Australia has become the world's first country to legalise the clinical prescribing of psychedelics for certain mental health disorders. According to a news release, starting July 1, authorised psychiatrists can prescribe MDMA, better known as ecstasy, to those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and magic mushrooms for some types of depression.
"The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) will permit the prescribing of MDMA for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. These are the only conditions where there is currently sufficient evidence for potential benefits in certain patients," Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration, or TGA, said in the release.
While announcing the latest move, the TGA added that psilocybin - the main psychoactive ingredient in the magic mushrooms - and MDMA are "relatively safe" when used in a medically controlled setting under the supervision of appropriately trained healthcare professionals and in the dosages that have been studied in clinical trials.
However, according to CNN, some experts fear that the move may be premature given that the drugs in question are still being tested in clinical trials and haven't been formally approved for the treatment of any mental health disorders by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for clinical use.
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But Dr Mike Musker, a mental health researcher at the University of South Australia, stated that the use of psychedelics would be carefully monitored and not a case of "take a pill and go away". He described the move as a "game changer". He explained that the patient would likely have three treatments over five to eight weeks. Each treatment would last about eight hours, with the therapist staying with the patient the whole time.
Notably, MDMA is a synthetic drug that acts as a hallucinogen. It increases the user's energy levels, sensory experiences and distorts their sense of time. Magic Mushrooms, on the other hand, also have hallucinogenic effects due to the active compound psilocybin. They are grown naturally.
