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CASE REPORT article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Addictive Disorders
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1490907
This article is part of the Research Topic Emerging Treatment Approaches for Substance Use Disorders View all articles

Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for methamphetamine dependence: A case report involving daily methamphetamine use Authors

Provisionally accepted
Jonathan Brett Jonathan Brett 1,2*Elizabeth Knock Elizabeth Knock 2Kathy Watson Kathy Watson 2Steven Albert Steven Albert 1,2Krista Siefried Krista Siefried 2Jeffrey Richard Guss Jeffrey Richard Guss 3
  • 1 University of New South Wales, Kensington, Australia
  • 2 St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney, Darlinghurst, New South Wales, Australia
  • 3 Grossman School of Medicine, New York University, New York, New York, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Methamphetamine (MA) dependence leads to severe physical and psychological issues. Current treatments, including psychosocial therapies and residential rehabilitation, face limitations such as high relapse rates, cost, and accessibility issues. As a result, there is an urgent need for novel approaches to treat MA dependence that are effective, affordable and accessible to patients. Psilocybin, the active component in numerous mushrooms of the Psilocybe genus, has shown potential for enhancing psychotherapy for various addiction and mental health issues due to its effects on perception, cognition, and affect. Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy (PAT) has demonstrated initial safety and efficacy in treating alcohol, cocaine and nicotine dependence. The case presented here describes a 36-year-old transwoman and daily MA user, who participated in a single-arm open-label clinical trial assessing feasibility and safety of PAT for MA dependence at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. Following inpatient withdrawal management and one session of psilocybin-assisted therapy, she experienced significant cognitive and emotional shifts, as well as sustained MA abstinence. She reported improved mental health over three months following treatment completion. She also noted increased self-esteem, mindfulness, and distress tolerance. This study suggests that PAT (following inpatient MA withdrawal management) may offer a scalable, safe and effective approach for treating MA dependence. However, further research is required to confirm the generalizability and efficacy of PAT for broader populations of people using MA. It is encouraging that this participant, a daily MA user, showed improvements in mood and cognition, in addition to abstinence from MA.

    Keywords: psilocybin, Psychotherapy, methamphetamine use disorder, Treatment, psychedelic

    Received: 03 Sep 2024; Accepted: 23 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Brett, Knock, Watson, Albert, Siefried and Guss. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jonathan Brett, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Australia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.