Australia has become the first country to recognize psychedelics as medicines, after the Therapeutic Goods Administration took researchers by surprise and approved the psychedelic substances in magic mushrooms and MDMA for use by people with certain mental health conditions.
MDMA and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, will be considered schedule 8 drugs – meaning they’re approved for controlled use when prescribed by a psychiatrist – from July this year after the TGA acknowledged there were few other options for patients with specific treatment-resistant mental illnesses.
The changes will allow MDMA to be used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. They will still be considered prohibited substances – or schedule 9 drugs – for all other usages.
“Prescribing will be limited to psychiatrists, given their specialized qualifications and expertise to diagnose and treat patients with serious mental health conditions,” a TGA statement published on Friday said. Psychiatrists will also first need to be approved by the TGA’s authorized prescriber scheme.
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The announcement marks a positive step forward in drug policy reform after years of archaic and heavy-handed rulings dictated by governments around the world. A clinical senior lecturer in emergency medicine at Australian National University, added that reclassifying MDMA and psilocybin as controlled substances helps move away from the “demonization” that has surrounded the two drugs for decades. He went on to say that the drugs “can have dramatic effects on conditions often considered refractory to contemporary treatment” and could prove to be particularly helpful for returning service people.
From July onwards, methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (known as MDMA or ecstasy) and psilocybin (magic mushrooms) will be available on prescription. Psychiatrists will be able to prescribe the former drug for post-traumatic stress disorder and the latter for treatment-resistant depression. The administration said the drugs are “relatively safe” in a medical setting, and helped patients by providing an “altered state of consciousness”.
Ecstasy was in circulation down under in the 80s, predominantly in party and rave scenes, and was subsequently being criminalized in ‘87. The demonization of these drugs by governments around the world is being revisited, and rightly so, as the steps toward treatment-resistant mental illnesses are now under review. Australia is trialling its drug reform policies by legalizing shrooms and ecstasy, and are looking into closely controlled clinical trials to introduce the drug into the medicinal system.
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