Have you ever really looked at your hands?
I mean, like, really looked at them?
[voice pitch dropping] First of all, they are huge,
and your fingers only bend one way!
[normal voice] At Woodstock in 1969, people made these kinds of revolutionary discoveries
and more… aided by the psychedelic drugs
they were taking, like LSD.
But—seriously—drugs like LSD have also
been the basis
of some more rigorous research, too.
After some initial research into the drug,
it was banned in the 1960s.
But today, under careful regulation, some
scientists have been trying to figure out
how it works and whether it might have a medical
benefit.
[INTRO♪]
A Swiss chemist named Albert Hofmann created
lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, in 1938.
He had been reacting different chemicals with
lysergic acid,
a derivative of a family of fungus called ergot.
He hoped to find a compound that could be
a heart and respiration stimulant.
What he discovered in 1943, after getting
some LSD on his fingertips by accident,
is that it makes you hallucinate...
[voice pitch dropping:] a lot.
He described a dream-like state in which he
saw fantastic images and colors.
And, today, we can kind of explain what was
going on.
Mostly, LSD was interacting with several kinds of
serotonin receptors in Hofmann’s brain.
Serotonin is one of the feel-good neurotransmitters
involved in regulation of sleep and wakefulness,
so it might have been responsible for the
relaxed, dream-like state he described.
The 5-HT2A receptor specifically seems to
be associated with the psychedelic effects.
We think LSD also interacts with a bunch of
other receptors in the brain,
including dopamine receptors.
Dopamine is thought of as
a feel-good neurotransmitter, too,
and it's involved in processes of reward and
addiction, among lots of other things.
Specifically, LSD interacts with D2 dopamine
receptors,
which are found in different parts of the brain
and serve different functions than you might expect.
Too little stimulation of these receptors
and people have mobility problems,
like in Parkinson's disease.
And too much stimulation of these receptors
is linked with hallucinations,
like in patients with schizophrenia... and,
well, people taking LSD.
Despite interacting with a lot of different
parts of the brain,
LSD doesn’t seem to cause symptoms of addiction,
although we haven’t entirely figured out why.
So after its discovery, researchers were looking into
whether LSD could treat mild mental illnesses
and addiction to alcohol.
Oh!
[opening of Star Spangled Banner on electric guitar]
And lots of people started taking it
at music festivals and stuff for fun.
Even though some scientists were optimistic that
it could be useful as a medical treatment,
and it was widely studied in the the 1950s
and 60s, research didn't really pan out.
Some people suffered anxiety, stress, or panic
attacks after taking LSD.
And other scientists feared it could be toxic,
leading to coma or bleeding, particularly
at high doses.
So for a lot of reasons, in the US and most
of the world,
LSD was made illegal in the 1960s.
And since then, very little research has been done.
Lately, because we have a deeper understanding
of neuroscience,
some researchers have ventured back into testing LSD—
to figure out possible harms or benefits.
But not without some clear safeguards.
For example, scientists testing psychedelic
drugs in the US
need to be licensed by the DEA, which can
require them to
measure the stored drugs daily, by two people,
to prevent theft.
And their experiments have to be carefully
designed and reviewed by committees.
Through these experiments, we’ve found some
evidence that LSD
could potentially be a useful treatment.
One of the most promising areas
is for alcohol addiction.
In a meta-analysis published in 2012,
6 randomized trials had been done on a total of
536 alcoholic patients.
These experiments tested whether a dose of about
500 micrograms of LSD would improve their symptoms.
And across all the studies, the LSD treatment reduced
the reported misuse of alcohol,
often up to months later.
It definitely wasn't a cure-all—
the researchers estimated that
for every 6 patients treated, 1 would see the benefit.
But that isn’t nothing.
Another study, published in 2014,
tested to see if the drug
could benefit patients with anxiety.
Specifically, people seeking therapy for anxiety
because they had a life-threatening disease.
It was a very small sample of only 12 patients,
but those who received a dose of about
200 micrograms of LSD
wound up reporting much less anxiety 2 months later
than those in the control group.
And that tentative positive effect for mood disorders
was also supported by findings from a 2016
meta-analysis.
These researchers reviewed 151 clinical trials
on LSD and other
hallucinogenic drugs, and honed in on 6 studies.
It's worth noting that the control groups
in most of these studies got LSD too—
just a smaller dose of around 20-50 micrograms,
which is less noticeable.
And this was to make the studies double-blind.
Like, if you sign up for a study of LSD,
you'll probably notice if you take a treatment
and don't feel anything.
So, this way, researchers can try to make
sure any effects are because of
the difference in dose size, and not because
someone could tell they were in a placebo group.
There's also very new research into an idea called microdosing—
taking an even smaller dose of about 10 micrograms.
That’s about a tenth of what you'd find
on a recreational paper tab of LSD—
although, those doses can vary too.
Very little research has been done on microdosing.
A paper published in February 2018 said they
didn’t find other research on the subject.
Those scientists interviewed 21 people who reported
that when they take microdoses of LSD,
they feel things like improved mood, energy, and
creativity, or reduced anxiety or depression—
all without the hallucinations or other side effects.
Of course, it's important to note that those are just personal stories—
there was no controlled experiments,
no placebo control group, and no randomization.
So it's also possible that taking too little
to hallucinate
might also be taking too little to... really
do anything.
Other experiments have used fMRIs to understand
more about
how the drug affects our brains.
In one 2016 study, 20 participants were injected
with either
75 micrograms of LSD or saline as a control,
and then had their functional connectivity
measured.
Basically, that’s looking at the brain and
seeing which regions activate at the same time.
For example, one network you often see in
this kind of analysis
is called the default mode network.
It seems to be active when people are daydreaming,
or accessing autobiographical memories.
But in the subjects that got LSD, researchers
didn’t see this network
emerge clearly in fMRI data.
Instead, they saw more global connectivity
across the brain.
The scientists predicted that this effect
might be related to
the experience of ego dissolution that reportedly
comes with taking the drug.
Basically, this is someone feeling less like
they're a separate individual from everyone
and everything else.
And in fact, that change in functional connectivity
was correlated with
whether the subjects reported feeling more
ego dissolution.
A similar 2016 study looked at 20 subjects
who also were given an injection
of 75 micrograms of LSD or a placebo and hopped
in an fMRI machine.
But in this one, they did multiple types of
imaging and
subjects filled out a questionnaire about
hallucinating during the experience.
Like the other experiment, researchers found
more functional connectivity
between the primary visual cortex and other
brain regions—
and that was also correlated with how much
participants reported hallucinating.
Besides giving insight into how LSD affects us,
these studies can also reveal how hallucinations
generally work in the brain—
for instance, to help scientists better understand
patients with schizophrenia.
So nowadays we know a little bit more about
this drug,
but there is a long way to go before we can
say whether or not
it’s a useful treatment for things like
anxiety or alcohol addiction.
But with more careful, regulated experiments,
we’ll hopefully keep learning more.
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Psych!
And thanks especially to our Patrons on Patreon,
whose support lets us make videos about complicated,
not-so-advertiser-friendly topics like LSD.
If you want to help us out, you can go to
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Or if you just want to keep learning about
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subscribe.
[OUTRO♪]
