Psilocybin therapy for alcohol use disorder and depression with Amandine Luquiens

In this episode, Dr Tsen Vei Lim speaks to Professor Amandine Luquiens, a psychiatrist and addiction specialist at the University of Montpellier and the Addiction Department of Nîmes University Hospital, France. The interview covers Amandine’s research article on psilocybin in alcohol use disorder and comorbid depressive symptoms: Results from a feasibility randomized clinical trial.

• Psilocybin and its recent popularity in clinical trials [01:22]
• The concerns of using psilocybin to treat psychiatric disorders [03:05]
• The use of psychotherapy alongside psilocybin in treatment [05:16]
• The key findings from the study [07:01]
• The contribution of the findings to policy and practice [10:13]
• The public’s current opinion for using psilocybin for psychiatric disorders [12:07]

About Tsen Vei Lim: Tsen Vei is an academic fellow supported by the Society for the Study of Addiction, currently based at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. His research integrates computational modelling, experimental psychology, and neuroimaging to understand the neuropsychological basis of addictive behaviours. He holds a PhD in Psychiatry from the University of Cambridge (UK) and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Bath (UK).

About Amandine Luquiens: Amandine Luquiens is a psychiatrist and addiction specialist, Full Professor at the University of Montpellier and the Addiction Department of Nîmes University Hospital. Her research focuses on patient-reported outcomes and psychotherapy-based interventions in addiction, with a particular interest in mindfulness and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy; she conducted the first clinical trial in France on psychedelics. Her work also addresses alcohol use disorder and gambling disorder, including the use of account-based gambling data to inform evidence-based guidance for policymakers. She is a member of the Centre de recherche en Epidémiologie et Santé des Populations (CESP) Inserm U1018 team Primary Care, Prevention and Women’s Health, and aims to advance patient-centered addiction care.

Original article: Psilocybin in alcohol use disorder and comorbid depressive symptoms: Results from a feasibility randomized clinical trial https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70152

Author's declaration of interest: AL has no conflict of interest in the field of psychedelics. She was the recipient of a grant regulated by a public organism “French observatory of addictive behaviors- OFDT” and constraining all French monopolistic gambling service providers to redistribute 0.002% of stakes on their platforms to academic research. The gambling service provider implied in that grant was the “Paris Mutuel Urbain” (PMU). Independency of the research with no constraint on the protocol, the analysis and the publication were guaranteed by a strict convention between universities, hospitals and the PMU. AL signed a data sharing agreement for the “OSE” study, through an academic-private convention with the FDJ: Independency of the research with no constraint on the protocol, the analysis and the publication were guaranteed by a strict convention between the hospital and the FDJ, and no funding was part of the convention.

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