Chronic Pain

Andrés Gómez Emilsson is one of the co-founders and the director of research at the Qualia Research Institute (QRI), a non-profit that investigates consciousness from a mathematical point of view with the goal of preventing suffering and enhancing wellbeing. He utilizes his education in psychology and professional experience as a data scientist to study exotic states of consciousness and their computational properties. One facet of his work at QRI involves researching psychedelics as a curative to extreme suffering and pain. In this talk, Andrés discusses this unusual application for psychedelics and articulates why this approach to reducing suffering is neglected, tractable, and significant. He argues that this approach has the potential to be as impactful for preventing suffering as the advent of anesthesia was for surgery.

Healthcare providers face the challenging task of managing patients who suffer from chronic nociplastic pain conditions. Pain is a multidimensional experience, and the current approach to managing people in chronic pain often fails to meet the needs of these patients. Novel ways of treating people who suffer from chronic nociplastic pain with classic psychedelic agents may offer a new lens through which to approach their pain. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin are both serotonergic agents with a long history of use in treating people with chronic pain and mental health disorders. 

Amid a lack of effective chronic pain treatments, psychedelics have gained attention as a potential solution, although their Schedule 1 classification poses challenges.
Psychedelics, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin, have gained popularity as alternatives and adjuncts for chronic pain treatment. 

Ongoing clinical trials have demonstrated that psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD can have rapid and long-lived antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects. A related clinical problem is chronic pain, which is notoriously difficult to treat and often associated with depression and anxiety.

People with headache disorders that persist despite treatment with available medications may attempt self-treatment using alternative substances. Secondary plant metabolites have established biological activity and molecular mechanisms. Among these are cannabis and typical and atypical psychedelics (Figure). This article will cover 2 plants with therapeutic potential for migraine that are US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Schedule 1 drugs: cannabis and psilocybin. We will also discuss ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic.

According to Dr. Schindler, psychedelics are “chemically and pharmacologically very similar to existing conventional headache medications.” Psilocybin has been reported to reduce pain and other symptoms of cluster headache after a single or a few doses. In rare cases, it may even lead to complete remission.