Thanks for pointing out my error about monoamine oxidase being an enzyme rather than a receptor. As a practising anesthesiologist I don’t pay as much attention to pharmacological acronyms as I should. Psychedelics may be helpful for treating opioid addiction, but it will be a small percentage of patients who will be cured. Going this psychedelic route is worth a shot when you look at our failure with how we handle the problem now, whereby a drug user gets an unknown white powder, which could be fentanyl or heroin at markedly different LD50s, and that is 90% contaminants, which is then shoved into the right side of the circulation with horrific vascular/septic results. If the drug was clean and the dosage known there would be very few of these patients showing up in the operating rooms, but this is a political, not a medical issue.

Microdosed psychedelics might become a standard anesthetic preoperative medication someday.
—Mark Elliott, MD, FRCPC
Vancouver

This letter was submitted in response to “Re: The age of mushrooms is upon us in medicine. [11]”