Common mental health problems could be treated by LSD and magic mushrooms, says a leading psychiatrist.

But legal restrictions makes testing the drugs for any potential benefits extremely hard.

Writing in the BMJ, James Rucker, lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, said research was carried out in the 1950s and 1960s which indicated some positive impacts LSD and shrooms had on psychiatric cases.


But the drugs were outlawed and classed as doing more harm than good in a medical sense so experiments immediately halted.

Dr Rucker writes: ‘No evidence indicates that psychedelic drugs are habit forming; little evidence indicates that they are harmful in controlled settings; and much historical evidence shows that they could have use in common psychiatric disorders.’



Only four hospitals in the UK hold a license to store schedule 1 drugs. They come with a price tag of £5,000 which makes research five times as expensive.

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