Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy for Treating Substance Use Disorders

Despite the rapid growth in the field of mental health, therapists still have relatively limited options when it comes to treating mental disorders. A promising field of study in recent years has been the research conducted on psychedelics. Many studies, mainly from the US and the UK have found proof that psychedelics such as psilocybin could be used in the treatment of depression (R. Carhart-Harris, 2016) and that MDMA could be used in the treatment of PTSD (JM Mitchell, 2021). According to these findings psychedelics could become an useful tool for therapists in the near future. Even though there have been many papers published on psychedelics during this so called ''psychedelic renaissance'', there have been relatively fewer papers published on using psychedelics to treat substance use disorders. There are studies that show promising result especially when it comes to smoking cessation (Matthew W. Johnson, 2014), alcoholism (Michael P. Bogenschutz, 2015) and opioid addiction (John M. Corkery, 2018). An advancement in this field is not only important, but necessary to combat substance abuse more effectively in the future.