“That is a short period of psychosocial treatment, which is what excites me about this research – the potential to speed up, enhance or maximise on the conversations that we have as counsellors [with these patients].”

The dosage used seems to be the optimal amount to avoid unwanted side effects – such as hallucinations – but still trigger a psychedelic effect, she said.

“It is really about people feeling freer to tell stories in their heads without being tied down to their value,” Dr Brock said.

“It’s this internal psychological and spiritual experience that people describe as transformative … they describe being transported back to childhood or back to where they can have conversations with people and resolve situations.”

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One way to think about it, Dr Brett said, is to imagine the mind as a landscape of rolling hills, valleys and troughs.

“The troughs represent deeply held values and you can really get stuck in those troughs which is where the addiction sustains itself. Psilocybin allows the valleys to be flattened and people to shift their values more freely,” he said.

The trial will recruit 15 participants in August from among patients over 25-years-old who are already seeking treatment for meth addiction at St Vincent’s.

“These will be people who may have tried to achieve their goals but have not had success,” Dr Brett said.

The eligibility screening process will be strict. Patients can’t be taking any medication that may interact with the psychedelic, and will need to see a nurse, an addiction specialist and their psychiatrist before they are accepted.

Anyone with a history of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or a family history of either will be excluded.

“We won’t start with heavy users,” Dr Brett said. “They’ll be people who use over a long weekend or Fridays to Mondays. That is the safest place to start this research. If it’s safe and feasible in that population then we can expand it.”

The trial – funded by the National Centre for Clinical Research on Emerging Drugs –
will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity before and after the psilocybin-augmented therapy.

The trial will focus on the default node network – regions of the brain that activate when we’re awake but not focused on any particular task of mental exercise.

The network is responsible for introspection and mental time travel to experiences, and central to defining who we are, Dr Brett said, and previous research suggest psilocybin stabilises this network.

“We are looking for evidence of causation: that this treatment is effective for this reason,” he said.

The history of psychedelic research has been dogged by controversy since entering the mainstream in the 1930s.

“There were some very well-intentioned researchers, but they weren’t necessarily up to today’s standards,” Dr Brett said.

Then the political war on drugs in the 1970s stoked fear of the drugs among the public, and overzealous psychedelic researchers performed experiments that compromised the integrity of the field, he said.

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The researchers stressed they are not suggesting psilocybin is a standalone treatment.

“We must tread very carefully and follow the ethical and scientific processes,” Dr Brett said.

Last Wednesday, the federal government launched $15 million in grants for clinical trials to investigate whether psychedelic drugs could be potential breakthrough therapies for mental illnesses.

The announcement followed an interim decision by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in February that rejected a push to allow psychiatrists to prescribe MDMA and psilocybin led by not-for-profit organisation Mind Medicine Australia.

President of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists Associate Professor John Allan welcomed the funding and the TGA’s decision.

“Research into medicines containing psychedelic substances should only occur under research trial conditions that include oversight by an institutional research ethics committee and careful monitoring and reporting of effectiveness and safety outcomes,” Associate Professor Allan said.

“Trials like these will hopefully improve our knowledge, providing the evidence-based research to comprehensively assess the efficacy, safety and effectiveness of psychedelic therapies to inform future potential use in psychiatric practice.”