Candyflipping: New MindMed-Owned Study Looks at Combining MDMA and LSD

“Candyflipping”: The combined administration of MDMA and LSD among recreational users, reportedly inducing synergistic acute positive mood effects.

This is the formal definition of candyflipping, a practice now being studied by the Liechti Lab at the University of Basel. This top psychedelic research centre published new data on the combining of MDMA and LSD, with MindMed owning the rights to all research produced by Dr. Liechti and his lab.

Up until now, there has been no controlled study investigating the combined administration of MDMA and LSD. The new study, published this week in Nature, investigated whether MDMA can be used to optimize some of the effects of LSD, by adding some of the more positive mood effects of MDMA, compared with LSD alone.

The primary hypothesis was that the co-administration of MDMA and LSD results in higher acute “good drug effects,” well-being, openness, and trust and lower “bad drug effects” and anxiety compared with LSD administration alone.

Study design

The study used a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design with four experimental test sessions to investigate responses to (i) placebo, (ii) 100 mg MDMA, (iii) 100 µg LSD, and (iv) 100 µg LSD + 100 mg MDMA.

Participants

Twenty-four healthy participants (12 men and 12 women; age range: 25–54 years)

Findings

Since high-dose LSD trips can sometimes produce some negative subjective effects like anxiety (depending on the dose of LSD used, set & setting etc), and since MDMA induces much less anxious ego-dissolution and typically positive subjective effects (like enhanced feelings of positive mood, well-being, empathy, and trust) — the study’s theory is that MDMA might help remove some of these potentially anxious effects.

However, to the surprise of some, the study found that MDMA co-administration with LSD did not relevantly alter the acute psychedelic effects of LSD, compared to taking LSD alone. Most users reported no significant differences in subjective scores between MDMA + LSD and LSD alone.

How could this be? Well, the study was limited to one dose level and a different study design with higher doses of LSD could perhaps allow for the positive effects of MDMA to be more evident.

… we only tested single dose levels of both LSD and MDMA and co-administration at the same time. LSD at a dose of 100 µg mainly induces high acute positive effects and nominally less anxiety compared with a higher dose of 200 µg. Thus, we cannot exclude the possibility that MDMA may reduce negative mood effects, including anxiety, of higher LSD doses than the dose that was used in the present study.

Also, there were some positive results from adding MDMA, although in this study they didn’t rise to the level of “statistically significant”.

Although no significant differences were seen, the addition of MDMA tended to non-significantly increase ratings of “happy,” “open,” and “trust” on the VAS and “well-being” on the AMRS, especially in the beginning of the experience compared with LSD alone.

Does this leave enough hope for a follow-up study? Is there enough potential therapeutic benefit in proving candyflipping can help patients better navigate a deep trip?

We will see. Of note is that MindMed not only owns the data for this research but was also granted a patent for the combination of MDMA and LSD.

With MindMed leading the way in LSD therapy development, it may be worthwhile to continue this dose-optimizing research.

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