Psychedelics for dogs?: 5 Questions for veterinarian Carlo Siracusa

The Microdose spoke with Siracusa about why dogs could be good models for human psychedelic research, and the challenges of getting this work off the ground.

Dogs are, as the saying goes, man’s best friend — and over the last decade, the pet industry has seen a proliferation of products geared towards dog owners who want their pet’s lives to mirror their own: human-grade dog food, clothing, psychiatric medications and top-notch health insurance. It’s no surprise, then, that as interest in using psychedelics for human mental health has grown, some have wondered whether the drugs could be used to treat their pets, too. 

Carlo Siracusa is a veterinarian at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in animal behavior, and is exploring the possibility of conducting psychedelic research with dogs in a veterinary setting. The Microdose spoke with him about why dogs could be good models for human psychedelic research, and the challenges of getting this work off the ground. 

What do we know about humans giving dogs psychedelics, and what effect it has on them?

There are anecdotal reports of psilocybin use with hunting dogs — some Indigenous peoples in South America use it to enhance the sensory faculties of the dog. There are also similar reports in Italy, where they’ve used dogs to sniff for truffles. 

I’m aware of some vets who use psychedelics with clients, and I’m reaching out to hear about their experiences. There are also reports for emergency services for dogs and cats that get intoxicated with psychedelics meant for human use — in those cases, the animals often show signs compatible with serotonin syndrome. There is not really any systematic approach or study of this, so that’s what we’re working on.

What kinds of issues might psychedelics address in pets?

In my practice, I see dogs and cats with behavioral problems — these are behaviors that are not well accepted or tolerated by people, but also not necessarily abnormal. For example, maybe your dog barks at noises and you live in a condo, so that’s a problem. Or maybe they have not been trained to urinate or defecate outside. That’s not a pathology, but it’s behavior people don’t tolerate well, and often it arises from the dysregulation of an emotional response. Dogs can be anxious or fearful, and sometimes this comes with increased aggression, which is similar to humans due to dysregulation of stress response. Just like in people, we’ve seen lots of intersections in animals between physical and behavioral health. There could be an underlying cause, like an inflammatory response that drives behavioral problems. We look at each individual animal like you would a person and try to understand what is happening in their body, and how that affects their behavior. 

In that way, dogs can be a model for ailments that affect people, too. For instance, with drugs to treat anxiety or depression, there have been new medications but they’re mostly variations of the same drugs with some variation in their molecular structure. Like in humans, their efficacy is not necessarily better than drugs like Prozac, so trying something new could be interesting. Dogs, like people, can also experience compulsive behaviors like biting its own tail; the underlying problem could be something like pain, in which case something like ketamine could be a treatment. In fact, I think it’s likely that treating companion animals will only be justified as a translational model for human ailments; we probably would not get authorization to use psychedelics for dogs and cats if the primary purpose is just to treat pets. 

Plus, if you do see an effect in animals, it would be easier to separate the actual pharmacological effect from the cultural effect; the dog or cat doesn’t know about psychedelics and that can’t affect the efficacy of the drug.

You hear about rats or primates as animal models in medical research, but I’d never considered that pets might tell us something about humans, too. Are there other ways treating pets might reveal things about human health?

You could argue that using pets over lab animals is also a more similar model to humans, because these companion animals are living in environments that are more similar to ours. Lab animals, like rats, are living in environments that are not natural, and they are chronically stressed. But companion animals are living in our homes, and unlike rats, they’re not caged or deprived of social interaction. So if you’re testing a drug on them and studying behavioral effects, that could be an important distinction. 

Beyond mental health, there are other interesting interactions I’ve seen between physical disease and behavior that affects companion animals as well as humans: irritable bowel disease, chronic back pain, compulsive behaviors, cognitive decline, immune disorders, separation anxiety, urinary disease. Cats and dogs have so many diseases that are similar, but I’m realizing that many people who work on the human side are not aware that animals have these same diseases. 

What do you see as the biggest challenge to doing psychedelics research on pets? 

Animals are very emotional creatures. Their ability to control their emotions is lower than humans’; they don’t have the brain anatomy needed. There have been reports of dogs on psychedelics not responding to humans, or getting aggressive, which could be a liability in a research setting.

In addition, one negative experience might significantly change them; there might be a before and an after. After all, this is the rationale we use in supporting the use of psychedelics: you can have an experience that will change your behavior, but the opposite can also be true. With a human, you can tell them it was just a bad trip, and they might be able to rationalize a negative experience to turn it into something good in the long-term, but animals don't have this capacity. 

They might get scared or dysphoric, and it could affect them long term to the point where they become dangerous. I really caution people not to try this with their own pets, as it can be dangerous.

Do people ask you about treating their pets with psychedelics? 

Not in particular, but in our clinic, it’s frequent for us to use psychoactive medications like Prozac and benzodiazepines, and I think it’s interesting to note that people’s reaction to those medications often depends on their personal experience or connotations of the substance. Some people don’t want their pets to take these drugs because they’ve heard they make people act like zombies, and they don’t want that for their pets. Other people have had positive experiences, and they think it can help their animal. I think this matters for psychedelics toobecause there was such a negative connotation with them and so many people were conditioned to think of them as illegal drugs, so there could be stronger feelings around them. But of course, owners already have to make difficult choices for their pets, like euthanasia, and if they’ve already tried other treatments, they may feel compelled to try an unconventional treatment like psychedelics for their pet even if they wouldn’t choose it for themselves. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.