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Allison R. Coker

13 papers in the library · 1,279 citations · publishing 2021-2026

Papers

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Trends in first-time psychedelic and other hallucinogen use in the United States: Results from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Drug and Alcohol Dependence May 1, 2026 Juan Carlos C. Montoy, Ralph C. Wang, Allison R. Coker et al.

Psychedelic drug use is increasing due in part to local legislative reforms. Understanding the patterns of first-time psychedelic drug use is imperative for informing consumers, healthcare providers, and policy makers. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) is a repeated cross-sectional nationally representative survey of civilians aged 12 and older. Use estimates are presented for...

Investigating Safety Concerns and Harm Reduction in Entheogenic Churches: The Case for Community-Based Participatory Research.

Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences November 22, 2025 Maha N. Mian, Allison R. Coker, Grace Kretzer et al.

Alongside the important contributions of the harm reduction movement to improving public health in secular settings, communities that use psychedelics as religious sacraments (i.e., entheogens) have developed their own frameworks for supporting safety within their spiritual practices and hold their own conceptualizations of risk and harm. In order to understand better the lived realities of...

US Poison Center Encounters for Psilocybin-Related Exposures: 2013-2022

Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians Open August 30, 2025 Juan Carlos C. Montoy, Ralph C. Wang, Allison R. Coker et al. 3 citations

From 2013 to 2022, there was a 3-fold increase in psilocybin-related PC encounters, nearly all of which occurred since 2019. A similar pattern was not observed with other substances. Although the number of encounters remains low, this trend could continue as psilocybin use increases.

Latent Classes of Lifetime Use of Seven Hallucinogens in the United States

Journal of Psychoactive Drugs August 4, 2025 Meredith C Meacham, Maha N. Mian, Ralph C. Wang et al. 2 citations

Interest in and use of hallucinogens appears to be growing in the United States, yet less is known about the use of multiple hallucinogens. The aims of this study are to characterize subgroups of lifetime hallucinogen use and to identify sociodemographic correlates of these subgroups. Latent class models were fit using 2021-2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) data on a...

Effects of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD on self-experience

PLoS One January 10, 2024 Rachel Yehuda, Leah Bedrosian, Charlotte Harrison et al. 52 citations

Introduction There is a resurgence of interest in the therapeutic potential of psychedelic substances such as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). Primary findings from our randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-site Phase 3 clinical trial of participants with severe PTSD (NCT03537014) showed that MDMA-assisted therapy induced significant attenuation in the...

MDMA-Assisted Therapy for Severe PTSD: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Phase 3 Study.

Focus (American Psychiatric Publishing) July 1, 2023 Jennifer Mitchell, Michael P. Bogenschutz, Alia Lilienstein et al. 97 citations

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) presents a major public health problem for which currently available treatments are modestly effective. We report the findings of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-site phase 3 clinical trial (NCT03537014) to test the efficacy and safety of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-assisted therapy for the treatment of patients with...

Psychedelic drug abuse potential assessment research for new drug applications and Controlled Substances Act scheduling

Neuropharmacology August 17, 2022 Jack E Henningfield, Marion A Coe, Roland R. Griffiths et al. 34 citations

New medicines containing classic hallucinogenic and entactogenic psychedelic substance are under development for various psychiatric and neurological disorders. Many of these, including psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) are Schedule I controlled substances of the United States Controlled Substances Act (US CSA), and similarly controlled...

Evidence for altered neural activity patterns after MDMA-assisted therapy in adults with chronic and severe post-traumatic stress disorder: a pilot study

medRxiv May 27, 2022 S. P. Singleton, J. B. Wang, M. Mithoefer et al. preprint

3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted therapy (MDMA-AT) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has demonstrated promise in multiple clinical trials. MDMA is hypothesized to facilitate the therapeutic process, in part, by decreasing fear response during fear memory processing while increasing extinction learning retention. The acute administration of MDMA in healthy controls modifies...

THE EFFECTS OF MDMA-ASSISTED THERAPY ON ALCOHOL AND SUBSTANCE USE IN A PHASE 3 TRIAL FOR TREATMENT OF SEVERE PTSD

Drug and Alcohol Dependence February 1, 2022 Christopher R. Nicholas, Julie B. Wang, Allison R. Coker et al. 67 citations

Background Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is commonly associated with alcohol and substance use disorders (ASUD). A randomized, placebo-controlled, phase 3 trial demonstrated the safety and efficacy of MDMA-assisted therapy (MDMA-AT) for the treatment of severe PTSD. This analysis explores patterns of alcohol and substance use in patients receiving MDMA-AT compared to placebo plus...

Altered brain activity and functional connectivity after MDMA-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Frontiers in Psychiatry 2022 S Parker Singleton, Julie B. Wang, Michael C Mithoefer et al. 36 citations

3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted therapy (MDMA-AT) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has demonstrated promise in multiple clinical trials. MDMA is hypothesized to facilitate the therapeutic process, in part, by decreasing fear response during fear memory processing while increasing extinction learning. The acute administration of MDMA in healthy controls modifies recruitment...

Scaling Up: Multisite Open-Label Clinical Trials of MDMA-Assisted Therapy for Severe Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Journal of Humanistic Psychology June 23, 2021 Julie B. Wang, Jessica Lin, Leah Bedrosian et al. 22 citations

Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating mental health condition associated with serious adverse health outcomes and functional impairment. Previous MDMA–assisted therapy (MDMA-AT) studies have shown promising results in single site studies. Two open-label studies tested this modality in multisite clinical trials to assess the feasibility of scaling this manualized...

MDMA-assisted therapy for severe PTSD: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 3 study.

Nature Medicine June 1, 2021 Jennifer Mitchell, Michael P. Bogenschutz, Alia Lilienstein et al. 965 citations

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) presents a major public health problem for which currently available treatments are modestly effective. We report the findings of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-site phase 3 clinical trial (NCT03537014) to test the efficacy and safety of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-assisted therapy for the treatment of patients with...