Israel

Psychedelic-related science in Israel must be understood in the context of a long international history that began in the mid-20th century. Globally, Albert Hofmann's discovery of LSD (reported in 1943) and Sandoz's subsequent commercial distribution of LSD under the trade name Delysid from 1947 facilitated early clinical and laboratory research in many countries; while Israeli-specific historical records of Sandoz-supplied research are limited in the public domain, the international availability of these compounds shaped scientific interest everywhere, including among Israeli clinicians and pharmacologists. During this era the dominant local scientific focus was pharmacology and organic chemistry rather than formal large-scale psychedelic clinical programmes.

A distinctive and well documented strand of Israeli research is cannabinoid chemistry. In 1964 Raphael Mechoulam and co-workers at the Weizmann Institute isolated and elucidated the structure of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a milestone that positioned Israel as a global leader in cannabinoid science and, over subsequent decades, helped create institutional expertise in psychoactive compound discovery and translational pharmacology. That cannabinoid expertise later fed into policy engagement and clinical programmes for medical cannabis, which developed in Israel in the 1990s and 2000s and established the Ministry of Health as a regulator of plant- and compound-based therapeutics.

From the 2000s onward Israel saw a steady rise in clinical interest in non-cannabinoid psychoactives, particularly ketamine for treatment-resistant depression. Ketamine — an approved anaesthetic with robust off-label psychiatric use — became widely available in hospital settings and private clinics, generating substantial clinical experience and observational data. More recently, in the 2010s and into the 2020s, Israel's academic psychiatry, neurology and psychopharmacology groups have begun to mount formal investigator-initiated studies and to participate in international collaborations examining classic psychedelics (notably psilocybin) and entactogens (MDMA), as well as neuroimaging and mechanistic studies that draw on the country's strengths in basic neuroscience and clinical trial infrastructure.

Throughout these developments the legal and regulatory framework has remained cautious: compounds such as MDMA and psilocybin are controlled under Israeli drug law and are not available for recreational use. Clinical research and any therapeutic use require formal approvals from institutional review boards and the Ministry of Health, and compassionate-use or special-authorisation pathways are tightly regulated. Nevertheless, the combination of a strong pharmacological research base, established cannabinoid expertise, and an active clinical psychiatry community has produced a vibrant and growing psychedelic research landscape in Israel.