Optimism and pessimism on psychedelic drugs as medicine

 "Psychedelics" may prove to be a broad church, with psilocybin and LSD quite different from MDMA, etc., but here are two articles that express very different views about the progress towards making them part of standard medical practice.

Here's some optimism in Columbia Magazine:

The Magic and Mystery of Psychedelic Therapies.  As new trials show that psilocybin and LSD may help treat depression and anxiety, mental-health providers get ready for a revolution.  By Paul Hond |

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And here's some pessimism, in the NYT:

How Psychedelic Research Got High on Its Own Supply, By Caty Enders

"The drug company Lykos Therapeutics had spent much of this year expecting to vault to meteoric heights. It had sent an application to the Food and Drug Administration seeking approval to use MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Lykos expected F.D.A. approval; it was banking on it.

"And then on Aug. 9, the F.D.A.’s decision came through: rejection. It was the capstone to months of increasingly loud concerns being voiced over the quality of Lykos’s clinical trials. And in the wake of the F.D.A. decision, the journal Psychopharmacology retracted three papers related to research on MDMA, citing “unethical conduct,” an apparent reference to allegations of sexual abuse on the part of an unlicensed therapist at one of the trial sites. Several of the authors of the retracted papers were affiliated with Lykos.

"It is a shocking decrescendo for a drug that had been promoted for years as best positioned to lead a psychedelic mental health revolution. The F.D.A.’s rejection signals greater uncertainty for the future of psychedelic medicine."