Inverse - 💊 Psychedelic therapy breakthrough

Monday

Oct 10 2022

Psychedelics have come along way over the past several years. Back in the 1950s and 60s, the mind-altering drugs, particularly psilocybin and LSD, showed immense promise for psychiatry as a way to treat a number of mental health conditions. But laws that regulated the drugs' use passed in the early 1960s quickly stalled scientific research. The past decade, however, has seen a dramatic upswing in studying the drugs' potential to treat conditions such as PTSD, especially when used in concert with therapy. There are now a number of research institutions studying the potential benefits of psychedelic-assisted therapy and the preliminary findings are incredibly promising.

But while it seems many people would benefit from the psychedelics' effect on mental health conditions, not everyone wants to experience the mind-altering "trip" that comes along with it. Researchers have been trying to find a way around this. This week, Inverse covered a study published last month in the journal Nature that details how researchers developed a novel drug in the lab that produces the antidepressant effects of LSD without the hallucinations. The new drug has only been tested on mice so far, so it's still in its early stages and it remains hard to tell how the drug will fare with human subjects. If successful though, it could be, as our reporter Katie MacBride puts it: "the best of both worlds" for the many people who would benefit from psychedelic-assisted therapy.

What's New

Mouse study

Mind and Body

LSD-like drug may treat depression without the "trip" effect

New treatments for mental health and behavioral disorders are desperately needed. Rates of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and substance use disorders soared during the pandemic, and traditional pharmacological interventions like SSRIs don’t always work. It’s one of the reasons research into using psychedelics to treat these issues has garnered so much interest.

But not everyone in need of new treatments relishes the idea of experiencing hours of hallucinations. Frankie*, a 41-year-old woman in Connecticut, has treatment-resistant depression. She read the promising research about psychedelics for depression but was reluctant to try it because she worried she’d have “a bad trip.” Frankie asked that Inverse change her name to protect her privacy.

“I know it might help me in the long run, but for me, when I’m already in a dark place, it’s pretty hard to agree to something that might produce hours of terrifying hallucinations,” she says.

Researchers have been trying to overcome that barrier to psychedelic therapy entry by finding drugs that have similar antidepressant effects to psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD but without the hallucinatory effects. Last month, researchers published a study in the journal Nature outlining how they developed an LSD-like drug that produced antidepressant effects in mice without hallucinations.

Review

Movies

Bones and All is a brutal cannibal romance that gets under your skin

The heart wants what the heart wants.

But for Maren (Taylor Russell) and her lover Lee (Timothée Chalamet), the doomed young drifters at the center of Luca Guadagnino’s striking new romantic horror, acting upon their deepest desires is as dangerous as it is irresistible.

That’s because Maren and Lee are “eaters” united in a compulsion to devour human flesh that they’ve struggled to control all their lives.

Set across swaths of the American Midwest in the late 1980s, Bones and All (in theaters Nov. 23) treats their hunger as a secret nature, something innate but also ritualistic, classical. This raw, unbridled need for self-knowledge leads them to society’s margins, to one another, and eventually to a consummation both devastating and divine.

Read our review

Inverse Interview

Television

How a real apocalypse inspired Mordor's return in The Rings of Power

Alex Disenhof had already seen Mordor before he set out to create it for Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

The orange-red sky that looms over Sauron’s domain after Mount Doom belched smoke and fire wasn’t inspired by fantasy or fiction, but was based on a real-life apocalyptic event he experienced.

“I was stuck in a wildfire in Portland in 2020, which I had my own reference images from,” Disenhof tells Inverse. “Those formed the basis of the color that I was going for. This kind of orangey, red, yellow mixture.”

The cinematographer, who was tapped by Amazon to work on Rings of Power Season 1’s two biggest episodes (6 and 7), also compiled images from California wildfires in 2018 to create a visual language for Middle-earth in the aftermath of an apocalyptic volcanic eruption.

But coming up with the concept was the easy part. Bringing it to life without leaning too heavily on CGI was far more difficult.

Pets

Science

Petting a dog has a therapeutic effect on the brain, study finds

It’s well known that dogs profoundly benefit our mental health as well as provide emotional support. But our pets might also help our brain in other surprising ways, according to new research.

Scientists analyzed the impact of petting a dog on the brain’s prefrontal cortex, revealing findings that could one day improve animal-assisted therapy treatments for humans. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

Learn more

JINKIES!

HBO

Velma preview: Harley Quinn meets Riverdale in HBO Max's meta mystery

While New York Comic Con was being rocked by the Super Mario Bros. trailer, another panel saw Mindy Kaling and frequent collaborator Charlie Grandy finally spill the beans on their upcoming HBO Max adult animation series, Velma.

Inverse saw the episode, and trust us when we tell you it’s not what you expect.

Inverse - 💊 Psychedelic therapy breakthrough

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