The researchers were surprised at the beginning of this year, when the regulator of the pharmaceutical sector approved the use of narcotic hallucinogenic drugs to help in treatment sessions.

 

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Edited by| Tony Wild

 

Health  section -  CJ journalist

 

Sydney - July,2,2023

 

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According to the” BBC " the decision will include the use of psilocybin, which is contained in magic mushrooms (or narcotic mushrooms), in severe depressive states resistant to treatment. The decision will also allow the use of MDMA drugs, also known as “ecstasy”, in the treatment of post-traumatic conditions.

The new amendments will be implemented from Saturday, making Australia the first country to classify narcotic drugs as medicines at the national level.

While initial access to these drugs will be limited and expensive, many experts and patients described the decision as a historic moment.

But major health organizations called for caution.

When 33-year-old former soldier Glen Boyes suggested taking low doses of narcotic drugs to treat his severe depression, his attending physician doubted.

He said that his doctor explained to him that he was not doing this, “but he could not stop me, and he did a brain scan to track my progress”.

He added that he began to suffer from “post-traumatic stress disorder” during his work with the Army during the lockdown imposed due to the corona epidemic in Sydney.

But after 10 weeks of low doses and treatment sessions, tests showed that blockages in red areas of his brain had disappeared. He says, " the fog has evaporated from my brain “ I can now think clearly again”.

Since no other state has scheduled these substances for therapeutic use at the national level, the group that has tested narcotic treatments is still small.

The head of Psychopharmacology and neuropharmacology at the British Imperial College, professor David Nutt, congratulated Australia for “world leadership in this vital therapeutic innovation”.

The researcher in the affairs of narcotic drugs, psychotherapist Dr. Ben Sessa, called the decision groundbreaking. “This is where the spotlight is now on drugs in the world,”he said.

Dr. Sessa has resigned from his job managing the main drug treatment organization in Britain, and will spend the next eighteen months traveling to Australia, to offer a customized training program in prescribing narcotic drugs.

Other countries have explored drugs for Compassionate Use, including Canada, Switzerland and Israel – where regulators have resorted to similar decisions, although they have not been officially adopted at the national level, as Australia has done.

Narcotherapy clinics also operate legally in countries such as Jamaica and Costa Rica.

But attention will turn to how Australia dispenses prescriptions for the two drugs, and at what cost.

The drug ecstasy was developed as an appetite suppressant in 1912, and was used in therapy sessions in the United States until the mid-seventies, until it was banned. Ecstasy was introduced to Australia as a party drug, because of what was said about its effect on increasing energy, empathy and pleasure, and its use was criminalized in 1987.

However, research on these drugs slowly returned after 2000 – recent tests have shown that “MDMA” and psilocybin can quickly improve the symptoms of severe depression, although there is little information about how they work.

To obtain a license to prescribe these treatments, psychotherapists must apply from the Ethics Committee and the Medicines Regulatory Authority of Australia. And then they have to get a source to supply them with both substances.

Once all expenses are accounted for – including the cost of the drugs themselves, supervision by multidisciplinary teams, sessions of Psychiatrists and hiring a private clinic-the costs can rise to 30 thousand Australian dollars (20 thousand US dollars) per treatment, according to one psychopharmacologist.

Given the high costs, senior lecturer at Edith Cowan University in Australia, Dr. Stephen Bright, doubts that these treatments will be” very widely available", between the first year and even a year and a half.

Although the president of the association “Mind Medicine Australia” opposed these estimates – an association that promotes treatment with these drugs-saying that the cost is lower, the costs are expected to remain prohibitive for most patients, especially in the absence of planned government support.

Major medical bodies and those responsible for mental health have joined the loud voices rejecting drug treatment.

“There is a great deal of caution among the scientific and medical community,”said Christine Morelli, professor of Addiction Medicine at the University of Sydney.

According to the Mind Medicine Association, “the weight of applications submitted by thousands of Australians whose psychological treatments do not work “contributed to obtaining the approval of the regulator.

But the Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australasian-New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, expressed serious concerns. They called for large-scale studies, warning of unknown risks, long-term side effects, and”very limited benefits” from their use in treatment.

Professor Richard Harvey, head of the narcotherapy steering group at the Australian Medical Association Royal Australasian-New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, warned that “narcotherapy may give hope to a small number of people where other treatment attempts have failed. But it's not a magic cure"”

He urged a "cautious, thoughtful and informed" approach, because of the”possibility that narcotic substances can cause fear, panic and shock". He said it was also unclear whether the results of the drug treatments stemmed more from the substances themselves or psychotherapy.

He added: "Simply the drug-assisted treatment is in its early stages “ There is more we need to know”.

 

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