by Federico Soldani – 5th Apr 2023
Two covers of Newsweek from 2021 and 2022 show how hallucinogens – called psychedelics by the new hype – are following a pattern that in many respects resembles what happened to so-called anti-depressants mainly during the 90s. Including presenting these medications in conjunction with psychotherapy, for instance during the 90s in best selling books such as Peter Kramer’s ‘Listening to Prozac: A Psychiatrist Explores Antidepressant Drugs and the Remaking of the Self’, in which the author was listening to his patients but actually hearing Prozac talking. See for instance, more recently, Stossel, S. (2016). Should We Still Listen to Prozac? Peter D. Kramer Jumps Back Into the Antidepressant Debate. The New York Times.
See about the new hype, a call by Members of the European Parliament to push for hallucinogens via the medical route Bencharif, S.-T. (2023). Europe needs faster action on magic mushroom, MDMA therapies, urge MEPs. POLITICO.
Anti-depressant medications such as those acting on serotonin reuptake – known as SSRIs, or serotonin selective reuptake inhibitors, however it is debatable how selective these are – are now largely not patented anymore, so there is less of a commercial interest in keeping pushing for them and it is ok even for the U.S. mass media to talk badly about them, see for instance the 2022 cover of Newsweek below: ‘Hooked on Hype. Antidepressants work no better than sugar pills for most of the 43 million Americans who take them’.
Instead, a Newsweek cover told the public in 2021 of “A new treatment for depression. Psilocybin, aka MAGIC MUSHROOMS, could be the biggest advance since PROZAC” (capitalised in the original).
The two discourses – antidepressants are bad, hallucinogens are good – are complementary to one another and actually promoted largely on the same mass and digital media (two examples here and here), as it is clearly the case with the U.S. weekly magazine Newsweek. The new hype about hallucinogens largely resembles the old one from three decades ago, only cubed given the very potent nature of the molecules involved this time around, known as hallucinogenic or psychotomimetic drugs, since they induce hallucinations and psychotic-like symptoms.
Also, the new rhetoric is not just about relatively minimalist statements such as being able to live a normal life or going back to work, as it was for antidepressants, instead it oftentimes makes statements related to being able – even after trying hallucinogens once – to feel connected with nothing less than the cosmos.
Such hype involves substances furthermore that by their very nature cannot be blinded or masked in rigorous clinical studies – think of masking or blinding a study participant for an hallucinogen – and about which the political hype is very high instead. At the end of each study, participants should routinely be asked a simple question, or a variation of it – entirely free of additional costs or time for researchers – which is not asked in major studies including the first randomised clinical trial published recently on this topic in the most prominent medical journal in the world, the New England Journal of Medicine, April 2021:
“What drug do you think you were given, the actual hallucinogen or the sugar pill?” Such type of question might perhaps help sedating the hype a little.
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Last Updated on April 5, 2023 by Federico Soldani
Great analysis of the hype that may be driving some of the overly optimistic treatment results.
on Medscape the following day 6th of April this Harvard psychobiology professor talks about “hallucinogens” and the hype, but not explicitly about the lack of blinding or masking in these studies
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/990509
“Enthusiasm Running Ahead of the Data
Commenting on the findings, Bertha K. Madras, PhD, professor of psychobiology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study, said “hallucinogens are an intriguing class of drugs and I support ongoing high-quality research in this area.”
However, she told Medscape Medical News that the “breathtaking endorsement of this drug is far ahead of scientific data.”
She cited concerns such as the “narrow demographics” of participants, their previous experience with and expectations of hallucinogens, the “potential for symptom fluidity of enrollees,” such as depression evolving into psychosis, and the “undefined role” of the therapist during a hallucinogenic session.
“Finally, I am concerned that enthusiasm for therapeutic potential has been, and will continue to be, preempted and directed towards legalization and widespread access for vulnerable populations,” Madras said.
This, she said, “is occurring at breakneck speed in the US, with scant resistance or skepticism from the investigators engaged in therapeutic assessment.”
happened to see recently this video just released a few weeks ago on YouTube and now with more than a quarter million views:
The Myth of Low-Serotonin & Antidepressants – Dr. Mark Horowitz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5cT-2BLWk0&t=964s
this is the YouTube channel link: https://www.youtube.com/@AfterSkool/videos
Contents routinely proposed on this YouTube channel called AfterSkool: classic “psychedelic” authors such as Ram Dass (Timothy Leary’s colleague during the 60s), Alan Watts, Terence McKenna, etc. or more recent propagandists like Joe Rogan, Graham Hancock, Jordan Peterson, etc. talking about LSD, psilocybin / magic mushrooms, Carl Jung, Hermeticism. As well as some cyber topics such as so-called crypto currencies, etc.
once more, criticism of so-called antidepressants goes with propaganda for hallucinogens, another example linked above in the article being the YouTube channel by comedian Russell Brand with tens of millions of viewers. again, criticism of antidepressants goes hand in hand with propaganda for hallucinogens and related cyber-psychedelic philosophies on a very popular YouTube channel.
Examples linked above in the article: against antidepressants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVSogil0Vao , and in favour of hallucinogens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HxLveKBOQE
publication of a randomized trial of psilocybin / magic mushrooms this month, JAMA Sept 2023
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2808950
surely improved compared the one in NEJoM Apr 2021
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994
in both instances the authors “forgot” to ask the simple question, or a variation of it, “do you think you got the hallucinogen or not?”
however this is now, two years later, noted in the Jama 2023 publication of a randomized trial of psilocybin, in all likelihood thank to the peer reviewers and editors of the Journal:
“Limitations
Several limitations in this study warrant consideration. First, the success of allocation blinding was not assessed, and it is likely that the acute psychoactive effects of psilocybin produced some degree of functional unblinding that may have contributed to the observed effect in psilocybin-treated participants.
To help address this issue, the current study used off-site centralized raters to reduce the potential impact of unblinding on the assessment of outcomes. Nonetheless, recent data demonstrating high rates of functional unblinding in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial of psilocybin for alcohol use disorder highlight a possible role for measuring blinding effectiveness in future studies of agents with acute psychoactive effects.”
is such simple but critical message finally getting through?
an article recently published, which is not quoting the above blog article in PsyPolitics dated April 5th, about the current “hype”.
interestingly the authors call these substances “psychedelics”, which is part of the hype they denounce.
then they talk about the “depoliticising” effects of such substances and hype, about a mental health paradigm that “individualises and interiorizes”, especially in the medical context (I wonder if it is supposed to be different in the non medical context or in a therapeutic context which is not medical).
all topics discussed in PsyPolitics since its inception and in the 2019 talk at the Royal College of Psychiatrist “Are we witnessing the emergence of a new global psychiatric power?”.
https://psypolitics.org/2020/07/13/are-we-witnessing-the-emergence-of-a-new-global-psychiatric-power/
also, authors talk about other topics discussing in PsyPolitics, such as “liberatory rhetoric” and “political lobbying” in relation to mental health and hallucinogens as well, which they call “psychedelics”.
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Received: March 30, 2023 • Revised manuscript received: July 18, 2023 • Accepted: July 18, 2023
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
Volume/Issue: Accepted Manuscript / Online First
*** Beyond the psychedelic hype: Exploring the persistence of the neoliberal paradigm
Authors: James Davies, Brian A. Pace, and Neşe Devenot
ABSTRACT
Background and Aims: Advocates of psychedelic medicine have positioned psychedelics as a novel therapeutic intervention that will solve the mental health crisis by liberating individuals from their entrenched habits and limiting beliefs. Despite claims for novelty, the psychedelics industry is engaging in the same profit-oriented approaches that contributed to poor clinical outcomes with SSRIs and other earlier pharmaceuticals, which threatens to undermine their purported clinical benefits.
Methods: We present evidence that the liberatory rhetoric of psychedelic medicalization promotes neoliberal, individualised treatments for distress, which distracts from collective efforts to address root causes of suffering through systemic change. Drawing examples from the psychedelics industry, we illustrate how the discourse of psychedelic medicalisation subjects socially-determined distress to psychotropic intervention through the mechanisms of depoliticisation, productivisation, pathologisation, commodification, and de-collectivisation.
Results: Rather than disrupting or subverting the psychopharmaceutical status quo, the psychedelic industry’s current instantiation aligns with and upholds key facets of neoliberal ideology by adhering to the same facilitative mechanisms that scholars identified in the antidepressant industry. We identify these common mechanisms in examples unique to the psychedelics industry, including the search for psychedelic analogues and political lobbying to reschedule psychedelics.
Conclusion: We demonstrate how a neoliberal mental health paradigm that individualises and interiorizes mental distress cannot meaningfully resolve suffering with ubiquitous origins in the current sociopolitical environment, which is characterised by inequality, precarity, exploitation, and ecological collapse. As a result, psychedelics must decouple from neoliberal incentives, and demonstrate efficacy, if they are to facilitate durable improvements in well-being and prosocial outcomes.