People with major depressive disorder can see a rapid and lasting improvement after a single dose of the psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT) when it is combined with psychotherapy, doctors have said.
A small clinical trial involving 34 people found that psychedelic-assisted therapy prompted a swift reduction in depressive symptoms that endured long after the drug had worn off, with some still feeling the benefits six months later.
“There is an immediate antidepressant effect that is significantly sustained over a three-month period and that’s exciting because this is one session with a drug, embedded in psychological support,” said Dr David Erritzoe, a psychiatrist at Imperial College London and lead investigator on the trial.
So is it just the DMT or is the psychotherapy part important? How important? What type of psychotherapy are they using, CBT, IPT, MPCT?
From the research papers I have read, psychedelics introduce a degree of neuroplasticity that allows psychotherapy to more effective. (I cannot speak to what types of psychotherapy would be more effective than another as I do not know or understand the differences.)
I attribute my use of psychedelics to helping me through my alcohol addiction. While it wasn’t guided therapy, it was still very controlled and allowed me to “rewrite” how I interpreted feelings and how I handled a variety of different situations. My hallucinations allowed my feelings to become more tangible and physical. I felt I had the opportunity to think differently about difficult parts of my life.
I suspect proper guidance is similar to what I did to myself: Have a person describe situations and the therapist proposes different ways to interpret those situations. The brain is able to physically form new pathways and sidestep old behaviors.
The DMT definitely has an impact, I guess you would need to go digging through the research to find the results of the questionnaire to compare both groups.