«A recent study from Johns Hopkins University suggests that psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, may be more effective than nicotine patches in helping people quit smoking. This innovative approach is based on a direct comparison between the two treatments.
The findings reveal that those who received a single dose of psilocybin were six times more likely to abstain from smoking after six months compared to those who used nicotine patches.
This trial, published in JAMA Network Open, included 82 smokers and combined the use of the drug with cognitive behavioral therapy.
Addiction treatment
Experts point out that, unlike conventional methods, psilocybin operates differently by not targeting nicotine receptors, suggesting a new paradigm in the treatment of addiction.
“It's been 20 years since we've had a new drug to help people quit smoking,” says Megan Piper, who directs the University of Washington's Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention and was not involved in the research. “We need something novel, and this is definitely a novel approach,” she was quoted as saying by National Public Radio (NPR).
The results are generating a growing interest in research on psychedelics to treat public health problems related to addictions.
The Johns Hopkins study, while encouraging, needs to be replicated in larger and more diverse samples. Continued exploration of psilocybin's effects on the brain could reveal more about its potential to induce changes in outlook and autonomy in smokers, opening the door to new strategies to combat smoking.»
PSILOCYBIN HAS PROVEN TO BE THE MOST EFFECTIVE TREATMENT FOR SMOKING CESSATION.
Now that the Spanish government has approved the «anti-smoking plan», will they fund clinical trials with psilocybin to treat smoking after scientific studies in the U.S. showed that psilocybin is not effective in the treatment of smoking?
80 % of people who quit smoking?
«Dr. Matthew Johnson, a researcher and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has spent two decades researching how psilocybin can help tobacco addicts who are unable to quit smoking with other treatments.
In one of their studies, published in 2014, Dr. Johnson and his team found that addicts who had been smoking for a long time and had failed in their multiple attempts to quit, were able to do so thanks to controlled doses of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic active ingredient in the ‘magic mushrooms’. After treatment, administered under strict medical control, they found that 80% of the participants were still smoke-free six months after the trial.
The $4 million grant, awarded by the NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse, helped Johnson conduct three-year clinical trials (2021-2024) testing the efficacy of psilocybin therapy in a larger group of people.
The clinical trial led by Dr. Johnson, of Johns Hopkins Medicine, also involved researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and New York University.
Peter Hendricks, a researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says modern smoking cessation treatments are only effective 30% of the time. «We have to do better,» Hendricks says. «Psilocybin has the potential to significantly improve the efficacy of smoking cessation treatments. Considering that nearly half a million Americans die from smoking each year, this could end up saving millions of lives, if not more.»
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“Quitting smoking is not a biological reaction produced by the use of psilocybin, as is the case with other drugs that directly affect nicotine receptors. When administered after careful preparation and the proper therapeutic context, psilocybin can lead to deep reflection on one's life, providing the spark of motivation needed to change” (Matthew W. Johnson, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and author of the study).
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