UCL Team Tests DMT as a Single-Session Treatment for Heavy Drinking, Results Still Pending

In a lab at University College London, a heavy drinker lies in an fMRI scanner watching an emotionally charged film while a drug infuses into a vein. Within a minute or two, the effects begin. Ten to twenty minutes later, they are gone. Whether that brief window can change how a person drinks is the question a UCL team is now trying to answer.

The drug is N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a fast-acting psychedelic. The researchers are Rebecca Harding, a PhD candidate in UCL's Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, and Ravi Das, professor of psychopharmacology. They describe their work in a piece first published in The Conversation. It comes as psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, draw growing attention in psychiatry. Studies suggest these substances may help with depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders and addiction.

The team chose alcohol because it is the most commonly misused substance in the UK, in part because it is legal, easy to buy and woven into social life. Many people drink in moderation, but a significant number cannot control it, and the physical, mental and social costs can be serious. Existing treatments do not work for everyone. That gap is why the researchers are looking at approaches that might shift behavior through a single, transformative experience.

DMT is metabolized rapidly, so the experience is short. Users often describe it as intensely profound, with vivid visions, complex patterns and a sense of entering another reality. Some report a lasting change in how they think, feel and perceive the world. The researchers want to know what happens in the brain during those minutes and how it might alter longer-term behavior.

They are working from two main theories. The first is that psychedelics temporarily boost neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to form new connections, opening a window in which a person may be more receptive to change. For someone caught in heavy drinking, that could help loosen old habits. The second concerns reward and motivation systems, which govern pleasure from things like food, sex and alcohol. In people with alcohol use disorder, these systems become hypersensitive to alcohol-related cues, often at the expense of other rewards. Some early research suggests psychedelics may help reset these pathways, and the team is testing whether DMT can reduce drinking that way.

The study recruits heavy drinkers who want to cut down. Each is screened, and every session takes place in a clinical setting overseen by medical professionals and experienced researchers. There are three lab visits. On the first and third, fMRI measures brain activity and how regions interact while participants watch emotional films, which the team considers a more natural test than abstract tasks. On the second visit, participants are randomly assigned DMT, a placebo, or a non-psychedelic drug, either D-cycloserine or lisuride, which are believed to promote neuroplasticity without the full psychedelic effect. The trial is double-blind, so neither participants nor researchers know who received what.

During the infusion, EEG records the brain's electrical signals, which could help predict who is most likely to benefit from DMT. Participants also complete questionnaires and tasks measuring memory, attention, mood and decision-making, so the team can relate brain changes to changes in drinking.

Data collection is still under way, and the study stays blinded until all results are in. The authors say that if DMT works, particularly for people who have not responded to other treatments, it could open a new path in addiction therapy, and that even inconclusive results would inform future research. They also caution that psychedelics are potent, unpredictable outside clinical settings, not suited to everyone, and not a magic bullet.