Pilot Study of the 5-HT2AR Agonist Psilocybin in the Treatment of Tobacco Addiction

By Matthew W. Johnson, A. Garcia-Romeu, Mary P Cosimano, Roland R. Griffiths. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2014

848 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Despite suggestive early findings on the therapeutic use of hallucinogens in the treatment of substance use disorders, rigorous follow-up has not been conducted. To determine the safety and feasibility of psilocybin as an adjunct to tobacco smoking cessation treatment we conducted an open-label pilot study administering moderate (20 mg/70 kg) and high (30 mg/70 kg) doses of psilocybin within a structured 15-week smoking cessation treatment protocol. Participants were 15 psychiatrically healthy nicotine-dependent smokers (10 males; mean age of 51 years), with a mean of six previous lifetime quit attempts, and smoking a mean of 19 cigarettes per day for a mean of 31 years at intake. Biomarkers assessing smoking status, and self-report measures of smoking behavior demonstrated that 12 of 15 participants (80%) showed seven-day point prevalence abstinence at 6-month follow-up. The observed smoking cessation rate substantially exceeds rates commonly reported for other behavioral and/or pharmacological therapies (typically <35%). Although the open-label design does not allow for definitive conclusions regarding the efficacy of psilocybin, these findings suggest psilocybin may be a potentially efficacious adjunct to current smoking cessation treatment models. The present study illustrates a framework for future research on the efficacy and mechanisms of hallucinogen-facilitated treatment of addiction.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology, Pharmacology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/89d02f111f332f0ba12fde0291e0d3ff6d8b616e

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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

In Clinical Psychology

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David E. Nichols

Citations in the corpus

Developing Guidelines and Competencies for the Training of Psychedelic Therapists (2017, background): “A pilot study looking at psilocybin for the treatment of tobacco addiction found a significant correlation between mystical experience measures and smoking cessation outcomes (Bogenschutz & Johnson, 2016; Johnson et al., 2014).”
Psilocybin-assisted treatment for alcohol dependence: A proof-of-concept study (2015, positive): “A recent pilot study of psilocybin as an adjunct in smoking cessation treatment resulted in remarkable rates of abstinence (80% point abstinence at 6-month follow-up) (Johnson et al., 2014).”
The Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Drugs: Past, Present, and Future (2017, background): “…clinical development of psychedelics, RLC-H sees it as a potentially exploitable component—especially as it has been shown to be predictive of long-term clinical outcomes (eg, in Johnson et al, 2014; Bogenschutz et al, 2015; Griffiths et al, 2016; Ross et al, 2016; Carhart-Harris et al, 2016a,b).”
Rapid and sustained symptom reduction following psilocybin treatment for anxiety and depression in patients with life-threatening cancer: a randomized controlled trial (2016, background): “It is further corroborated by recent open-label trials using psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy to treat tobacco addiction (Garcia-Romeu et al., 2014; Johnson et al., 2014) and alcoholism (Bogenschutz et al.”
Psilocybin with psychological support for treatment-resistant depression: six-month follow-up (2017, background): “Psilocybin has shown promise in the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder (Moreno et al. 2006), alcohol (Bogenschutz et al. 2015) and tobacco addiction (Johnson et al. 2014) and anxiety related to terminal diagnoses (Griffiths et al. 2016; Ross et al. 2016; Grob et al. 2011).”
Psychedelics (2016, background): “In a follow-up to the report by Johnson et al. (2014), Garcia-Romeu et al. (2014) reported that abstainers scored significantly higher on a measure of psilocybinoccasioned mystical experience.”