Psychedelics: the new cure for anxiety by Livia Herbert, Ewell Castle – This is Local London

Psychedelics, a type of hallucinogenic, are a class of psychoactive substances that produce changes in perception, mood and cognitive processes. Despite these drugs being looked down upon by many, their positive side effects are being closely examined in laboratories acrossthe world. There is a strong stereotype that psychedelics, mainly LSD, always cause a bad trip, where people believe that by taking the drug, your mind will be altered in such a negative way that all you are left with is panic for 12 hours until the drug wears off. Bad trips were shown in campaigns to warn people that taking LSD is dangerous, they showed people thinking they can fly on acid and jumping out of windows, getting attacked by their own hallucinogens and even losing any control over their bodily functions. Indeed, bad trips do occur, but there is a way of avoiding them - by making sure three things are perfect before you trip: setting, people and mind set. By this I mean the person tripping must feel completely safe in their surroundings; they must feel both safe with the people they are with and the environment they are in. Without these two aspects considered, a bad trip may occur as the drug heightens any emotion you feel; if you are already uncomfortable before the trip, you will be extremely uncomfortable during it. The third aspect, mindset, refers to your intention; if your intention is to get really high, you will trip so hard until you cannot handle it, however, if your intention is to broaden your mind or deal with current emotions, you will be rewarded with just that. As a result of all these things being accounted for in a laboratory, with professionals, since the start of psychedelic research, beginning in the 1990s, out of a thousand volunteers, not one serious adverse has been reported. In fact, this is how psychedelics were discovered as a treatment rather than a party drug.

In Switzerland in 2014, Peter Gasser, Katharina Kirchner, and Torsten Passie published the results of their experiment, which aimed to show that LSD-assisted psychotherapy in patients with anxiety will improve their life-threatening condition. They gave 12 months of LSD psychotherapy to 10 participants who were tested for anxiety (STAI) and reported a reduction in anxiety (77.8%) and a rise in quality of life (66.7%) after a Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) was carried out. Furthermore, they suggested that LSD administrated in a medically supervised psychotherapeutic setting can be safe and generate long lasting benefits in patients.

Slowly, the stigma around psychedelics being a street drug is fading and the real benefits are arising. The medical use of these drugs is showing more certain positive effects than any other anti-anxiety drug prescribed by doctors. With the right environment and professionals around, psychedelics have the potential to cure many mental illnesses through introspection; studies like the one in Switzerland is only the start to a breakthrough in medical history.

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Psychedelics: the new cure for anxiety by Livia Herbert, Ewell Castle - This is Local London