Wanted: Men and women, ages 18 to 74 who have severe anxiety or depression. Must be willing to take psychedelic drugs.

Baltimore County psychiatric hospital Sheppard Pratt has begun recruiting test subjects to use the hallucinogen, lysergic acid diethylamide, better known by its acronym, LSD.

Scientists are studying how its potent mind-altering properties could help disrupt troubled patterns of thinking, such as constant worrying or hopeless thoughts, by rewiring the human brain, according to lead researcher Dr. Scott Aaronson.

LSD is just one of many hallucinogenic substances, perhaps most commonly associated with the countercultural movement of the 1960s, colorful raves or spiritual retreats, that have been gaining traction in medical research. They are prized for their potential in treating a host of health issues, from drug addiction to mood disorders.

Aaronson, chief science officer of the Sheppard Pratt Institute for Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics, said he has seen impressive improvements in some with stubborn mental illnesses after even just a single dose of a psychedelic.

“Psychiatry will change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last century,” said Aaronson. “I think we now have an ability to address some of the biggest, hardest to treat illnesses that psychiatry has.”

The ongoing LSD studies are recruiting up to 30 people with generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, or who are currently experiencing a depressive episode.

Medical professional will first screen potential participants to diagnosis their conditions.

Some of the participants will be randomly selected to receive LSD, while others will receive a fake pill. The patients — about 10 to 15 in each study — could expect to participate for up to a year.

Dosing medical LSD during a clinical trial looks very different from how many people might use the drug for fun, Aaronson said.

To start, LSD will be provided in the form of small, dissolvable tablets made by a pharmaceutical company, as opposed to the brightly colored blotter papers a recreational user may buy.

Trial participants should expect no flashing bright lights or dance floor at the 172-year-old psychiatric hospital in Towson. Instead, after taking LSD, they’ll spend the next eight to nine hours in a quiet bedroom-like research space under monitoring from mental health professionals. Once the dose wears off, they’ll talk with a therapist to try to make sense of their experience, Aaronson said.

Researchers will track participants’ anxiety and depression levels and any unexpected effects from taking LSD, such as persistent hallucinations, he said.

Though psychedelics aren’t addictive, there’s a risk they could worsen psychotic disorders, Aaronson said. Those with personal or family histories of schizophrenia and similar disorders will not be eligible to participate in the study.

LSD was first synthesized in 1938 by Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann. At the time, he was studying a rye fungus that through history has caused massive outbreaks of hallucinations, convulsions and gangrene.

In his first experience with the drug, Hofmann described seeing “an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors” and quickly understood it could be useful for the field of medicine.

But early, controversial experiments with LSD, including on young undergraduate students at Harvard or as a mind-control tool by the CIA, largely overshadowed the nascent field. By 1970, the Controlled Substances Act banned virtually all research on psychedelics in the U.S. for decades, according to Aaronson.

It wasn’t until 2000 that a group of Johns Hopkins researchers became the first in the country to receive regulatory approval to research psychedelics with healthy volunteers who had never used such substances before.

Today, Hopkins’ Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research also regularly recruits people to study the effects of psychedelics on a variety of health conditions, ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS.

While the body of research is growing and shows promise, there is not yet enough hard evidence to make psychedelics widely available to patients, and they largely remain classified as illegal drugs under federal law, according to a new Maryland psychedelics task force created by lawmakers. In its first report published Wednesday, the task force encouraged Maryland officials to do more to expand access to some psychedelics for therapeutic and other uses.

Meanwhile, the federal Food and Drug Administration may begin to approve some psychedelics for medical treatment in the next few years, said Albert Garcia-Romeu, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Hopkins medical school.

Corporations looking to make money off psychedelics, which have long been available and are often found in nature, are now helping to push for regulatory changes, Garcia-Romeu said. Aaronson’s LSD research is sponsored by a pharmaceutical company, MindMed, which developed the tablet used during the clinical trials at Sheppard Pratt and more than 30 other sites across the country.

“There is a lot of interest in the financial possibilities of these new medicines,” said Garcia-Romeu, who said he also consults for some pharmaceutical companies.

“I really think we can use these in ways to help a lot of people. There’s a lot we don’t understand yet in how these work and how they can help, but there still seems to be a lot of potential.”

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, call or text 988 to contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.