MM120, a pharmaceutical form of LSD, shown to reduce anxiety symptoms (2025)
sciencedaily.com"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather."
-Bill Hicks
today an evolved monkey realized that the evolution of intelligence via genetic algorithms doesnt line up that well with the scientific trajectory of existence since the big bang , he then realized that his perception of existence would be exactly equivalent to that of a brain in a jar , his final realization was that all realizations are epheremal regardless as to how convincing or conclusive they may seem
Hell yeah man. Momentary lapse.
Thanks for reminding me of this. One of the all time greats.
Tool.
In case others don't know, Tool used this quote in their song Third Eye.
It's more than just a quote, it's a sample of Bill Hicks himself speaking it.
Unfortunately, I will probably never be able to try that for my GAD even if they confirm the positive effects due to stigma surrounding psychoactive drugs! Yay!
Nitpick: you will probably never be able to try it legally.
There are lots of ways you could try LSD tho.
Do you mean it won't be legalized because of stigma, or you personally wouldn't try them because of stigma?
People that think psychedelics are evil are just closed minded people that probably need psychedelics in their life. You probably don't want to pay attention to what they think. If you're genuinely looking for healing there are plenty of people that practice psychedelic assisted therapy around the world that could help you take those first steps. It's underground, but not terribly hard to find with some online searching.
Like, just don't tell anybody. And there are many things you haven't tried, like metabolic ketogenic therapy as an example.
Why? Stigma from whom?
MM120 is seeking FDA approval and there are many more in late stage trials for GAD.
psilocybin is easy to find (even legally, in certain jurisdictions) or cultivate yourself.
LSD and psilocybin are very different. Wouldn't think it, but it's true
Finding it's half the fun! Going out walking by a creek/river on a warm, rainy spring day is kind of an antidepressant in its own right. When you find a patch of Ovoids and pick a few, it's just all the better.
mhm where i live you can go to a hydro grow store and buy the spores that you definitely SHOULD NOT inject into the aio grow bag conveniently placed nearby lol
Some will sell an already conolized growbox. Much harder to fail than the spores.
yeah where i am that is definitely skirting the line haha. i am plenty happy that i can just go to the store and buy the spores and its a very nice gray area that no one is looking really looking at. Sadly we did have a proposal fail on the 2024 elections for legalizing a few forms of psychedelics, but also the interest is there which is nice.
I’d be afraid of a treatment like this where you’re sort of different after one treatment. From experience taking ssris, I took one one that worked so well that I had to stop taking it because it removed stress to the extent that I wouldn’t get to class on time or get my homework done before deadlines. Eventually I found a medicine that worked for me. But, if there’s a “before” vs “after” one shot treatment, you have to hope the new you is the one you want assuming you could be stuck there permanently.
When you have heavy generalized anxiety, you are usually willing to commit to that if it means there is a significant probability of coming out with an improved condition. I had such terrible panic attacks before my treatment with a bunch of different medication that I seriously considered and searched for electroconvulsive therapy and even help from shady religious institutions.
I might have gotten that desperate myself, but I finally found a great physiatrist that gave a shit and was competent. Simply taking Effexor removed my panic attacks without problematic side effects.
Yeah, changing psychiatrists also helped me. Unfortunately, I had to change drugs a couple of times and ended up taking multiple ones to end my panic attacks. Those drugs left me with long lasting tremors, even after I've stopped taking them, but the tremors are 10000x better than the panic attacks.
I think curing GAD will mean changing your personality. There's always going to be a before/after you, that's the whole point. The important part is being able to reliably know what the "after you" will be so you can be sure that you want that change to happen.
Curing anything changes your personality. I stopped biting my nails to the quick after 50 years - that's a difference!
The Ship of Theseus argument should never be used to justify retaining mental dysfunction. "What if I can't paint sunflowers if I stop being suicidal?" is a question; more decades of Van Gogh paintings would inarguably have been better.
Sounds like intended behavior. Instead of keeping working in shitty motivation loop (stress builds up so I will eventually get the stuff done), maybe changing habits a bit around your new me would be a better move, like doing tasks proactively as they come? Triple that if you were being cured for anxiety itself.
You got the chance for a more chill life compared to obviously more stressed one and you threw it away as 'too nice won't bother trying it'.
A good point, but if stress was your motivator, it might be better to work to reframe that and gain motivation through something else that isn't stress.
My experience was similar, with social anxiety suddenly removed it made me a bit of a dick for a while.
People underestimate the long-term impact of pharmacological treatments.
But also I get what you mean, even if its not totally rational.
This will be like legal weed. Assuming it isn't already, the pharma bean counters will turn it into something awful.
...legal weed is awful?
Weed is better, cheaper, safer, and more diverse that it has been in my lifetime (and I happily smoked it while it was illegal also).
Legal weed has been an enormous success (not that there was ever much doubt that it was going to be).
Agreed I’m not sure what the op is suggesting. I probably smoked brick weed a few times in high school but then didn’t again for ~20 years when I held a clearance.
Your local closet grower isn’t giving you a terpene percentage breakdown and guarantee of no laces or a return policy
This is actual medicine, not hobby baking or ceramics
Of course they want to repackage a cheaply synthesized substance at 100-1000x the costs even though the original likely works just as well. That's pharma for you.
It's just the tartrate salt of LSD. It isn't even a derivative of it. Does not have any other effects pharmacologically.
You are fabricating "facts" so you can diss the experimenters.
So cool. So edgey.
The psilocybin data tells a similar story. One or two sessions outperforming months of conventional meds. The fact that both LSD and psilocybin work on neuroplasticity probably isn't a coincidence. Hope regulators don't drag their feet on this for another decade.
As someone that has done mushrooms a dozen or so times, I would never ever take them when I’m anxious or depressed. That’s a sure fire way to have a horrible trip. Maybe these are referring to pretty small doses.
Fair point about set and setting, taking a big dose when you're in a bad place is asking for trouble. But the research and most microdosing protocols are talking about way smaller amounts, like 0.15-0.3g every other day. That's well below the 1.5-2g where you actually start tripping. Personally microdosing in that range has helped me a lot with focus and creativity, no trip, no weirdness, just a subtle shift. It's a completely different thing from what people usually imagine when they hear mushrooms.
I'd argue that the results might not be from the drugs but from the fact that they were heavily monitored by other humans.
It's not the drugs that people with high anxiety need, it's people giving them attention and caring for them.
These experiments need a control where they just take the drug and they don't have medical staff around.
Isn't that basically the same as them using a placebo? If just care has the same effect, then surely heavily monitoring them while providing a placebo drug should work.
The problem is you can very obviously tell that you have a placebo because nothing is happening. Some studies mitigate that issue by giving a microdose but then maybe only the microsose is necessary? It seems like a hard problem
Such studies typically use an active placebo, such as methylphenidate.
But that doesn't test if the LSD helps in a non-clinical setting, only that the monitoring and attention helps
This is exactly what the placebo is for. Same attention and care, no drug.
The control is where you have the medical staff around but not the drug. I believe placebo control groups are pretty common.
"In this phase 2b, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 4 dose levels of MM120 that included 198 adults with generalized anxiety disorder, the primary outcome of a dose-response relationship for change in Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale score at week 4 was statistically significant."
You are fabricating a lot of details about the study to come to that conclusion.
If only there were experts on the ground, designing the experiment, who could plan to avoid such interfering variables.
That's why we have placebos ... and double-blind studies ...
> It's usually treated with medications like Zoloft and Paxil that boost and stabilize the neurotransmitter serotonin, leading to reduced anxiety and enhanced emotional well-being
How do figure the boost and stabilize part for a patient? Do they take samples of neurotransmitters in the spinal fluid before and after and looking for neurotransmitter concentrations?
There's a divide in the marketing language vs the research language on this topic. Marketing says some handwavy statement like "Zoloft stabilizes serotonin levels", but the research on the topic basically says that we assume that's how it works based on what we know about the brain & the drug, but we don't actually have proof of the mechanism.
I always think for some reason that by now with all advancements in technology they'd eventually get to a point where they start measuring these things so going to doctor like that people might hear "your level were out of balance, here are the numbers" and then they get treatment and now, look, another lab result shows we fixed your levels. But it doesn't seems we are quite there yet.
You can't exactly pull some brain matter out to send to the lab, which makes research very difficult.
Of course not in humans. Though can probably be done experimental with animals. With all the side effects and trade-offs involved with these drugs surely they had to be doing something like it?
I was mostly thinking maybe sample the blood or spinal fluid, or use imaging tracing markers to see how the imbalance manifests and then it can be corrected.
It seems like every few weeks there's an article on how drugs are amazing hitting the front-page.
Where do you go when you need to escape but can't actually go anywhere?
Inwards. Imagination, media, substances, meditation, solitude.
To an extent I feel your position, and it can be true in many contexts. I would say, however, that taking a trip to a far off country, and dropping acid serve two different purposes. While I'm sure there's some overlap, you won't get the entirety of the experience from either one exclusively.
HN has some peculiar medical fixations. It comes in waves. For a while there were a lot of submissions about intermittent fasting. 15 years ago people were excited about polyphasic sleep. 10 years ago it was all about modafinil. Enthusiasm about ketamine for depression was big, but it seems to have finally fizzled out.
Wonder what the approach would be to empirically determine these waves.
Ketamine is still used for depression quite effectively.
It's good that techbros' interest in it fizzled out though. Better for everyone that way.
"Drugs" can cure polio and dysentary; alleviate headaches and menstrual cramps; lower blood pressure; and regulate brain biochemistry in ways that make dysfunctional people able to function again. And sometimes they enable happy feelings.
Yes, drugs are amazing.
Well... drugs are amazing. They're so amazing people will literally die for them.
It is tragically funny to consider linking quietness of mind with LSD. It is everything but quiet
The "neuroplasticity" which leads to a relative quietness presumably comes after the psychedelic experience.
Interestingly, the paper only lists the following adverse effects: visual perceptual changes, nausea, and headache. Given that the patients in the double-blind study were those who suffer from moderate to severe Generalized Anxiety Disorder, I could imagine some significant anxiety in the 200 µg active group!
The paper only reports significant results at the 100 µg and 200 µg dose level, not less, which seems like another strike against psychedelic microdosing. The pharmaceutical industry would love to find a magic psychedelic drug which doesn't result in the psychedelic experience, but it seems like that experience is the key to their mental impact.
You're describing what's called a critical period.
These are well established and lots of research is going on as to why psychedelics seem to put us into a critical period.
Lsd, psylocybin and mdma all seem to do it. Peyote does too.
While in the critical period, usually a week to 3 months, it is very important to surround oneself with what they want to focus on.
LSD experience causes a serious lack of sleep. Is the quoted relative quietness after the experience simply an effect of a sleep deprivation? Why to take drugs to have it, then?
At the risk of sounding like an imbecile, can I ask why LSD-25 can't be the pharmaceutical form of LSD?
Why can we not just get plain LSD?
I have never heard a reasonable argument.
This reflects a longstanding...essentially conspiracy...to suppress attention to 5HT2A-based neural regulation because it sheds such poor light on SSRIs
I land on "if it helps it helps."
But if you catch me in a get-together setting and we share a beer together, I'd say: "on the one hand you have a well-determined profitable path in the SSRIs, and on the other hand you have people giving LSD doses away for free to each other. One sits well, one doesn't. One has to wonder why the people aren't giving away SSRIs for free if they work so well, right?"
What are you talking about?
how about treating the cause for the anxiety?
The "surprising way" is by using a derivate of LSD.
I'd argue that the surprise is rather on this: "In clinical trials, a single dose significantly outperformed standard treatments, offering hope to those who have found little relief elsewhere."
It is no derivate. It's just the tartrate salt of LSD. There is no pharmacological difference. It's like saying I got this new Magnesium Tartrate which is now different to the Magnesium Oxide / Citrate / Glycinate / whatever you are taking. It might affect stability or absorption rate or similar, but Tartrate itself doesn't have an effect.
> It is no derivate. It's just the tartrate salt of LSD.
I think you're unclear on the meaning of "derivate".
Calling it the "pharmaceutical form" is borderline misinformation, considering it's just a common salt of LSD. You can get that outside the pharmacy. It's not like actual LSD is ever made in some dirty improv meth lab. Likewise, nobody expects researchers to buy their drugs on the streets. It's just LSD. This "say no to drugs" drug did the trick.
Call me a luddite, but I'd personally honestly preferring knowing my chemist so that I can be relatively certain there's no 2-ci or whatever bs the kids are cutting with or straight up substituting these days.
My understanding is that, today in the US (and other markets so far as I know), it is far easier to know a pharmacist than a genuine LSD chemist, though I am several years out of that particular market.
Would be nice to know there's been a resurgence of access to ergot via improvement in Claviceps growth or some nifty novel synthesis we didn't have a few years ago.
Yeah, of course that's all legit concerns and demands. However, I dislike the notion this "dangerous street drug" was graciously made to somethings "useful" and safe by the pharma industry. It's the same its always been. Especially around the time of its prohibition.
I am calling out a pattern. It's a bit similar to pharma going into the jungle, taking some natural compound (possibly known to an indigenous tribe), modifying the chemistry just enough to patent it and call it a miracle. The dealer gets life in prison, the Sackler family literally killed thousands, but merely had to pay a fine and do some rebranding.
If LSD wasn't arbitrarily outlawed, your concerns wouldn't exist. ID and purity considerations are purely consequences of being made illegal. It was always synthesized by highly educated and responsible chemists, because the chemistry demands it. It was never an honest public health concern, it's not addictive, practically lacking any toxicity.
MDMA also got this treatment. Immersion with the collectivist teachings of Christ was decided a sinful desire, but now treating the PR problem of broken cogs in the war machine may be ruled acceptable in the eyes of God.
Sandoz was the first to manufacture LSD under the product name Delysid.
Fair enough. But I think you know what I mean.
While I agree that I'd love to have a guarantee on purity, the way to do that is just to make LSD legal, rather than have some private equity backed pharma company tie up the supply. LSD should be a case like insulin or the polio vaccine, as it offers an immense amount of potential for the planet.
Sure, if they want to make money by offering retreats in clinical settings for people too afraid to spend an afternoon with a loved one on 100ug of LSD, by all means. But jumping through hoops to lock up the supply of a truly revolutionary molecule that could improve the lives of millions just feels bad to me.
Edit: Also, no one is putting 2c-i on a tab of LSD. The doses are way different (~100ug vs 15mg) and chemists that make LSD tend to be pretty sold on it's potential to help humanity and try to keep the supply as pure as possible.
You may be thinking of "tusi" or pink cocaine, which is a drug mixture that tends to have ketamine and mdma mixed, and often has had fentanyl creep into the supply. Someone just decided to name it similar to Shulgin's 2C class of drugs for some reason, which is annoying and dangerous.
Except just legalization is no guarantee of safety or purity. Look at the Vitamin Industry as an example. The general public thinks that manufacturers of those bottles in the vitamin aisle are required to follow the same standards set by the FDA as those in OTC pain relief in the next aisle over.
well yes, of course. I'd assume any mind altering substance should have purity standards if legal and not treated like buying herbal supplements. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Why can't they just put it in the title of the article instead of classic clickbait tactics? Ugh.
I agree. I have anxiety sometimes, but I’m not about to start taking LSD. I’m not going to risk a permanent psychological crisis to reduce my anxiety. It’s not really a cure if it has a even a small percentage chance of causing something much worse.
Fair point. You know your body the best and should be the final arbiter of what's ingested. Side point and question: Can't SSRIs cause Serotonin Syndrome? Doesn't the reduction of anxiety come with a small percentage chance of causing something much worse?
That statement is not surprising to anyone who has taken LSD. However I would be surprised if the pharma version works as good as the original.
> The "surprising way" is by using a derivate of LSD.
What's the difference between a derivate and a derivative?
(I'm not being facetious, I'd really rather like to know)
MM120 is just a patented LSD. So its just a brandname LSD.
Exactly. The medical cannabis industry has been doing this right from the start. Thankfully they do tell you what strains they got their cultivar from, though.
They can control the supply and make more money off of it. And you can pay lobbiests to make sure the original LSD stays illegal.
Just from personal experience I met a bunch of people who did to many psychedelics and became ego maniacs . I also had my first panic attack on acid. Also read about weird therapists taking advantage of people on psychedelics during therapy. I'm a believer in the use of psychedelic therapy but there really needs to be good protocols in place to protect patients who are very vulnerable. I really wish I could go back in time and see the Czech psychedelic clinic it sounded really cool.
Clickbait
"Side effects were mild or moderatr and included hallucinations..."
Yeah....
No. That is a gross and deliberate mischaracterization in bad faith. Here is the full quote:
> Side effects were generally mild or moderate and included hallucinations, visual distortions, nausea, and headache. It's important to note, these were more prevalent using the highest dosage -- which we will not be using since it was found to be no more effective.
More prevalent, not absent. As I understand it, anything that affects the 5HT2A receptor will induce a psychedelic state. Magnitude being dose-dependent.
>more prevalent using the highest dosage
These psychedelic treatments always have substantial limitations, and this is no different;
1. Low volume cohort i.e. 40 participants per dose group
2. Industry sponsored study i.e. MindMed.
3. Think about it; how do you blind psychedelics? It's pretty obvious you're on one when you take it.
I recall an experiment where the control group was given Ritalin, and the participants had presumably tried neither Ritalin or the psychedelic.
I thought it was pretty cool, since the control group will still "feel" something and potentially think "oh this is it" but since the effects of stimulants like Ritalin have been more studied, the researchers can easily account for it.
Let me guess: Those limitations are ”unscientific” in this context, but when the article is about the dangers of cannabis, they are suddenly okay?
This isn't unscientific per se, it's just low quality science. No conclusions should be drawn. There are known treatments with extremely robust, good science.