Researchers from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas have initiated a study on psychedelics drugs such as LCD, mescaline and psilocybin among others to find out their potential mental health application of these drugs.
The above drugs are considered Schedule 1 drugs by the federal government and for decades now most Universities and research institutions have been shying away from researching on the positive or negative effects of these drugs.
Dr. Dustin Hines will be a leading researcher in the study by UNLV together with his wife Dr. Rochelle Hines and Ph.D candidate April Contreras. According to Dr. Hines, the available dtat on psychedelics compounds only captures up to the 1960s whereas he use of psychedelics started about 10,000 years ago.
Dr. Hines who is a brain specialist says the current state right now on psychedelics compounds is that ‘they don’t know’. Researches on how psychedelics change the brain and could be therapeutic only started 5 to 10 years ago.
The lab at UNLV considers the psychedelics compounds as schedule 1 drugs and only a few of them will be used on the study. Dr. Rochelle Hines says the long process to carry out the study begun with the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy, then the Drug Enforcement Agency.
“We started hearing more and more about investigations into psychedelics, especially for end of life care. We started to become really interested in how powerful these substances were, and really want to try to understand mechanistically, what their potential was for how they might be working on the brain,” added Dr. Rochelle.
