Mind Medicine (NEO: MMED) (OTCQB: MMEDF), a psychedelic pharmaceutical company, has approached the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) for authorization to conduct a clinical trial on LSD as a treatment of anxiety.
Interestingly, the MindMed project is called “Project Lucy.” For those who may not know, LSD is short for Lysergic Acid Diethylamide and The Beatles popularized this psychedelic drug by asking people to search for “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” a thinly veiled reference to LSD. It is therefore no wonder that MindMed called their work in this area “Project Lucy.”
This isn’t the first time that doctors are going to use LSD as a drug for mental disorders. In the 1950’s and 60’s, LSD was used to treat depression, anxiety and addiction. However, the drug took on counterculture use and this prompted President Nixon to declare the War on Drugs and include LSD, and other substances, on Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”).
With LSD categorized by the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) as something with “no medical use and a high potential for abuse,” research into psychedelics ground to a halt.
Decades later, researchers quietly picked up from where they had left. Today, MindMed is asking the FDA to allow it to administer a high dose of LSD (about 200mcg) to patients in a move that is unprecedented around the world due to the controlled status of LSD.
However, MindMed is confident that they will get the approval they need. The company recently obtained the rights to the LSD research done by a Swiss doctor called Peter Gasser. Gasser has been conducting human trials using LSD for more than a decade after he obtained special permission for that research from the Swiss ministry of health.
During his research, Gasser would keep patients under medical observation within his research facility for 12 hours while the LSD took its course. His findings showed how beneficial the drug is to people suffering from different mental health challenges.
MindMed is using all this data to prove to the FDA that LSD can be beneficial if it is administered in a controlled environment and under the supervision of trained medical workers.
The research couldn’t possibly have come at a better time as statistics indicate that the use of antidepressants in the U.S. spiked by 35% in March, and with unemployment expected to hit 25% as the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics comes in, a lot more people will be anxious and depressed in the months and years to come. It is these people that MindMed and other psychedelics companies wish to help.
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