The Active Ingredient in Psychedelic Mushrooms Will Have a New Use! The world's first clinical trial is here

According to the British "Mirror" report on August 5, a British team of scientists is preparing to conduct a world-first clinical trial-using the active ingredients in psychedelic mushrooms to treat gambling addiction.

 

The government-funded study will begin in October on patients given psilocybin, a hallucinogenic substance found in certain fungi. The study will be conducted by four top neuropharmacologists at the prestigious Imperial College London. "This is a world first. No gambling addict has ever been treated with psychedelics in a clinical trial, so this is truly a groundbreaking trial," said Rayyan Zafar, lead author of the study.

   

Rayyan, who works at the Center for Psychedelic Research and Neuropsychopharmacology in London, said clinical trials will begin in October, with an initial five patients receiving psychedelics. Starting next year, the number of patients will gradually increase.

 

There have been trials of psilocybin in the treatment of other addictions, including drug addiction and smoking addiction, and the results of the trials have shown that it does help patients. A similar trial in the United States of alcoholics found that taking psilocybin reduced the number of days the patients drank alcohol by nearly 2.5 times.

 

"Psilocybin has had inhibitory effects on some other addictions, so we thought it would be equally effective on gambling. The brain profiles of alcohol addicts, heroin addicts, and gambling addicts are very similar, so we thought Treating gambling addiction with psychedelic therapy can be very effective. There are now more and more people with gambling addiction in the UK, and gambling addiction appears in medical diagnoses. But only about 3% of people with gambling addiction in the UK have actually received Professional treatment, and a lack of approved pharmacological interventions, i.e. licensed drugs or therapies. There is a large unmet clinical need, so we hope that one day psilocybin therapy will be available in the NHS in the treatment of gambling addiction," Rayyan said.

 

It is understood that this ground-breaking project was funded by Imperial College London, part of which came from a British government fund. Rayyan said: "Historically there has been little institutional or government funding for psychedelic research in the UK, so this is a very positive sign. Maybe it's a sign that times are changing and psychedelic research is becoming a priority." field, rather than a fringe science.”