Psychedelic Chemicals and Depression Treatment
Ayşe Zağlı1, İlknur Altuntaş1, Oytun Erbaş1,2
1ERBAS Institute of Experimental Medicine, Illinois, USA & Gebze, Turkey
2Department of Physiology, Medical Faculty of Demiroğlu Bilim University, Istanbul, Turkey
Keywords: Ayahuasca, depression, lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin, psychedelics
Abstract
Depression is a psychiatric disorder that is widespread around the world and affects more than 300 million individuals. Treatment of depression divides into psychological counseling and antidepressant medication. Although antidepressants are an effective method of treating depression, alternative treatments are necessary due to their strong adverse effects. As an alternative treatment of depression, commonly used psychedelics are classic serotonergic psychedelics, entactogens, the atypical psychedelic ibogaine, and dissociative anesthetics. Psilocybin in particular, as well as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) and ayahuasca containing DMT (N, N-dimethyltryptamine), are seen as promising novel treatments for depression. In this review, the effect of psychedelic drugs, in particular LSD, psilocybin, and DMT on the treatment of depression will be discussed.
Cite this article as: Zağlı A, Altuntaş İ, Erbaş O. Psychedelic Chemicals and Depression Treatment. JEB Med Sci 2021;2(2):274-282.
The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.