Serotonergic hallucinogens and emerging targets for addiction pharmacotherapies.

Serotonergic hallucinogen-assisted psychotherapy may prove safe and effective for treating substance use disorders in controlled trials, offering a novel treatment paradigm. These substances differ from other drugs of abuse by not producing dependence syndromes, with effects on the nucleus accumbens and dopamine ranging from inhibition to slight activation without causing addiction. Risks include adverse psychological events, manageable through careful screening, and low potential for misuse. Their ability to treat addictive, psychiatric, and existential disorders represents a potential paradigmatic shift in psychiatry.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Only time will tell if serotonergic hallucinogen-assisted psychotherapy treatment paradigms for SUDs will prove to be safe and effective in double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials. If they are, they would truly constitute a novel psychopharmacologic-psychosocial treatment paradigm to treat addictive disorders, although the risk of adverse psychological events would have to be controlled through a careful screening process and the risk of misuse of the substances or developing use syndromes would have to be considered, although the overall risk would be low because, as mentioned, SHs are unlike all other drugs of abuse in that they do not appear to produce dependence syndromes. There effects on the NA and DA range from inhibition to slight activation, all this without producing addiction. The ability of these medicinal tools to treat a range of addictive, psychiatric, and existential disorders is remarkable in scope and possibility. They truly represent a potential paradigmatic shift within the field of psychiatry, too interesting to not explore further.