Swiss scientists broke a four-decade-long informal ban on LSD research yesterday when they announced the results of a study in which cancer patients received the drug to curb their anxiety about death. 
 
 The study, which was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, looked at the safety and efficacy of LSD when used in combination with talk therapy. The researchers used the semisynthetic psychedelic drug to facilitate discussions about the cancer patients' fears of dying. The patients who took LSD, most of whom were terminally ill, experienced 10-hour-long supervised "trips." One patient described the trips to The New York Times as a "mystical experience," where "the major part was pure distress at all the memories I had successfully forgotten for decades." 
 
 These periods of distress are regarded as therapeutically valuable because they allow patients to address their memories and the emotions they evoke. The patients underwent 30 such trips over the course of two months. 
 
 A year after the sessions ceased, the patients who had received a full dose of LSD — 200 micrograms — experienced a 20 percent improvement in their anxiety levels. That was not the case for the group who received a lower dose, however, as their anxiety symptoms actually increased. They were later allowed to try the full dose after the trial had ended. 
 
 "We want to break these substances out of the mold of the counterculture." 
 
 Because of the small number of study participants, the researchers are reluctant to make any conclusive statements about the LSD treatment's effectiveness. Indeed, the results were not statistically significant. But the fact that the study took place at all bodes well for psychedelic drug research, as the drug caused no serious side effects. Rick Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a foundation that has funded many of these studies, thinks that revisiting LSD-based treatments is worthwhile. "We want to break these substances out of the mold of the counterculture," Doblin told The New York Times, "and bring them back to the lab as part of a psychedelic renaissance." ||||| Misha Kaminsky/Getty 
 
 Can a psychedelic trip change the way people with life-threatening cancer face death? Results from two clinical trials suggest so. 
 
 Researchers have shown that a single dose of psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – combined with psychotherapy reduces depression and anxiety and increases feelings of wellbeing in people with cancer. What’s more, for most, these effects appeared to last for more than six months. 
 
 Psilocybin, along with other psychedelic drugs like LSD, was banned in the late 1960s. But an increased understanding of the drug’s physiological mechanisms has sparked a revival of research into its potential therapeutic benefits. Several small trials have shown its promise as a treatment for alcoholism, opiate addiction, depression and anxiety. 
 
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 People with cancer often develop chronic symptoms of depression and anxiety, and antidepressants appear to be of little help. Some small studies have suggested that psilocybin could be an alternative. 
 
 To investigate, teams from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and NYU Langone Medical Centre in New York carried out two trials involving 80 people with cancer and symptoms of depression and anxiety. 
 
 In one trial, each volunteer participated in a psychotherapy session aided by either a single high dose of psilocybin or a low placebo-like dose of psilocybin. Five to seven weeks after this session, they took part in a second session with the other drug. 
 
 The second trial was run in a similar manner, except it used Vitamin B3 as a placebo. 
 
 Inner experience 
 
 During each session, the subjects laid on a couch, wore a blindfold and listened to music. They were accompanied by two researchers and were encouraged to focus their attention on their inner experiences. 
 
 To assess the volunteers’ responses, the trials used a variety of psychological and physiological measures, including blood pressure and heart rate, clinician-based tests and self-reported questionnaires. These assessments were carried out before each session and at either two or three points over the next six months. At the end of the trial, their families, friends and work colleagues were also interviewed to gauge their thoughts on the participant’s wellbeing. 
 
 Results across the two trials showed that psilocybin produced immediate and significant decreases in measures of depression, anxiety and mood disturbance, and increases in measures of quality of life, life meaning, death acceptance and optimism. These benefits were still present in 80 per cent of participants after six months. 
 
 The core feature of a psilocybin experience is a sense of unity; a feeling that everything is connected at some level, says Roland Griffiths, who led the Hopkins trial. 
 
 “After this kind of experience, people feel that they’ve learned something that’s of deep meaning and value to them,” he says. “They attribute changes in how they approach life, interact with people and to their value systems to that experience.” 
 
 There were no serious adverse effects in either trial, although there were some reports of nausea, headache and transient anxiety. The results together form the most extensive trial of psilocybin for treatment of depression and anxiety. 
 
 Alternative treatment 
 
 Stephen Ross, lead investigator on the NYU Langone trial, highlights the need for an alternative to the available care for people with cancer. “Anywhere from 40 to 50 per cent of cancer patients will have diagnosable anxiety or depression,” he says. “The [current] treatments, like antidepressants, really don’t work any better than placebo.” 
 
 In a commentary published alongside the trials, Richard Shelton and Peter Hendricks, both at the University of Alabama, at Birmingham, call into question the integrity of the placebo design in both trials, as none of the participants were asked which drug they thought they had received after each session. 
 
 This is normally carried out to ensure that the placebo arm of a trial is realistic enough. If people cannot accurately guess which drug they were given, it ensures that the results are down to the drug and not any other factor. However, they note that due to the hallucinogenic effects of the real drug, it may be unfeasible to create a placebo that is indistinguishable from the real thing, as is often the case with studies of psychoactive drugs. 
 
 Ross says the study now needs to be carried out on a larger sample of people. “Even though our two trials together replicated the same study and would lead one to think this is a real effect, it needs to be done in a larger, nationally representative cancer sample,” he says. “And if that trial shows what we showed then psilocybin potentially could be rescheduled to become a prescription medication for cancer related anxiety and depression.” 
 
 Journal references: Journal of Psychopharmacology, DOI: 10.1177/0269881116675512; DOI: 10.1177/0269881116675513 ||||| While higher doses of psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin cause trippy visual hallucinations, lower doses may not cause the same impairments, anecdotal reports suggest. 
 
 Editor's Note: This article was updated at 5:15 p.m. E.T. 
 
 For Martijn Schirp, it's a way to make an ordinary day just a little bit better. 
 
 A former poker player and recent graduate in interdisciplinary science in Amsterdam, Schirp has been experimenting with a new way to take psychedelic drugs: Called microdosing, it involves routinely taking a small fraction of a normal dose of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or magic mushrooms (the latter is legal to purchase in coffeeshops in Amsterdam but not the former). 
 
 Microdosing has gained a cult following amongst a small group of hallucinogen enthusiasts like Schirp, who now writes at HighExistence.com. Proponents report improvements in perception, mood and focus, minus the trippy tangerine trees and marmalade skies normally associated with psychedelics. 
 
 Schirp said he prefers to microdose when he's immersed in creative or contemplative activities, such as writing, painting, meditating or doing yoga. 
 
 "It's like the coffee to wake up the mind-body connection. When I notice it is working, depending on the dosage, time seems to be slowing down a bit, everything seems covered with a layer of extra significance," Schirp told Live Science in an email. 
 
 Given his positive experiences with higher doses of psychedelics, "microdosing offered a way to get a taste of this without [the experience] completely overwhelming me," Schirp said. [Trippy Tales: The History of 8 Hallucinogens] 
 
 But while the effects Schirp and others describe are plausible from a physiological perspective, microdosing is uncharted territory, said Matt Johnson, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who has studied the behavioral effects of psychedelic drugs. Scientists have yet to run a clinical trial to assess the effects (or lack thereof) of microdosing. Johnson added that taking a smaller dose of a psychedelic is safer than taking a large dose, but the way people tend to do it — regularly taking small doses every several days — could have long-term side effects. 
 
 Just a little bit 
 
 The idea of taking small doses of psychedelics has been around for a while. The inventor of LSD, Albert Hofmann, was known to microdose in his old age and told a friend that microdosing was an under-researched area. But microdosing gained greater visibility when James Fadiman, a psychologist and researcher at Sofia University in Palo Alto, California, described it in his book "The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide" (Park Street Press, 2011). 
 
 Since then, Fadiman has received about 50 anecdotal reports from microdosers around the world. Most report positive, barely perceptible shifts while microdosing, Fadiman said. [Images: Scientists Analyze Drawings by an Acid-Tripping Artist] 
 
 "What people say is that whatever they're doing, they seem to be doing it a little better," Fadiman told Live Science. "They're a little kinder, a little bit nicer with their kids." 
 
 People with creative jobs report improved focus and an ability to enter the state of flow more easily. Some report a desire to eat healthier or start meditating, Fadiman said. 
 
 "It's like they tend to live a little better," Fadiman said. 
 
 Still others report taking the teeny doses of psychedelics for psychiatric conditions, said Brad Burge, the director of marketing and communications at Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in Santa Cruz, California, where scientists study the effect of psychedelics on medical conditions such as PTSD. 
 
 "I've heard anecdotally of people using it for depression, seasonal affective disorder, anxiety, OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder]," Burge told Live Science. "With microdoses, the point would be to create subtle changes in people's psychopharmacology or experience, in much the same way as most traditional pharmaceuticals are used now." 
 
 Plausible mechanism, no evidence 
 
 The effects people report with microdoses of LSD, psilocybin, DMT or other "classic" psychedelics aren't completely implausible, Johnson said. All of these drugs work by activating a particular receptor in the brain known as the serotonin 5HT-2A receptor. This receptor fuels the release of the "feel-good" brain chemical, serotonin, which creates a domino effect in the brain that leads to many other brain changes. 
 
 At high doses, these drugs temporarily, but radically, reshape brain networks; for instance, one study found that magic mushrooms create a hyperconnected brain. But antidepressants like Prozac also target serotonin receptors, so it's possible that a low, constant dose of a psychedelic might work in a similar manner, Johnson said. [11 Odd Facts About Magic Mushrooms] 
 
 Still, there's absolutely no evidence to suggest microdosing works as people claim it does, Johnson said. The effects described are so subtle — on par with having the caffeine in a cup of coffee — that they "fall within that category of barely perceptible, and it's right in the range where people can so easily fool themselves," Johnson told Live Science. That means microdosing is particularly susceptible to the placebo effect, in which people taking a sugar pill who believe they're taking a drug report perceptible effects, he said. 
 
 To prove that microdosing has an effect, psychedelics researchers would need to do a double-blind study, in which neither the people administering the drug nor the recipients know whether a particular participant is getting a microdose of a psychedelic or something inert, like a little sugar dissolved in water, Johnson said. Some groups of people are allegedly doing these trials — but because LSD is illegal, and is only approved for research use in a few small trials in a few locations, all of these people are off the grid and not publicizing their efforts, Fadiman said. 
 
 Unknown side effects 
 
 What's more, microdosing could have side effects, Johnson said. The few microscopic grains of LSD — just 10 micrograms — typically used to microdose are too tiny to measure even on a professional laboratory scale, Johnson said. To get around this, people who microdose typically take a blotter paper laced with one hit of LSD, soak it in water and then drink some of the water. But since LSD is an illegal substance procured on the black market, there's really no way to know exactly what you're getting, Johnson said. 
 
 Even in the lab, with carefully measured doses of drugs administered in a controlled environment, Johnson has found substantial variation in the way that people react to the same dose. Combined, those two uncertainties mean people may not be able to reliably microdose, he said. 
 
 "Someone might be expecting a kind of sparkly day, just a really productive day at work — and next thing you know, they're grasping hold to their office chair wondering why the world is dissolving," Johnson said. 
 
 Schirp, for instance, has occasionally had negative microdosing experiences. 
 
 "At times, the experience was still too overwhelming to be productive — I just wanted to lay down or take a walk," Schirp said. 
 
 Beyond that possible experience, the long-term risks of the drug are unknown. The risk of taking a single, tiny dose of LSD or psilocybin is going to be smaller than the risk of taking one big hit, Johnson said. But even the most dedicated psychonauts don't typically trip daily or even weekly, Johnson said. By contrast, people who are microdosing report using the drugs every three or four days, he said. 
 
 Such frequent use could have unknown, long-term side effects, he said. 
 
 "You're tinkering with the system that is involved with depressive systems, but in unexplored ways," Johnson said. 
 
 Editor's Note: This article was updated to correct the spelling of Martijn Schirp's name. 
 
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– Researchers experimented with LSD in psychiatric treatment until such research was effectively banned in the US in 1966—but now a Swiss psychiatrist has conducted the first controlled trial of the hallucinogenic drug in more than four decades, with US FDA approval. Dr. Peter Gasser's study involved 12 people who were dying, most of terminal cancer, and suffering from "deep anxiety," the Seattle Times reports. After undergoing talk therapy, eight of the patients were given a 200-microgram dose of LSD designed to "produce the full spectrum of a typical LSD experience" on two occasions; the other four received a 20-microgram "active placebo" that wasn't expected to have an impact. They took their 10-hour "trips" in Gasser's office, and, he says, "Their anxiety went down and stayed down." Specifically, subjects who received full doses of LSD saw a 20% improvement in their anxiety symptoms, and for those who were still alive a year later, the improvement had lasted, the New York Times reports. Those who took the placebo reported increased anxiety. It doesn't sound like a comforting experience at first: The Verge says the purpose of administering the psychedelic drug was to "facilitate discussions about the patients' fears of dying," and one patient reports that "the major part was pure distress at all these memories I had successfully forgotten for decades. These painful feelings, regrets, this fear of death." But he talked about all that with Gasser, something he'd found difficult prior to the trip; the Times refers to such distress as "therapeutically valuable," and many subjects had similar experiences. Other than that, no serious side effects were seen.