New York University launching $10M Center for Psychedelic Medicine in Manhattan
(The AEGIS Alliance) – New York University plans to expand our minds — but in a groovy, far-out trippy kind of way.
NYU Langone Health’s Department of Psychiatry plans to create a Center for Psychedelic Medicine, a hallucinatory hub that may aid in research on treating chronic pain, addiction, opioid addiction, and also “existential distress” — amongst other bodily and emotional problems utilizing psychedelics. NYU researchers are already involved with research on the treatment of alcoholism, anxiousness, and major depressive disorder with psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms or “shrooms”) and the treatment for severe cases of PTSD with MDM, also referred to as ecstasy and molly.
The program was announced on Wednesday and it is also planned to be the headquarters for NYU’s new Psychedelic Medicine Research Training Program, which is able to try and make psychedelic medicine more mainstream and increase the number of specialists within the medical field.
The new facility is backed by $10 million from donors, together with Dr. Bronner’s established protocols and psychedelic medication company MindMed.
The center is being created to “ensure that the momentum created by the modern psychedelic renaissance is sustained,” NYU psychiatry professor Michael P. Bogenschutz said, who is expected to be the center’s director.
Benefactors believe the program won’t only advance psychedelic-inspired medicinal research, but additionally assist those affected by “some of the most prevalent issues in mental health for patients,” a statement reads, which added, “We are very excited about what the future holds.”
The center comes amid a surge in medicinal interest in psychedelics, with when Oregon in November became the first state to legalize magic mushrooms, and California presently contemplating a bill that may decriminalize acid (or LSD). Last August, a guided ketamine trip therapy clinic opened its doors in Manhattan.
Recreationally, psychedelics seem like they’re more popular than ever. A study in July 2020 led researchers to discover that LSD has grown to be exponentially more popular amongst American adults because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“LSD is used primarily to escape. And given that the world’s on fire, people might be using it as a therapeutic mechanism,” University of Cincinnati doctoral candidate Andrew Yockey informed Scientific American at the time. “Now that COVID’s hit, I’d guess that use has probably tripled.”
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
