Altering perceptions: Good outcomes from "club drugs"?

Researchers are investigating whether the illicit drugs that keep some revelers on the dance floor for hours have legitimate medical uses.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Oct. 1, 2007.

John H. Halpern, MD, associate director of substance abuse research at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., was researching the long-term consequences of hallucinogen use among American Indians when he noticed something. Many of his subjects' experiences were positive, and he became part of a select group of researchers who chose to investigate whether certain controlled substances -- drugs bought and sold on the sly at nightclubs and parties or on the street -- could, under the right circumstances and in the hands of trained medical professionals, benefit patients.

Much of this work has regulatory approval. Some has government funding.

"If you're interested in studying the potential harms from these substances, you come face to face with people describing beneficial uses from [them]. That [finding] merits good, careful research to follow up, too," said Dr. Halpern, who is also an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

His work includes a Food and Drug Administration-approved study into whether ecstasy (methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA) can reduce the anxiety of terminal cancer patients. Other current projects on so-called "club drugs" include research funded by the National Institute of Mental Health into ketamine as a treatment for major depression and a FDA-approved study regarding the use of MDMA for posttraumatic stress disorder. Researchers at the University of Arizona are investigating psilocybin, the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms," as an option for obsessive-compulsive disorder. In addition, the first study in decades into lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD, in a medical setting is expected to launch this fall in Switzerland.