Psychedelic research timeline
Chronic Pain: the psychedelic research timeline
Chronic pain is not one psychedelic programme. It combines ketamine analgesia, patient-led cluster-headache discoveries and newer psilocybin and MDMA studies that target both pain and its psychological burden.
Milestones are editorially selected from Blossom’s research catalogue. Future markers are limited to important trials with dated public guidance and are shown as planned, not promised.
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Pain in the first psychedelic era
1966 to 1973LSD studies in terminal illness mix pain, anxiety and the encounter with death.1966-01
LSD is studied in pre-terminal cancer pain
An open clinical series studies LSD for anticipatory anxiety and pain in people with terminal cancer. The design does not separate analgesia from the wider psychotherapy experience.
Patients reopen the question
2006 to 2020Cluster-headache reports and ketamine studies create several distinct research lanes.2006-06
Neurology
Cluster headache: patients get there first
A case series in Neurology reports that people with cluster headache were already self-medicating with LSD and psilocybin, and that it appeared to work.
One of the few genuinely patient-led findings in the field. Cluster headache sufferers organised, compared notes, dosed themselves outside any clinical framework, and produced a signal strong enough that neurologists wrote it up.
A 2008 follow-up in the same literature described the situation plainly as unauthorised research. That is what a thirty-year evidence gap looks like from the patient side: if the formal system will not test something, some people test it themselves, without safety monitoring and without anyone recording what goes wrong.
It is also the seed of two live programmes further right on this canvas, the Basel and Vanderbilt cluster headache trials, and of the non-hallucinogenic analogue thread.
2010-02
ended earlyThe first esketamine trial in the database is about pain
A Dutch randomised, double-blind, active-placebo-controlled study models S-ketamine pharmacokinetics in twenty-four fibromyalgia patients. It finds no lasting analgesic effect.
Blossom’s esketamine record starts in February 2010, nine years before Spravato, and it starts in the wrong indication. This is an anaesthetist’s study of an anaesthetist’s drug, asking how a short infusion behaves in people with chronic widespread pain.
The answer, published in 2012, was negative: a short S-ketamine infusion did not produce a durable reduction in fibromyalgia pain. It is a well-designed trial with an active placebo, which is more methodological care than a lot of what came later, and it reported a null result.
Worth holding onto as the canvas moves into the depression programme. The pain literature for this compound is substantially less encouraging than the depression literature, and the two are rarely read together.
Condition-specific programmes
2021 onwardsFibromyalgia, migraine and neuropathy trials begin to separate the indications.2021-12
A multicentre fibromyalgia study begins
A Phase II multicentre study tests psilocybin effects on pain in people with fibromyalgia and healthy volunteers.
2022-06
Ceruvia Lifesciences
A version without the trip
Ceruvia files an IND for NYPRG-101 (2-bromo-LSD), a non-hallucinogenic analogue that blocks the 5-HT2A receptor rather than activating it.
BOL-148 has a small, striking history: an open case series in 2010 reported that it interrupted cluster headache cycles without producing psychedelic effects. Ceruvia’s Phase 1 is the first systematic safety study of it under modern trial standards.
Seaport Therapeutics is running at the same target from a different angle, applying a lymphatic-absorption linker to the same molecule in preclinical work, because low oral bioavailability is the practical obstacle for both.
If either works, it reframes the whole canvas. Every clinical programme to the left assumes the experience is part of the treatment, and staffing a supervised dosing session is the largest cost in delivering it. An analogue that keeps the benefit and drops the session changes the economics before it changes the science.
2024-03
MDMA-assisted therapy enters fibromyalgia
A Phase I study begins testing MDMA-assisted therapy for fibromyalgia, treating the condition as more than a pharmacological pain endpoint.
2026-05
plannedA neuropathy-prevention trial is registered
NeuroGuard proposes a Phase II placebo-controlled test of psilocybin for preventing chemotherapy-induced neuropathy. Its date is a registry plan, not a result.
Chronic Pain
A patchwork of analgesia studies, headache research and mind–pain interventions
Research Landscape
What the registered trials connected to Chronic Pain look like when you line them up. Counts come from Blossom’s trial records as of August 2026.
How fast is Chronic Pain research growing?
SourcedRegistered trials by recorded study-start year; 3 earlier trials began before 2013. Click a year for the running total.
Don't read as total research effort: only registered trials with a recorded start date are counted (80 of 80 tracked). Recent years under-count because of registration lag; striped bars are still filling in or are planned starts.
What's live right now, and what stopped?
SourcedRegistry status of all 80 Chronic Pain trials Blossom tracks. Orange marks trials recruiting or opening.
- Recruiting or opening
- 3949%
- Underway, not recruiting
- 34%
- Completed
- 2228%
- Stopped early
- 810%
- Unknown / other
- 810%
Don't read stopped trials as failures: trials end early for funding, recruitment, and strategy reasons too. Status is as last synced from the registry; some 'recruiting' trials may already have finished.
Which compounds carry the Chronic Pain research?
SourcedTrials per compound. Orange marks the most-studied compound.
Don't read shares as adding to 100%: a trial testing several compounds counts once per compound, and placebo comparator arms are not shown. Trial volume signals research attention, not evidence quality.
How does Chronic Pain research split by subtopic?
SourcedTrials per subtopic within the 80 Chronic Pain trials on this page. Orange marks the largest subtopic.
Don't read shares as adding to 100%: a trial can name several subtopics (MDD and TRD often travel together), and 'no subtopic specified' means the trial is tagged only with this broader category. Each subtopic's own page can show a different total because it also tracks trials outside this set.
Publication Landscape
How the 175 papers Blossom links to Chronic Pain line up by year, compound and journal. This is the psychedelic-relevant literature in Blossom's records as of August 2026, not the condition's full medical literature.
How has Chronic Pain research grown?
SourcedTracked papers by publication year; 13 earlier papers published before 2012. Click a year for the running total.
Don't read as total output: only the 175 of 175 tracked papers with a recorded publication date are counted, and these are the psychedelic-relevant papers Blossom tracks, not a complete bibliography. The current year is still filling in.
Which compounds shape Chronic Pain?
SourcedTracked papers per compound. Orange marks the largest literature.
A paper studying several compounds counts once per compound, and placebo comparator arms are not shown. These are the psychedelic-relevant papers Blossom tracks.
Where is Chronic Pain research published?
SourcedTracked papers per journal. Orange marks the most-used journal.
Counts the journal recorded on each tracked paper; papers without a journal on file are omitted. Blossom tracks psychedelic-relevant papers rather than each journal's full catalogue.