Summary:
- Researchers want to know if psychedelic therapies can treat gambling addiction
- The study uses brain imaging technology in mapping responses to gambling stimuli
- Gamblers may require just one therapy session to eliminate addiction
With gambling addiction increasingly becoming a global public health concern, a group of researchers in the UK are currently looking into new ways to deal with the problem.
They have launched a study into the potential use of so-called “psychedelic therapies” to treat gambling addiction after such therapies delivered encouraging results in the treatment of substance addictions.
Psychedelic Therapies Could Help Gambling Addiction
Spearheaded by the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, the new research aims to uncover whether psychedelic therapies are effective in treating behavioural addictions, such as gambling. In particular, researchers are studying the potential impact of the hallucinogenic substance “psilocybin”, also known as “magic mushrooms” on people struggling with gambling addiction.
With addiction generally considered a mental affair involving the pleasure/reward circuits in the brain, the study involves the use of brain imaging to get a picture of the brain’s responses to gambling stimuli.
One of the researchers, Dr. Rayyan Zafar, a member of the Department of Brain Sciences at Imperial, previously worked in that area in his PhD research at Imperial. That particular work had positive results and now the next step is to figure out whether psilocybin therapy can reverse or restore the dysfunction in gamblers’ brains, Dr. Zafar said.
Once researchers get what they’re looking for, a further study will be conducted on possible therapies. The end goal is to launch a proper clinical trial to determine if psychedelic therapies are safe and effective in clinical populations, Dr. Zafar shared.
How Psychedelic Therapy Works
Psychedelic therapy primarily works by stimulating insightfulness and expanding a person’s state of consciousness, according to clinical senior lecturer in psychiatry and head of the Centre for Psychedelic Research Dr. David Erritzoe. When it comes to treating gambling addiction, the idea is to combine psychedelic therapy with psychotherapy as they are likely to work in the same way. Dr. Erritzoe said.
Psychedelic therapy could also involve just one session, unlike traditional drug treatments for addiction where multiple doses are needed. Dr. Erritzoe said some patients could only require just a single therapy session to get rid of the addiction.
The ongoing research is funded by the UKRI Impact Acceleration Account grant, with support from the CIPPRes clinic and Invicro London.
