‘Magic mushrooms’ via drip: World-first experimental therapy revealed

Magic mushrooms will be used to treat Australian patients with eating disorders in a world-first trial.

A novel form of magic mushrooms will be used to treat Melbourne patients.

A novel form of magic mushrooms will be used to treat Melbourne patients with eating disorders in a world-first trial.

Scientists hope their new psychedelic drug, which is delivered through an IV drip, can treat binge eating disorder, a debilitating condition that attracts far less research investment than other illnesses.

Swinburne University has struck a deal with Tryptamine Therapeutics to hold the first patient trial of their experimental treatment.

Tryptamine Therapeutics chief executive Jason Carroll said the goal of treatment was to help patients “break the cycle” of negative thoughts.

“It’s about how the brain can rewire itself to remould itself,” he said.

He said patients undertake therapy in the lead up to prepare — and then again afterwards, to process what happened — but unlike other psychedelics there was no psychological therapy during the “inward”-focused experience.

“There’s no interactions with the therapist during therapy itself,” he said.

Patients do therapy before and after — but not during.

He said when a patient takes psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound in magic mushrooms, our body breaks it down and eventually produces psilocin.

“A certain amount of this drug then enters the brain,” he said.

He said, instead of giving a patient psilocybin in the form of a pill like other psychedelic medications, the idea behind their therapy, TRP-8803, was to administer the active metabolite psilocin directly into the vein.

“It usually takes 15 minutes to take effect,” he said.

“Our innovation allows for more precise control over the onset and duration of the psychedelic experience and time in the potential therapeutic zone.

“This is finished within a couple of hours.

“As well, we have the ability to reverse treatment quickly if required.”

He said other psychedelic treatments require a psychiatrist to observe patients for ten hours, making them difficult to scale in a stretched workforce.

But he said TRP-8803, as the drug-taking itself did not involve direct talk-therapy, would likely not need direct psychiatry supervision for the entire procedure and could be overseen in parts by a nurse.

“This makes it far more scalable,” he said.

The drug is still in early-stage research, and this trial — the first to involve patients after a successful one last year with healthy volunteers — will be very small.

But Mr Carroll said it was an exciting step and would provide them with crucial patient data needed to evaluate their drug.

Research lead Swinburne’s Professor Susan Rossell said we had an eating disorder and body image “crisis”.

“We have got record numbers of people who have these disorders and no real interventions for some people,” she said.

Interest in psychedelics to treat mental illness has been growing in recent years. Picture: Getty

“We have a record number of people that we class as treatment resistant and everything that we have in our toolbox today doesn’t work.”

She said it was important to emphasise that the drug did not work in isolation, and the psychotherapy component — which in the case of TRP-8803 was given before and after the experience — was crucial.

“One without the other doesn’t work,” she said.

“The psychedelic is opening people up to new experiences and then the psychotherapy that they might have been having for years, it becomes easier for that to work and it’s easier for people to work through the problems they have been having.”

She said people with eating disorders, including binge eating, were “struck is a pattern of behaviour” that they know is bad for them but cannot stop.

“[The behaviour] is their safety mechanism to help them overcome any dramas and traumas in their life,” she said.

“They’re unable to think differently.

“This is where psychedelic medicine can really help people.”

Current treatments do not work for all eating disorders patients.

The use of psychedelics in psychiatry is a growing field, but is not without controversy.

Australia made headlines around the world when we became the first country to, under strict conditions, allow psychiatrists to prescribe medicines containing psilocybin and MDMA for PTSD and treatment-resistant depression in 2023.

The decision by the Therapeutic Goods Association was met with mixed reaction in the medical community, with some celebrating it as a significant win for patients with difficult to treat mental illness.

But others questioned whether there was enough evidence to justify an approval, and called for more research into the emerging field.