Magic Mushrooms Cause
Positive Changes For Months - Could Be Used To Treat Depression By
Changing Mood and Anxiety
July 11th 2006
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Amazing new research from the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute believe
that the resulting experience form ingesting the active agent in “sacred
Mushrooms” apparently prompts “positive changes in behavior and attitude
that lasts several months, at least.” The researchers are still not
sure where in the brain the agent, psilocybin works.
They do know that psilocybin mimics the effect of serotonin on brain
receptors, as do some other hallucinogens. The research is cited as
“landmark” in a commentary by former National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
director, Charles Schuster.
Shuster believes the research marks a new systematic approach to
studying certain hallucinogenic compounds. Back in the 1950’s the
hallucinogen showed signs of therapeutic potential into the nature of
consciousness and sensory perception.
Schuster says “Human
consciousness…is a function of the ebb and flow of neural impulses in
various regions of the brain-the very substrate that drugs such as
psilocybin act upon. Understanding what mediates these effects is
clearly within the realm of neuroscience and deserves investigation."
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The experiences have been descriptively identical to the spontaneous
mystical / spiritual experiences people have reported for centuries.
Lead author, Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., said “A vast gap exists between
what we know of these drugs-mostly from descriptive anthropology-and
what we believe we can understand using modern clinical pharmacology
techniques. That gap is large because, as a reaction to the excesses of
the 1960s, human research with hallucinogens has been basically frozen
in time these last forty years." Griffiths is a professor with Hopkins'
departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry and Behavioral Biology.
There is a caution though. The authors say there are substantial risks
of taking psilocybin under conditions not appropriately supervised.
"Even in this study, where we greatly controlled conditions to minimize
adverse effects, about a third of subjects reported significant fear,
with some also reporting transient feelings of paranoia," says
Griffiths. "Under unmonitored conditions, it's not hard to imagine those
emotions escalating to panic and dangerous behavior."
Two months after the ingestion, 79 percent of subjects reported
moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction compared
with those given a placebo at the same test session. A majority said
their mood, attitudes and behaviors had changed for the better.
Structured interviews with family members, friends and co-workers
generally confirmed the subjects' remarks. Results of a year-long
follow-up are being readied for publication.
They hope to study the effects of psilocybin on patients suffering from
advanced cancer-related depression or anxiety, following up the
suggestive research several decades ago. They will also be
investigating the drug dependence aspects.
Dan Wilson
Best Syndication
Books on Dieting
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