The Potential Future of Designer Psychedelics

One of the main motivations for creating designer psychedelics – or analogues of existing compounds – is to evade bans. LSD is illegal, so an analogue can be created (typically a purported prodrug of LSD), allowing people to have an LSD experience without worrying about arrest. And when the analogue is banned, a different one will appear – in the world of designer psychedelics, if you cut off the head of the hydra, another one grows back in its place. 

But tweaking existing psychedelic chemicals has other benefits: the experience itself can change. The chemist Alexander Shulgin discovered this through the various psychedelic tryptamines and phenthylamines he synthesised (as detailed in his two books on these classes of psychedelics: TiHKAL and PiKHAL, respectively). We also see potential benefits with the development of non-hallucinogenic psychedelics: these could help people enjoy the neuroplastic effects of psychedelics without the risks entailed by altered states of consciousness.

What will the future of designer psychedelics look like? I can imagine – in either an underground context like Shulgin’s lab or an overground, government-sanctioned context – chemists will be able to tweak existing compounds for therapeutic or commercial reasons. In other words, presuming the resulting psychedelic chemicals are physically safe (unlike 25I-NBOME), then people will have access to psychedelics that feel less daunting and/or meet other personal preferences. We’ve already seen this in the case of an ibogaine analogue (tabernanthalog) that lacks ibogaine’s heart risks (although it also doesn’t produce the potentially therapeutic psychedelic effects).

One of the beneficial ways psychedelics could be tweaked is by creating shorter- or longer-lasting varieties. For example, psychonauts who love LSD or mescaline, or people who may benefit from their use, may be put off by their long duration (around 12 hours for LSD, potentially longer for mescaline). If, say, an LSD experience could be condensed into the duration of a psilocybin mushroom experience (around six hours), or even shorter, then this would make the compound more accessible and approachable.

The longer the trip goes on, the greater the chance there is to experience ‘trip fatigue’: feeling that one has experienced ‘enough’ and that continuing to trip feels tiring, bothersome, or distressing. While many people, of course, have wished that their mushroom trips ended before they naturally come to a close, this feeling may be more likely with a longer-lasting psychedelic like LSD.

Moreover, the longer-lasting the psychedelic, the greater the likelihood it’ll disrupt sleep. Of course, you can take LSD or mescaline early in the morning to avoid this from happening (although there’s no guarantee of that if the experience is particularly long). But that does mean you’re confined to having the experience in the day and not in the evening (assuming you want to sleep at a healthy time after the experience). Creating shorter-lasting LSD, mescaline, or ibogaine experiences (ibogaine journeys can last 24+ hours) also reduces the need to use sleep aids like alcohol, cannabis, and benzodiazepines.

Meanwhile, there is a push to make certain shorter-lasting psychedelics last longer. An example of this is DMT, which is known to produce an intense 10-minute otherworldly experience. Researchers have extended the experience by altering the delivery method so that it lasts 30 minutes, which was well tolerated by volunteers (anxiety ratings remained low). Another way to extend the DMT experience is by creating ‘changa’ (freebase DMT combined with an MAOI-containing plant and other smokeable herbs), which has been referred to as ‘smokeable ayahuasca’. However, the changa experience won’t last as long as the extended DMT state developed by researchers.

Tweaking the DMT molecule may be an alternative way to create an extended DMT state. This would make the extended experience more accessible, as it avoids the need to use changa or an altered infusion method.

Psychonauts and novice users may also find some of the side effects of certain psychedelics unpleasant. Depending on the compound, these can include headache, nausea, stomach upset, vomiting, and diarrhoea. In certain cultural contexts, nausea and vomiting are not viewed in negative terms but instead are seen in positive terms – ’purging’, in the context of the ayahuasca experience, is seen as a form of physical and spiritual cleansing.

In my book Altered Perspectives, I explore the hypothesis that ayahuasca (the combination of a DMT-containing plant with an MAOI-containing one) may have been discovered through the search for effective purgatives. I also note research on the potential therapeutic effects of purging. On the other hand, I acknowledge, too, that the nausea-promoting effects and unpleasant taste of certain psychedelics do act as barriers to use. While many people are willing to go through initial or prolonged physical discomfort for the sake of a therapeutic or spiritual experience, not everyone is. And even those who are willing may limit the number of experiences they have (which could prove beneficial) due to the prospect of uncomfortable side effects.

Many people welcome a future in which psychedelics could be designed to have side effects like nausea eliminated or at least greatly reduced. I’m not personally a psychedelic purist or gatekeeper when it comes to these things: I don’t think tweaking classic psychedelic chemicals so that they’re more palatable is sacrilege or disrespectful. I also don’t buy into the narrative that natural psychedelics are inherently superior to synthetic ones, as I’ve argued in an article for Psychedelic Support.

Nevertheless, we do need to be careful that, in a medical or commercial context, we’re not engaging in the colonial practice of psychedelic extractivism. This would involve extracting psychedelics used by Indigenous groups, creating isolating compounds, tweaking them, patenting those designer compounds, and then profiting from those efforts with no plans for reciprocity or compensation for the Indigenous communities, who have protected the use of natural psychedelics for centuries and millennia. We need to ensure that designer psychedelic commercialisation is matched by an adequate benefit-sharing or reciprocity agreement with relevant Indigenous groups.

As Shulgin has shown through the hundreds of different psychedelics he synthesised, making minor changes to the chemical structure of a compound can lead to different subjective effects. Some psychonauts appreciate and value some of these effects more than others (e.g. visual, auditory, tactile, somatic, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual effects). So perhaps skilled chemists in the future could tweak psychedelics with these preferences in mind. This could be done for therapeutic reasons (based on which effects more strongly predict mental health benefits) and for more personal reasons (for example, some people may find the perceptual distortions distracting, disturbing, or a nuisance, whereas others want strong visuals – the latter does seem to be an idiosyncratic Western preference).

Could the future be a world in which every person can take their ideal psychedelic? If so, artificial paradises could be tailored to each person’s needs and preferences. The downside of this individualised approach, however, is that this would involve fewer shared, group experiences. It’s harder to reach states of group psychedelic bonding when people are experiencing different effects, as well as coming up, peaking, and coming down at different times. This is a highly speculative future I’m imagining, however. Even if it could (or does) arise, there will always be those who’ll still use classic and non-classic psychedelics, either in addition to designer psychedelics or instead of them.

How the future of designer psychedelics unfolds will also depend on political and cultural factors, including who (and in what contexts) can experiment on tweaking compounds, as well as the demand (the size and nature of it) in the first place. If there’s not a huge demand for particular variations of psychedelics, then the incentive won’t be there to create them (except, perhaps, by curious and passionate underground chemists).

It will be fascinating to see how the landscape of designer psychedelics unfolds in the future and the kinds of altered states that could become available to us.

Sam is one of our community bloggers here at Chemical Collective. If you’re interested in joining our blogging team and getting paid to write about subjects you’re passionate about, please reach out to Sam via email at [email protected]