Can Mushrooms Treat Depression?
By Thom Hartmann A...
Looks like it.
The Imperial College London, in a study gave patients psilocybin, a hallucinogenic chemical found in the mushrooms.
Dr. Cahart-Harris of the study said a "majority of the patients had a rapid dip in their depressive signs, including predictable side effects like nausea, anxiety and headaches.”
Looks like the mushroom's psilocybin targets the brain's receptors, which usually responds to the hormone serotonin, that is involved in mood.
Comments
#2
According to The Guardian, two doses, plus some kind of psychotherapy during the experience, resulted in improvement in these (officially) treatment resistant patients for anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months. That is very promising.
Will it work compared to placebo? Probably.
Will it work without the psychotherapy? Probably not, so DON'T rush out and grab some magic mushrooms and scarf them down to treat your or someone else's depression.
#3
Magic mushrooms. It does not make sense that these plants are not being studied for their benifits. There are enormous numbers of people suffering from mental disorders that potentially could be assisted.
#4
They are not being studied because outlawing "recreational" drugs was a centerpiece of Nixon's Culture Wars, as was spreading nonsensical propaganda.
Roland
#5
Not really a new finding. Over the past year and more, Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Stanford Medical Schools have also reported similar results.
Where research has been allowed, other psychedelics have also given good results in treating various emotional dysfunction. MAPS has sponsored research with MDMA, We have lost over 40 years of discovery due to bad drug policy.
#6
Off topic:
If HRC wants to win over Progressives in the Party she will use her speech to support the issues in the platform. She may be a swell person but I'd like to know what she will push and oppose from the Oval Office.
#7
New drugs to treat depression are marketed almost weekly - so it seems - just watch TV. The new drugs are not so different in effectacy from existing drugs that have gone generic but may have a different side-effect profile and preserve drug company profits. Psychedelics in addition to being on the outlawed drug list are likely to be far less profitable for drug companies so will not attract the large investment needed to get them approved to treat depression by the FDA.
#8
You lefties have been feed so much horseshit and kept in the dark for so long, you've become mushrooms :).
#9
After the convention roll call last night, the DNC should have distributed magic mushrooms by the crate load. Seems the least they could do.
#10
I would try it but, 1) does health insurance cover it 2) how much does it cost 3) where do you get the antidepressant mushrooms 4) is this for mild to moderate depression or severe? and 5) is it like your depression is treated, or are you just (and sorry if this is biased, but) kind of buzzed all the time? I remember Thom saying recently on the TV show I think, if 5 doctors told you you had cancer and needed surgery and one told you, "here, just take these dandelion greens", what would you do? Depression is a serious medical illness, like cancer. I'm not saying mushrooms might not be able to help with it, I just want it to be understood that, in terms of major depressive disorder anyway, it should be taken as seriously as more physiological illnesses. It would be nice if you could use herbal remedies to cure depression, and I don't discount holistic forms of healing at all, especially in conjunction with other treatments. I wouldn't really want to go through life buzzed all the time though I don't think, if that's all it does.
#11
Magic mushrooms have lifted severe depression in a dozen volunteers in a clinical trial, raising scientists’ hopes that the psychedelic experiences beloved of the Aztecs and the hippy counter-culture of the 1970s could one day become mainstream medicine.
A clinical trial, which took years and significant money to complete due to the stringent regulatory restrictions imposed around the class 1 drug, has found that two doses of psilocybin, the active substance in the mushrooms, was sufficient to lift resistant depression in all 12 volunteers for three weeks, and to keep it away in five of them for three months.
Pass4sure 200-120
#12
Ou812, ever have anything substantive to say?
ckrob, she isn't a swell person.
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Psychedelic drugs have been found to be very effective in psychotherapy and it isn't necessary to look for such a mechanistic explanation for it.
They have caused alcoholics to abstain, criminals to reform and mentally ill and disabled people to improve and make gains in recovery. Subjects attribute their improvement to a "cosmic religious experience, increased self confidence, increased self awareness and a reorientation of values".
It has long been well known amongst those experimenting with psychedelics on their own that the psychedelic experience will change one's life, generally for the better. A not uncommon claim of the psychenauts is that they "talked to God" during the experience.
Unfortunately, cultural bigotry, perhaps coupled with a sick society's and sick system's fear of mental health, has caused not only free experimentation with psychedelics to be outlawed in 1967 but for psychedelic research to be be banned as well so that no one may benefit from the therapeutic effects of these drugs simply to please the bigotries of the willfully obtuse dominators of society.