John McCorvy, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell Biology, Neurobiology, and Anatomy at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW); Adam Halberstadt, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and Director of the UCSD Center for Psychedelic Research; and Kevin Murnane, PhD, Associate Professor of Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Neuroscience and Director of Basic Science Research for the Louisiana Addiction Research Center at LSU Health Shreveport, were recently awarded a five-year, $2.4 million research grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to uncover critical insights into how psychedelics could be used as a therapeutic to treat methamphetamine addiction. Stimulant use disorder and methamphetamine-related overdose deaths are escalating at an alarming rate.
According to data from NIDA, the number of overdose deaths in the United States involving psychostimulants (primarily methamphetamine) has grown significantly since 2015 when there were 5,716 attributed deaths. In 2022, NIDA reported 34,022 overdose deaths involving psychostimulants – a nearly 500% increase from 2015 to 2022. Psychedelic substances, like psilocybin, have shown promise in treating a wide range of behavioral health conditions, including anxiety, depression, alcoholism, and nicotine dependence.
However, these substances interact with multiple receptors and are not specifically selective for the ser.