Swiss scientists broke a four-decade-long informal ban on LSD research yesterday when they announced the results of a study in which cancer patients received the drug to curb their anxiety about death. 
 
 The study, which was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, looked at the safety and efficacy of LSD when used in combination with talk therapy. The researchers used the semisynthetic psychedelic drug to facilitate discussions about the cancer patients' fears of dying. The patients who took LSD, most of whom were terminally ill, experienced 10-hour-long supervised "trips." One patient described the trips to The New York Times as a "mystical experience," where "the major part was pure distress at all the memories I had successfully forgotten for decades." 
 
 These periods of distress are regarded as therapeutically valuable because they allow patients to address their memories and the emotions they evoke. The patients underwent 30 such trips over the course of two months. 
 
 A year after the sessions ceased, the patients who had received a full dose of LSD — 200 micrograms — experienced a 20 percent improvement in their anxiety levels. That was not the case for the group who received a lower dose, however, as their anxiety symptoms actually increased. They were later allowed to try the full dose after the trial had ended. 
 
 "We want to break these substances out of the mold of the counterculture." 
 
 Because of the small number of study participants, the researchers are reluctant to make any conclusive statements about the LSD treatment's effectiveness. Indeed, the results were not statistically significant. But the fact that the study took place at all bodes well for psychedelic drug research, as the drug caused no serious side effects. Rick Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a foundation that has funded many of these studies, thinks that revisiting LSD-based treatments is worthwhile. "We want to break these substances out of the mold of the counterculture," Doblin told The New York Times, "and bring them back to the lab as part of a psychedelic renaissance." ||||| Misha Kaminsky/Getty 
 
 Can a psychedelic trip change the way people with life-threatening cancer face death? Results from two clinical trials suggest so. 
 
 Researchers have shown that a single dose of psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – combined with psychotherapy reduces depression and anxiety and increases feelings of wellbeing in people with cancer. What’s more, for most, these effects appeared to last for more than six months. 
 
 Psilocybin, along with other psychedelic drugs like LSD, was banned in the late 1960s. But an increased understanding of the drug’s physiological mechanisms has sparked a revival of research into its potential therapeutic benefits. Several small trials have shown its promise as a treatment for alcoholism, opiate addiction, depression and anxiety. 
 
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 People with cancer often develop chronic symptoms of depression and anxiety, and antidepressants appear to be of little help. Some small studies have suggested that psilocybin could be an alternative. 
 
 To investigate, teams from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and NYU Langone Medical Centre in New York carried out two trials involving 80 people with cancer and symptoms of depression and anxiety. 
 
 In one trial, each volunteer participated in a psychotherapy session aided by either a single high dose of psilocybin or a low placebo-like dose of psilocybin. Five to seven weeks after this session, they took part in a second session with the other drug. 
 
 The second trial was run in a similar manner, except it used Vitamin B3 as a placebo. 
 
 Inner experience 
 
 During each session, the subjects laid on a couch, wore a blindfold and listened to music. They were accompanied by two researchers and were encouraged to focus their attention on their inner experiences. 
 
 To assess the volunteers’ responses, the trials used a variety of psychological and physiological measures, including blood pressure and heart rate, clinician-based tests and self-reported questionnaires. These assessments were carried out before each session and at either two or three points over the next six months. At the end of the trial, their families, friends and work colleagues were also interviewed to gauge their thoughts on the participant’s wellbeing. 
 
 Results across the two trials showed that psilocybin produced immediate and significant decreases in measures of depression, anxiety and mood disturbance, and increases in measures of quality of life, life meaning, death acceptance and optimism. These benefits were still present in 80 per cent of participants after six months. 
 
 The core feature of a psilocybin experience is a sense of unity; a feeling that everything is connected at some level, says Roland Griffiths, who led the Hopkins trial. 
 
 “After this kind of experience, people feel that they’ve learned something that’s of deep meaning and value to them,” he says. “They attribute changes in how they approach life, interact with people and to their value systems to that experience.” 
 
 There were no serious adverse effects in either trial, although there were some reports of nausea, headache and transient anxiety. The results together form the most extensive trial of psilocybin for treatment of depression and anxiety. 
 
 Alternative treatment 
 
 Stephen Ross, lead investigator on the NYU Langone trial, highlights the need for an alternative to the available care for people with cancer. “Anywhere from 40 to 50 per cent of cancer patients will have diagnosable anxiety or depression,” he says. “The [current] treatments, like antidepressants, really don’t work any better than placebo.” 
 
 In a commentary published alongside the trials, Richard Shelton and Peter Hendricks, both at the University of Alabama, at Birmingham, call into question the integrity of the placebo design in both trials, as none of the participants were asked which drug they thought they had received after each session. 
 
 This is normally carried out to ensure that the placebo arm of a trial is realistic enough. If people cannot accurately guess which drug they were given, it ensures that the results are down to the drug and not any other factor. However, they note that due to the hallucinogenic effects of the real drug, it may be unfeasible to create a placebo that is indistinguishable from the real thing, as is often the case with studies of psychoactive drugs. 
 
 Ross says the study now needs to be carried out on a larger sample of people. “Even though our two trials together replicated the same study and would lead one to think this is a real effect, it needs to be done in a larger, nationally representative cancer sample,” he says. “And if that trial shows what we showed then psilocybin potentially could be rescheduled to become a prescription medication for cancer related anxiety and depression.” 
 
 Journal references: Journal of Psychopharmacology, DOI: 10.1177/0269881116675512; DOI: 10.1177/0269881116675513
– Researchers experimented with LSD in psychiatric treatment until such research was effectively banned in the US in 1966—but now a Swiss psychiatrist has conducted the first controlled trial of the hallucinogenic drug in more than four decades, with US FDA approval. Dr. Peter Gasser's study involved 12 people who were dying, most of terminal cancer, and suffering from "deep anxiety," the Seattle Times reports. After undergoing talk therapy, eight of the patients were given a 200-microgram dose of LSD designed to "produce the full spectrum of a typical LSD experience" on two occasions; the other four received a 20-microgram "active placebo" that wasn't expected to have an impact. They took their 10-hour "trips" in Gasser's office, and, he says, "Their anxiety went down and stayed down." Specifically, subjects who received full doses of LSD saw a 20% improvement in their anxiety symptoms, and for those who were still alive a year later, the improvement had lasted, the New York Times reports. Those who took the placebo reported increased anxiety. It doesn't sound like a comforting experience at first: The Verge says the purpose of administering the psychedelic drug was to "facilitate discussions about the patients' fears of dying," and one patient reports that "the major part was pure distress at all these memories I had successfully forgotten for decades. These painful feelings, regrets, this fear of death." But he talked about all that with Gasser, something he'd found difficult prior to the trip; the Times refers to such distress as "therapeutically valuable," and many subjects had similar experiences. Other than that, no serious side effects were seen.