High hopes

摘要

In the back corner of a small locked room at the New York University College of Dentistry in New York City sits a 400-kilogram safe. Inside is a small plastic bottle holding a gram of a white powder with a bluish tinge. Every day, two people come into the room, open the safe, take out the bottle, and weigh it to make sure its contents are still there.The powder is psilocybin, the active compound in hallucinogenic mushrooms. It's a schedule Ⅰ substance, a category reserved for the most dangerous drugs. But Stephen Ross, the psychiatrist who had the safe installed, has been giving psilocybin to cancer patients since 2009. He believes it can reduce the anxiety and anguish of people facing death. His study could help pave the way for the first-ever phase Ⅲ trial of psilocybin. If that succeeds, within a few years doctors might prescribe the drug for anxiety in cancer patients.