A Tragedy of Errors: The State of Psychedelic Research in the Treatment of Alcohol Use Disorder.
Brain Sci November 4, 2025 A. Benjamin Srivastava, Mark S. Gold
Research into psychedelic drugs for treating alcohol use disorder (AUD) has revived, but several fundamental limitations restrict the conclusions that can be drawn. These include general issues like functional unblinding and the ambiguous definition of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, as well as AUD-specific challenges such as how the mystical experience relates to the spiritual experience described in Alcoholics Anonymous literature. Current neuroimaging studies are also limited in design and fail to directly examine the cognitive and circuit-level processes likely underlying treatment response. This review bridges historical, conceptual, and mechanistic aspects of this research and offers suggestions for future studies to more clearly specify the role of psychedelics in AUD treatment.