Psychedelics (Minus the Trip) Could Provide Powerful Anxiety Relief

We all know psychedelics have gained popularity in recent years—and have long been illegally used for their hallucinogenic effects. Some people even turn to microdosing these drugs as a form of anxiety treatment. 

Of course, the use of psychedelics to treat issues like anxiety or trauma is a careful practice that should be done in a controlled environment. After all, the last thing anyone with anxiety needs is a bad trip. 

However, new research published in Science has raised the possibility of separating the anti-anxiety effects from the hallucinogenic effects of psychedelic drugs—a potential game-changer in anxiety relief.

“In the past, we did this using chemistry by making new compounds, but here we focused on identifying the circuits responsible for the effects, and it does seem that they are distinct,” said study co-author David E. Olson, director of the Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics (IPN), per ScienceDaily. “This is an important mechanistic study that validates our earlier results.”

Scientists used a mouse model to understand and identify the neural circuits connected to the anti-anxiety properties of psychedelics and those activated by the hallucinogenic properties. 

“Understanding which neural circuits psychedelics activate to elicit their effects is the kind of basic science needed to ultimately develop targeted therapeutics with better safety profiles,” Olson, who is also a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and molecular medicine at the University of California, Davis, said in the ScienceDaily release.

While the researchers found that psychedelics reduced anxiety in mice, they also noticed symptoms of hallucinations through head twitches. However, after dosing mouse models with the psychedelic 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI), the evidence of anxiety relief lasted while the head twitches stopped.

“We thought that if we could identify which neurons activated by DOI were responsible for reducing anxiety, then we might be able to reactivate them at a later time to mimic those anti-anxiety-like effects,” said Christina Kim, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of neurology, core member of the Center for Neuroscience and IPN affiliate, per ScienceDaily.

Through the use of molecular tagging, scientists were able to highlight and isolate those neurons in the part of the brain involved with anxiety reduction. As stated in the research, decoupling psychedelics’ benefits from their hallucinations is a matter of targeted neural circuitry, not just chemical compound design—a major discovery and step in the right direction.