Why People are Turning to Psychedelics to Treat Medical Conditions
Frustrations with waiting lists and a feeling that pharmaceutical medications are failing health needs are leading some people to seek out psychedelic alternative medicines.
By Jack Howse | Illustration by Esmée Balcewicz
“I feel like a different person, physically. It’s nuts. I've never taken hospital medication since”.
Liam O’Reilly was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 2015. It’s an auto-immune disease which can lead his immune system to mistakenly attacks healthy cells in the body. “My hands swell up and become quite painful,” Liam explains. “The actual inflammation fluid, it's like a low level acid. So if you don't treat it, it eats away your cartilage over time – and it is usually set off by stress.”
Liam has also experienced addiction issues – exacerbated by his work in the nightlife industry – and has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). When pharmaceutical medicine wasn’t helping, he began to explore how psychedelic drugs could be used to treat his condition.
Psychedelics and the medicinal value of plants seem to be re-entering the mainstream and political psyche in recent years. From Gwyneth Paltrow going on a mushroom retreat in her Netflix show to Australia becoming the first country to legalise the use of psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) and MDMA for clinical and therapeutic use – people from different communities are championing the potentials of psychedelics for health.
The Scottish Psychedelic Research Group, which is based at the University of Edinburgh and founded in 2021, recently held three days of talks on the subject including one afternoon focused on mental health. The speakers were a mix of scientists and people with lived experience of the medicinal qualities of psychedelics, including a former rugby player for the Scottish national team and a family that had been affected by addiction issues.
Dr Mourad Wahba, a psychiatrist who has been running clinical trials on the subject, highlighted how the amount of papers published on the subject has doubled since 2013. He also showed how psilocybin, especially higher doses, can reduce the impact of severe depression and addiction issues. This was backed up by another speaker, Professor Jo Neill, who said: “Never in forty years of research, have I seen such amazing results… I switched to researching psychedelics because they work. They heal people which is not a word we usually say in psychiatry.”
What’s more, studies done by the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London have shown how psychedelics can be used to treat and manage conditions like depression, chronic pain and eating disorders.
Back in Govanhill, Liam began speaking to friends who were using psychedelics as alternative medicines and how they have helped them treat and cope with their respective conditions. He learned about toad venom and kambo (the secretion of a tropical frog), two potently strong psychedelics that are usually administered with the help of more experienced people. He has also self-administered psilocybin over the years.
Previously, Liam had tried traditional routes to combat his health problems such as therapy and prescribed medication, but found they did not help, or the results were very temporary saying: “This kind of medical approach is just about sticking a band-aid on and getting on with it.”
For people that champion alternative approaches, this is where pharmaceutical medicines and psychedelics diverge; they do not just block effects of illnesses and disorders like most pharmaceutical medicines.
“Psychedelics induce the brain to change transiently in ways that appear to allow a reset to take place and permit alterations in previously 'stuck' ways of feeling and thinking about things”, writes Dr. Jerrol Rosenbaum from the Centre for the Neuroscience of Psychedelics in America. “It’s like rebooting your computer… and past trauma can reemerge with a new perspective on them that is freeing and healing”.
For Liam, and many others who suffer from long term conditions, things like stress and anxiety are one of the main reasons for flare-ups of their conditions; as such managing and processing memories and trauma is necessary to live their day-to-day lives. This is also true for so many people, regardless of if they suffer from long-term health conditions or not.
At the event in Edinburgh, Karen Llewelyn, a member of both Scottish Families Campaign For Change shared the story of supporting her sons through drug-induced and the harm done by state care, including through police intervention, hospitalisation or imprisonment. It was only through attending a psychedelic retreat that she was able to address her own trauma from the experience, and this has led her to be convinced that it is the route which mental health care must explore.
Dr. Sam Gandy, a researcher who works with the Centre for Psychedelic Research, spoke in Glasgow about the impact of psychedelics. Much of his research revolves around the connection between psychedelics and our connection to nature. He told Greater Govanhill:
“There is a growing body of evidence to show that psychedelics can shift our relationship towards nature in positive ways, enhancing feelings of connection towards it… This sense of kinship with the natural world has a strong association with a form of well-being tied to life meaning, vitality and self-actualisation, in addition to happiness.”
A connection to nature has been proven to boost happiness in humans, as well as make us care more about the future of our planet. However, Sam also agrees that: “ The degree to which psychedelics may be able to evoke sustained shifts in outlook and behaviour through enhancing nature connectedness requires further research.”
Yet due to lack of funding and restrictive laws surrounding psychedelic usage in clinical research, studies on the benefits of psychedelics have not been done on a wider level. “Unfortunately, the UK government seems to be quite rigid and backwards looking when it comes to integrating psychedelics into public health care.” says Sam.
Professor Jo Neill concurs, saying: “Drug laws are stopping people doing research.” She points to how psychedelics and cannabis are in the strictest category for being able to do research, above the likes of heroin and cocaine.
For Liam, and the other people we spoke to who are microdosing mushrooms for conditions like migraines, the effects of his own self-treatment have been profound. “I told my NHS arthritis doctor that I was using psychedelics,” he recalls, “He sent me for a full round of bloods. And he was like, ‘you are in the best shape that you've been since I've known you’.” Liam has also been able to manage his addiction issues through alternative medicine use.
While the use of psychedelics as a treatment is leading to radical results for some, there are some ethical discussions that arise from this increased popularity.
Many psychedelic substances are linked to indigenous cultures in the Americas and the rise of ‘ayahuasca (another popular psychedelic) tourism’ is seen as culturally problematic by many as it involves using substances sacred to many indigenous tribes in South America, and it is sometimes unclear who benefits from the tourism surrounding it. Yet, Liam highlights he has never travelled to South America to partake in these ceremonies and has carried out fundraising for different Amazonian indigenous communities creating the treatments he uses.
Another discussion that should be had around psychedelics is the potential dangers of using these substances. Whilst studies have shown psilocybin as the safest recreational drug, ingesting the wrong variety of mushroom could have fatal consequences. One way of reducing this risk would be to make these substances legal in order to regulate supply. But, until then, people like Liam are supported by others who also use alternative medicines. “I am part of many groups where we support people and offer advice” Liam says. “I also run a little Whatsapp support group for people with ADHD. It's so important to find your tribe”.