CUMBRIANS heard about the benefits of psychedelics to treat depression from a top medical expert in a webinar last week.
Professor David Nutt, of the prestigious Imperial College London explained the research around psychedelics such as psilocybin on November 27.
It was one of a series of webinars hosted by Pears Cumbria School of Medicine to showcase the work of researchers working in or with Cumbria.
Professor Nutt said that psychedelics have been found to target Seratonin 5-HT2A receptors in the human brain.
He said: "The main effect of psychedelics is on those receptors and those receptors are in the most recently evolved parts of the brain, which do the things that only humans can do in great depth and with great efficiency."
Professor Nutt said that psilocybin resets the brain to a child-like state that is more receptive to counselling.
He said: "What happens if you learn the wrong thing? What happens if you're told by your parents that you're useless and you begin to believe that because you don't know any better?
"And you continually learn on a daily basis, you reiterate that belief that you are worthless, then you become depressed, you dig a ditch of intense negative thinking.
"Un-learning that can be very difficult, there is no treatment we know of that can change the brain to help you unlearn deeply ingrained emotional responses...except for psychedelics."
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Professor Nutt said: "Psychedelics can put the brain back to as it was before people learned to be depressed and that's why it can lift depression."
In 2016, academics tested the effect of psilocybin on 20 patients who had previously tried anti-depressants and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
Patients were given psychotherapy in the days following a controlled dose of psilocybin.
Professor Nutt said: "The first single dose of psilocybin produced a halving of the depression scores, it occurred almost immediately.
"That is the most powerful, single dose treatment of resistant depression there has ever been."
But attendees heard that psilocybin is not yet permitted for use in medicine. Psilocybin was approved as a medicine in Australia by its regulator in 2023.
Professor Nutt said: "Germany has recently come to the same conclusion, they're making it available, the Czech Republic will do so next year.
"What we need to do now is persuade our government that this really radical breakthrough in the treatment of depression is something that should be allowed in this country."
Professor Nutt told the News & Star that universities and hospitals should be exempt from regulations restricting the use of certain drugs in medicine.
He said: "We don't need a special license to work with heroine or fentanyl but have to have a special license to work with psilocybin.
"Why can't psychedelics be treated like drugs like heroine and fentanyl? That would facilitate research enormously and then obviously I would like them to be rescheduled for clinical use as well."
Anyone can attend the webinars and take-up the opportunity to quiz the experts.
To sign up for the webinar mailing list, email pcsmresearchhub@cumbria.ac.uk
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