Their results suggested the effectiveness of the personality-targeted strategy, finding it significantly reduced internalising and externalising symptoms compared to a universal alcohol prevention approach. We need to tread the line between embracing opportunity and not succumbing to enthusiastic solutions without sober scrutiny.įollowing the theme of treatment and prevention, Newton and colleagues (this issue) used a cluster randomised trial to examine a personality-targeted alcohol prevention strategy aimed at minimising internalising and externalising symptoms in high-risk young people compared to an active control. Repurposing drugs of addiction is a high-risk undertaking, highlighted by the opiate crisis, birthed by recognition of unmet needs in pain, promising short-term data, aggressive marketing, growing public demand and bullish use patterns. And, a large number of studies in play suggest that answers should be forthcoming. But the promising and unique effects of psilocybin on default mode networks and pathways such as neuroplasticity and neurotrophins may be informative pathophysiologically. But many studies are preliminary, poorly controlled and have recruited people who are prior users. Unsurprisingly, given its heritage as a drug of abuse, new data suggest rapid antidepressant effects, although it is uncertain if such rapid euphorigenic or mood-elevating results equate to antidepressant effects in the traditional sense of the word. Meikle and colleagues (this issue) enter this spiky debate, looking at psilocybin. Ketamine is now (almost) mainstream, cannabis legalised and marketed in many jurisdictions, stimulants are again in the Lazarus zone, and psychedelics are the latest carriage on this lengthening train. For this reason, there is growing interest, maybe even fervour, in repurposing drugs hitherto regarded as agents of abuse. An overview of industry-initiated trials shows a dramatic slowdown of novel therapy development over the last decade, especially the last 5 years. There is a crisis in novel therapy development.

Pills and potions chords