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While a lot of focus is on physical health, you should not ignore mental health issues too. Issues such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, or OCD should not be ignored. If not treated, it can lead to dire consequences.
Joining the Psychedelic Clinical Trials
First and foremost, you need to understand what the term “psychedelic” means. The simple definition is a mental state wherein a person starts hallucinating and experiences heightened levels of euphoria.
Many research and training institutes have started giving importance to psychedelic mental health issues and have come up with drugs and medications that can help control the symptoms of such issues. Now before the drugs are introduced to the market, thorough testing of these drugs needs to be made to ensure that the drugs are safe for patients and work well on the body.
In addition to trying these drugs on patients, these institutes are also looking for research volunteers who can contribute to the success of these inventions. Yes, it is natural to be a bit sceptical about the safety protocols followed and would the drugs be safe to be injected.
Here is where you need to understand how these clinical trials work.
You can broadly classify these into 3 phases:
- FDA Approval to test drugs on small participants
- Testing drugs on psychedelic patients
- Long-term effectiveness of the drugs
In the first phase, once the drug is developed, researchers need FDA approval to test the drug on humans. The participant size will be small hardly 2-5 people. Initially, a small dose will be given, and the participants will be kept under observation to see if the drug is well-received. If the result is positive, then a slightly higher dose is administered to the next set of volunteers.
If the drug receives good feedback from the healthy participants, then it is further tested on the patients suffering from psychedelic health issues. Here the participant size can either be small or big, depending on the effectiveness of the drug.
Here the drug will be tested for the effective dosage range, what all symptoms can be targeted and how well it is received by the patients. If the drug works well in controlling the symptoms of the patients, then the researchers will try their best to record their findings and present them to FDA for the final approval.
Lastly, once the drug is FDA-approved, it is then introduced into the market only under valid medical prescriptions. The researchers will continuously monitor the progress of the drug and further tried to develop them for effective use on patients. The studies also will get published in various journals for other researchers to review.
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Different Types of Psychedelics That Are Used by Researchers
If you wish to be a part of the psychedelic clinical trials, all you need to do is go through the clinical registry sites of your state, filter for study sites in your area and enroll for the same. Now, you can choose from different types of psychedelic drugs based on your interest.
Listed below are popular drugs and the conditions they would be helpful for:
- Psilocybin – depression, alcohol use disorders, anxiety, and PTSD
- LSD – depression
- MDMA – anxiety, PTSD, or alcohol use disorders
- 5-Meo-DMT – chronic pain and anxiety
- Mescaline – alcohol use disorders
- DMT – depression
A small willingness on your part can help in curing a lot of mental issues. All the trials are conducted under professional supervision and all safety protocols are in place.