Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
Researchers are testing several new and old approaches to treat addiction. The most attention is on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy — that is, giving a drug like psilocybin, MDMA, or ibogaine together with careful therapy — and on new drug compounds tested in animals. Some early clinical trials and many reviews call these approaches “promising,” but most evidence is still limited, mixed, or from small studies. At the same time, for some substances like methamphetamine there are no approved medicines that clearly reduce use. Animal studies and new chemical versions of old drugs show strong early results, but human safety and larger trials are still needed. Researchers also stress that the drug effect and the therapy around it (preparation, setting, and follow-up) both matter for how well treatment works.
Researchers gave different psychedelic drugs to mice and found the drugs could reopen a window of brain plasticity used for learning social rewards. This reopened window went along with changes in a social hormone system in a key reward area of the brain and with changes in genes that control…
The authors reviewed psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy studies published from 1993 to 2017 to see how many people of color took part. They found 18 studies with about 280 people. About 82% of participants were non-Hispanic White, while only small percentages were African American, Latino, Asian, indigenous, or mixed race. Because so…
This review looked at many studies about classic psychedelics (like psilocybin and LSD), MDMA, ketamine, and plant medicines (like ayahuasca). The authors explain how these drugs can change the brain’s wiring, calm inflammatory processes, and shift key brain chemicals. Those actions may help explain why small clinical trials and animal…
Researchers collected and read 15 studies where patients described their own experiences with psychedelic treatments for mental disorders. These studies looked at about 180 patient accounts across different drugs and different illnesses. Even though the drugs and treatment settings were very different, many patients described similar helpful processes, such as…
Researchers around the world have started clinical studies again to see if psychedelic drugs can help treat serious mental health problems. This work picks up after research that stopped around the 1950s. Scientists are running controlled studies to test whether these substances can safely reduce problems like depression, anxiety, addiction…
This review explains the fast-growing problem of so-called "legal highs", which are better called novel psychoactive substances or NPS. Unknown labs keep making slightly different chemicals to avoid bans, and this led to about 80 new substances being spotted in one year. The paper groups these drugs into five main…
This paper reviews research on using psychedelic drugs to treat addiction. The authors say scientific and medical interest has grown a lot in the last ten years and that early evidence is starting to show these treatments can be safe and may help with psychiatric problems including addiction. The review…
This paper reviews clinical and lab studies about psychedelic therapy, which means using a psychedelic drug together with psychological support. The authors say this approach looks promising for several different mental health problems that share rigid or harmful patterns of feeling, thinking, or acting — especially major depression, depression that…
This paper is a review of research about psychedelic drugs and whether they could help with mood and anxiety problems. It explains that these drugs were used for thousands of years in some cultures, then were banned in the 1960s which slowed scientific study. The authors describe a new wave…
This review describes a rapid rise in medical research on psychedelic drugs over the past five years. Several later-stage clinical trials have been published, and many different drugs — including psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, LSD, ayahuasca, and ibogaine — are being tested for conditions such as depression, post‑traumatic stress, addiction, obsessive‑compulsive…
This paper reviews recent studies on using psychedelic drugs together with psychotherapy to treat people who have problems with substance use. The authors found promising signs that this approach can be done safely and may help reduce harmful drug use when the drugs are given in carefully controlled, therapeutic settings.…
This review explains that classical serotonergic psychedelics — drugs like psilocybin, DMT (in ayahuasca), LSD, and ibogaine — can change brain cells and connections in lab and animal studies. These drugs have been shown to help neurons grow new branches and form more synapses, which are the contact points where…
