The Challenges of Doing Randomized Controlled Trials

Major depression, smoking, anorexia nervosa, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Alzheimer’s disease...is it possible for psychedelics to play a positive role in all of these conditions? There are indications the answer may be yes, which is why Dr. Al Garcia-Romeu and his colleagues at The Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research are so busy. “We're learning more, but as we learn more, the rabbit hole gets deeper and so it's a really fascinating time to be involved in this work and to see the expansion in all these different areas.” As he explains to Raise the Line host Shiv Gaglani, this is not about research for the sake of research. “A big part of the end goal here is to get this in a place where anybody who wants to quit smoking in the country can go to a clinic and get this type of treatment because we’ve shown that it seems to work.” Garcia-Romeu recognizes there are many steps to be taken before that’s a reality --including, of course, FDA approvals if clinical trials are successful -- but there is also a need to train a national corps of providers to guide psychedelic-assisted therapy sessions, a better system for recruiting diverse populations for studies, and insight into how current and future providers perceive psychedelics and their potential utility, a topic the Center is also researching. Don’t miss this in-depth look at the challenges and opportunities in a fascinating area of medical research.

Mentioned in this episode: https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/

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