PostHole
Compose
Login
The Search for New Psychedelics
As companies join the hunt, can the field of mind-altering synthetic substances stay true to its original pioneering spirit of wonder, curiosity and connection?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
November 6, 2023
The Search for New Psychedelics
As companies join the hunt, can the field of mind-altering synthetic substances stay true to its original pioneering spirit of wonder, curiosity and connection?
By Rachel Nuwer edited by Tulika Bose & Alexa Lim
[An illustration of a rainbow bridge leading into an open eye sitting inside a colored arch with the words "The Search for New Psychedelics" in the center]
Molly Ferguson/Scientific American
[Illustration of a Bohr atom model spinning around the words Science Quickly with various science and medicine related icons around the text]
Apple | Spotify | YouTube |RSS
Rachel Nuwer: When someone says psychedelics, what comes to mind? Maybe “magic mushrooms” or LSD? Or if you’re a real aficionado, maybe you think of more obscure substances such as dimethyltryptamine, also called DMT, or 4-Bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine, also called 2C-B.
Unless you’re really deep in the psychedelic weeds, though, what probably doesn’t come to mind are, say, 4-Hy­droxy-N-methyl-N-iso­propyl­tryptamine, also called 4-HO-MiPT, or 2,5-dimethoxy-4-(n)-propylthiophenethylamine, also called 2C-T-7. These things are mouthfuls.
The latter two psychedelics are actually among hundreds of obscure, consciousness-altering drugs—ones that maybe just a handful of people have ever tried, let alone studied. Most are synthesized in labs, and new ones are being created all the time. Some are made by underground chemists looking for the next big high, but others are being created by bona fide scientists searching for better therapeutic agents.
On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
For Science, Quickly, I’m science journalist and author Rachel Nuwer. Today I’ll be taking you on a mind-bending journey: the hunt for new psychedelics.
Matthew Baggott: I think the existing psychedelics are going to help a lot of people, but there are some people that will not be helped by them or that will benefit even more from other medicines.
Nuwer: That’s Matt Baggott, a neuroscientist and co-founder and CEO of a start-up called Tactogen. He and his colleagues are trying to make safer and more effective MDMA-like molecules for therapeutic and medical uses. There are at least 50 other labs and companies around the world pursuing similar goals.
Baggott: For me, three big reasons to create new psychedelics would be, one, decreasing unwanted effects ...
Nuwer: For example, bladder irritation that’s sometimes caused by ketamine or transient high blood pressure that can be triggered by MDMA. Matt thinks it could be possible to engineer new versions of these drugs that don’t cause the kinds of unwanted side effects that have nothing to do with the actual therapeutic uses of psychedelics.
The second reason for pursuing new psychedelics, he says, is ...
Baggott: Increasing the accessibility of these types of therapies.
Many of us are concerned that psychedelic therapies may end up being so resource-intensive that the insurance industry and other payers won't consider the therapies to be cost-effective, and they may be reluctant to cover them.
But if it’s not covered by the payer, then treatment will often be in the range of tens of thousands of dollars.
Nuwer: The steep price tag is because****most psychedelic-assisted therapy usually requires several sessions of around eight hours each and requires two therapists to be present. So if Matt and other scientists could create molecules that are shorter-acting but still just as effective, then the costs could be reduced, and the treatments could become available to way more people.
Baggott: And then the third ... reason for developing new psychedelics is a little more speculative. I think that psychedelic-derived medicines could create whole new categories of therapy. We don't really have an established idea in our health care system of pharmacotherapies that accelerate psychotherapy. But that’s exactly how a lot of people are thinking about psychedelics. And so that’s just one example; there may be many other examples of ways that psychedelics could provide new, essentially, types of treatments.
There’s a really large possibility space here that we're only now starting to explore, and there’s a lot of promise.
Nuwer: It’s important to acknowledge, though, that Matt’s search for new psychedelics isn’t new. In a way, he and all the other researchers pursuing this path today are just following in the footsteps of those who came before. One of the greatest psychedelic pioneers of all time was the late chemist Alexander Shulgin, known as Sasha to his friends.
Erika Dyck: Maybe there’s no one else quite like Sasha Shulgin.
Nuwer: Sasha was best known for resynthesizing MDMA, aka Ecstasy, and kicking off widespread interest in it among therapists in the late 1970s.
But he also famously created hundreds of new psychedelic drugs in a ramshackle backyard lab at his home in Lafayette, California. Sasha would actually try out his creations on himself, starting with tiny doses and working his way up. If the compound seemed interesting enough, he’d invite his late wife, Ann, and their closest friends to try it with him, and they’d all take notes.
Dyck: Without those moments, much of this psychedelic history would look quite different.
There are people working for pharmaceutical companies now who came into this, I think, with a real, genuine desire to to embody the Sasha Shulgin spirit.
He’s so visible and becomes ... a kind of iconic figure in this space who’s not only associated with the brilliance of his own chemistry and for allegedly introducing over 200 psychoactive compounds.
He’s open with the DEA.... And he creates things faster than the DEA can figure out what to do with it.
Nuwer: That’s Erika Dyck, a professor of health and social justice at the University of Saskatchewan who researches psychedelic history.
Erika says that one of the things that set Sasha apart from other psychedelic chemists of his day was the fact that he was so open about his work creating new mind-altering substances—despite this being at the height of the war on drugs. In the 1990s he and Ann even wrote two books about their experiences that contained detailed instructions in the back for making all of Sasha’s different psychedelics.
Dyck: He writes about it and sort of shares his enthusiasm for the chemistry in a way that scales things differently than a patent and scaling it in terms of its marketability, and that’s a different philosophy. It’s a different way of living in this space.
Nuwer: That’s because, unlike most other chemists, Sasha wasn’t driven by profit. He seems to have been motivated by sheer enthusiasm for drugs and their potential promise for unlocking hidden realms of consciousness and secrets of the brain.
Dyck: A lot of people describe his enthusiasm—this just giggling, infectious enthusiasm for the process of discovery that really just kind of brought him to light.
[...]