Safety

Safety

Medicinal ketamine, psilocybin and MDMA appear to be very safe to use in a medically controlled environment and are non-addictive. A number of large multi-site international ‘Phase 3’ trials of both psilocybin and MDMA are set to commence in the next 2 to 3 years. These trials are essential to determine whether the promising results seen to date will hold up in larger and more realistic clinical settings.

While classical psychedelics pose only negligible toxicity or dependence risks, psychological risks need to be better understood and mitigated. To date, research trials have done well to select appropriate participants and conduct trials in such a way as to produce impressive levels of safety. However, in order to offer these therapies to a much larger proportion of the population, more work is needed to understand the psychological risks and how to maintain the currently low levels of adverse events.