Pharmacist Guide to Psilocybin and Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy

This primer is designed to provide a broad overview of psilocybin and its use in medically supervised settings as part of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. This article will act as a framework to give practicing pharmacists the knowledge they need regarding pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, contraindications, adverse effects, and drug interactions that would impact safe use of psilocybin in medical settings.

Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has re-emerged in the last twenty years as a potential pathway to address a variety of mental health disorders. Interest in psilocybin has experienced a renaissance, and there have been pushes at federal, state, and local levels to expand access to this agent in research settings and within psychotherapy offices. While generally considered a very safe therapy, psilocybin does have several contraindications and clinically relevant drug-drug interactions that need to be considered when evaluating patient candidacy for psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy.

Pharmacists play an important role in ensuring safe and effective use of psilocybin as it becomes more readily available and utilized across the globe. Recognition of relevant contraindications and drug-drug interactions is particularly essential to this process.