LSD could help treat alcoholism

Washington, March 9 (ANI): Taking hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) could help alcoholics give up drinking, according to an analysis of studies performed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

LSD is used mainly as an entheogen, recreational drug, and as an agent in psychedelic therapy.

Several decades ago, a number of clinics used LSD to treat alcoholism with some success.

But until now, no research has pulled together the results of these trials to document exactly how effective LSD was.

Now a new meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials of the drug provides evidence for a clear and consistent beneficial effect of LSD for treating alcohol dependency.

Teri Krebs and Pal-Orjan Johansen, both affiliated with the Department of Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway, spotted a gap in the understanding of LSD's potential for alcoholism treatment during research fellowships at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.

Krebs and Johansen set out to independently extract data from previous randomised, controlled clinical trials, pooling their results.

They identified six eligible trials, all carried out in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These included 536 participants, the vast majority of whom were male in-patients enrolled in alcohol-focused treatment programs.

While the experiments varied in the dosage used and the type of placebo physicians administered to patients, LSD had a beneficial effect on alcohol misuse in every trial.

On average, 59 percent of LSD patients and 38 percent of control patients were improved at follow-up using standardized assessment of problem alcohol use. There was also a similar beneficial effect on maintained abstinence from alcohol.

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LSD could help treat alcoholism