Can psychedelics help people quit smoking?

Are psychedelic drugs a viable quitting aid for smokers?

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University are investigating whether a psychedelic drug could be used as a treatment. It's the first time a federal grant has been offered in 50 years to study such a substance.

In the future, researchers at Hopkins are planning to investigate whether psilocybin, a psychedelic compound found in “magic mushrooms” can help people quit smoking. In partnership with researchers at NYU Langone Health and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, they will lead a randomized controlled trial that will examine this hypothesis.

Until now, the barrier has been NIH's lack of support for psychedelic research, said Dr. Joshua Woolley, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. Woolley did not take part in the new research.

“It’s great to see the NIH taking an interest in these kinds of studies,” said Dr. Charles Nemeroff, chair of the psychiatry and behavioral sciences department at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin. “It will allow us to do these controlled studies.” Nemeroff is not involved in the new study.

Research published in August found that psychedelic psilocybin could be used to treat alcohol addiction.

In a planned 2018 study, up to 66 participants will be randomly assigned to one of two groups. Both groups will receive psychological counseling before receiving psilocybin or niacin, a form of B vitamin.

Experts say that in studies that use psychedelics, participants are typically administered the drug during a session with a therapist, which can last hours. After just one session, results can be seen.

People who take a drug known as psychedelic are monitored by a therapist in an examination room at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md.Akshay Syal / NBC News Paraphrase: At the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md., participants are monitored by a therapist after taking a psychedelic drug.

Matthew Johnson, a researcher at Johns Hopkins Medicine who is conducting the experimental study on psychedelic effects is looking at the potential of psychedelics as a treatment because of the lack of effective options for those who wish to quit smoking.

Only 9 percent of smokers who try to quit succeed each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“There are several existing treatments, both medications and other therapies, but they all have a lot of room for improvement," Johnson said. "Even six months down the line, it is pretty small success rates with the medications."

In a small pilot study, Johnson and colleagues found that psilocybin helped 10 of 15 people quit smoking for at least one year.

In addition to studying the effectiveness of psilocybin for quitting, the research group is also studying whether psilocybin is more effective than nicotine patches. An open-label trial — in which patients and researchers know which treatment they are receiving — is currently assessing the efficacy of psilocybin for quitting.

According to interim data provided by the researchers to NBC News, a half of the psilocybin-treated participants had not smoked for a year, compared to 27 percent of the participants who received nicotine patches. These numbers are expected to change once 80 participants have completed one year of treatment.

One of the participants in the open-label study, Anne Levine, 58, from Baltimore, said she had been smoking about a pack a day for nearly 40 years and had tried quitting a dozen times.

Anne Levine, 58, and her husband. Levine said she hasn't touched a cigarette since the study. She said she has not smoked or craved a cigarette since participating in a psilocybin study.

“It’s the most bizarre thing,” said Levine, “because every time I quit before, I always craved a cigarette. … No longer do I have that physical desire to smoke or emotional desire to smoke.”

It is unclear how psilocybin may be helping people with addiction. “There are no agreed-upon answers to the billion-dollar question,” Johnson said. “I don’t think there are any good answers in the brain science industry in terms of what is different in the brain a year later or six months later.”

He said some things are known psychologically about psychedelic use, for example, people’s personality changes and that they become more open to new experiences. “So, in general, they are more likely to smoke after taking psychedelics.”

Woolley says that one of the theories is that psychedelics might be able to help people abandon long-held habits.

“ ... helping people get out of behavioral ruts would have really big implications for mental health, addictive disorders and smoking in particular,” he said.

Neuroplasticity may be a contributing factor, according to Nemeroff, as new learning is possible through psychedelics. "There may be behavioral change where it has not occurred before as a result of increased neuroplasticity," Nemeroff said.