Still, it’s encouraging data before the next round of testing begins — and the beginnings of a full-circle moment in mental health.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…