Hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and psilocybin were often the target of the war on drugs in the 1970s. That’s even though what are known as psychedelics, that altered users’ senses and perceptions were studied and researched extensively for their therapeutic potential in the 1950s until the 70s.

For the past decade, the psychedelics have been getting another look and how they may be used to treatment depression, anxiety or PTSD.

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a draft of guidelines for conducting clinical research with these drugs.

Dr. Jason Wallach, an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Studies at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia studies and develops psychedelic compounds to treat mental illness and joined us on The Spark Tuesday where he talked about what's changed in how the drugs are viewed since the War on Drugs,"These drugs are heavily demonized. They remain schedule one in the United States, which is high abuse potential. And no recognized medical use, essentially, I think would change a number of things. And it's complicated. But I think one of the major ones was that science sort of advanced. There were a number of pioneers who did very well done, controlled studies starting in the nineties, but continuing up to modern times, demonstrating that these compounds can be used safely in controlled clinical situations. And not only that, they show very encouraging and promising therapeutic potential in a number of areas where our current therapeutic interventions fall short."

Wallach was asked what impact the hallucinogens have on the user,"They're classified as hallucinogens because often they'll cause visual, auditory, tactile hallucinations and not hallucinations in the sense, for example, that you would see someone who's not there and think that that's a real person, right? It's things like patterns in the walls, in the walls might appear to breathe. So just distortions in perception. They also stimulate changes in thought. People will have sort of what appear to be like revelations about life and their personal history. And so it can cause very profound alterations in thought as well.

Wallach added that these drugs are not physically addictive.

Wallach said there are still a lot of unknowns about how the psychedelics affect the brain and whether it's unique but described what research has found with those who suffer from mental illness,"What we do know is studies have been done, for example, where after a psychedelic, people will have a more positive outlook on things, if they're shown sort of ambiguous stimuli, they'll rate it more positively or ambiguous faces. They'll write them more positively. So many people think it's sort of allows a shift in your perspective, your outlook, maybe, it's not so much there's changes in the brain that alleviate the pathology, assuming you know that's the case, it may be that it alters your interpretation of the world in a way that's therapeutically beneficial."

Support WITF: https://www.witf.org/support/give-now/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.