First magic mushroom depression trial hits stumbling block

[satanboy]

The world’s first clinical trial designed to explore using a hallucinogen from magic mushrooms to treat people with depression has stalled because of British and European rules on the use of illegal drugs in research.

David Nutt, president of the British Neuroscience Association and professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, said he had been granted an ethical green light and funding for the trial, but regulations were blocking it. “We live in a world of insanity in terms of regulating drugs,” he told a neuroscience conference in London on Sunday. He has previously conducted small experiments on healthy volunteers and found that psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, has the potential to alleviate severe forms of depression in people who don’t respond to other treatments. Following these promising early results he was awarded a 550 000 pounds ($844 000) grant from the UK’s Medical Research Council to conduct a full clinical trial in patients.

But psilocybin is illegal in Britain, and under the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances it is classified as a Schedule 1 drug — one that has a high potential for abuse and no recognised medical use. This, Nutt explained, means scientists need a special licence to use magic mushrooms for trials in Britain, and the manufacture of a synthetic form of psilocybin for use in patients is tightly controlled by European Union regulations. Together, this has meant he has so far been unable to find a company able to make and supply the drug for his trial, he said. “Finding companies who could manufacture the drug and who are prepared to go through the regulatory hoops to get the licence, which can take up to a year and triple the price, is proving very difficult,” he said.

Nutt said regulatory authorities have a “primitive, old-fashioned attitude that Schedule 1 drugs could never have therapeutic potential”, despite the fact that his research and the work done by other teams suggests such drugs may help treat some patients with psychiatric disorders. Psilocybin — or “magic” — mushrooms grow naturally around the world and have been widely used since ancient times for religious rites and also for recreation. Researchers in the United States have seen positive results in trials using MDMA, a pure form of the party drug ecstasy, in treating post-traumatic stress disorder. “What we are trying to do is to tap into the reservoir of under-researched illegal drugs to see if we can find new and beneficial uses for them in people whose lives are often severely affected by illnesses such as depression,” Nutt said.

The proposed trial would involve 60 patients with depression who have failed two previous treatments. During two or three controlled sessions with a therapist, half would be given a synthetic form of psilocybin, and the other 30 a placebo. They would have guided talking therapy to explore negative thinking and issues troubling them, and doctors would follow them up for at least a year. Nutt secured ethical approval for the trial in March. In previous research, Nutt found that when healthy volunteers were injected with psilocybin, the drug switched off a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is known to be overactive in people with depression. “Even in normal people, the more that part of the brain was switched off under the influence of the drug, the better they felt two weeks later. So there was a relationship between that transient switching off of the brain circuit and their subsequent mood,”, he said. “This is the basis on which we want to run the trial.”

Times

Gotta love the name of the professor.

 

[biometrics]

Must be a Nutt.

 

[copacetic]

As far as I recall, Dr Nutt was sacked by the British government, on a drug advisory panel, for suggesting that certain drugs were not as dangerous as the government wanted them to to be portrayed as.

Which says it all really.

 

[copacetic]

"David Nutt sacked" (hee hee hee)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/30/drugs-adviser-david-nutt-sacked

Professor David Nutt, the government's chief drug adviser, has been sacked a day after claiming that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.

Nutt incurred the wrath of the government when he claimed in a paper that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "The home secretary has asked Professor Nutt to resign as chair of the ACMD [Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs].

"In a letter he [Alan Johnson] expressed surprise and disappointment over Professor Nutt's comments which damage efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs.

"We remain determined to crack down on all illegal substances and minimise their harm to health and society as a whole."

Nutt had criticised politicians for "distorting" and "devaluing" the research evidence in the debate over illicit drugs.

Arguing that some "top" scientific journals had published "horrific examples" of poor quality research on the alleged harm caused by some illicit drugs, the Imperial College professor called for a new way of classifying the harm caused by both legal and illegal drugs.

"Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth," he wrote in the paper from the centre for crime and justice studies at King's College, London, published yesterday.

"Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively."

Nutt said tonight he was disappointed by the decision but linked it to "political" considerations. "It's unusual political times, I suppose, elections and all that. It's disappointing," he told Sky News. "But politics is politics and science is science and there's a bit of a tension between them sometimes."

Nutt clashed with Jacqui Smith when she was home secretary after he compared the 100 deaths a year from horseriding with the 30 deaths a year linked to ecstasy.

Smith also ignored the recommendation of Nutt's advisory committee that cannabis should not be reclassified from class C back to class B, leading to heavier penalties.

He criticised Smith's use of the "precautionary principle" to justify her decision to reclassify cannabis and said that by erring on the side of caution politicians "distort" and "devalue" the research evidence.

"This leads us to a position where people really don't know what the evidence is," he said adding that the initial decision to downgrade the classification of cannabis led to a fall in the use of the drug.

 

[satanboy]

As far as I recall, Dr Nutt was sacked by the British government, on a drug advisory panel, for suggesting that certain drugs were not as dangerous as the government wanted them to to be portrayed as.

Which says it all really.

correct

He said LSD was less dangerous than alcohol...probably correct and he wanted to legalise cannabis...correct too.

 

[rubytox]

But psilocybin is illegal in Britain, and under the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances it is classified as a Schedule 1 drug — one that has a high potential for abuse and no recognised medical use.

Methadone is used as a substitute to wean heroine addicts off their drug habit. Methadone is highly addictive and its a known fact that only a small percentage of heroine addicts are cured.
So what's wrong with trying LSD?

 

[RiaX]

isnt this old news ?

Methadone is used as a substitute to wean heroine addicts off their drug habit. Methadone is highly addictive and its a known fact that only a small percentage of heroine addicts are cured.
So what's wrong with trying LSD?

its not as simple as this. The swiss use heroin to cure heroin addicts and the reason in SA we use methadone is because heroin is banned. The reason you HAVE to use these drugs to treat the addiction is because heroin addicts get was is called "dop sickness". Without stimulation of the opioid receptors in the brain they will literally die. So in practice you have no choice

 

[rubytox]

isnt this old news ?



its not as simple as this. The swiss use heroin to cure heroin addicts and the reason in SA we use methadone is because heroin is banned. The reason you HAVE to use these drugs to treat the addiction is because heroin addicts get was is called "dop sickness". Without stimulation of the opioid receptors in the brain they will literally die. So in practice you have no choice

Yes, I understand that. My point is that a drug is used to cure a drug addiction ( with a very low success rate) but for now that's the best choice.
Anti depressants are addictive and its advisable not to quit cold turkey. Major depression is incurable, at least for most that suffer from it. Depression is like being sucked into a dark void, finding no joy in life and lacking the ability to solve life's problems. If LSD opens up a depressed person's mind and lifts the dark cloud, which may add to the person's quality of life, its worth pursuing, right?

 

[abandonallhope]

I was feeling really depressed the other day when I realised how little I've accomplished.

Are these guys saying this mushroom can fix those feelings ?

Or is it for those days you wake up feeling depressed and you have no idea why ?

 

[porchrat]

I was feeling really depressed the other day when I realised how little I've accomplished.

Are these guys saying this mushroom can fix those feelings ?

Or is it for those days you wake up feeling depressed and you have no idea why ?

Probably talking about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder

 

[rubytox]

I was feeling really depressed the other day when I realised how little I've accomplished.

Are these guys saying this mushroom can fix those feelings ?

Or is it for those days you wake up feeling depressed and you have no idea why ?

Depression is normal. It becomes abnormal when the symptoms persist over a long period of time.

LSD, Cannabis, a bottle of rum ... all will probably make you feel better until the effects wear off and reality strikes ... you have still not accomplished much.

P.S. probably also not a good idea to take all of these substances at the same time

 

[abandonallhope]

Probably talking about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder

So which of my 2 cases is major depressive disorder ? both ?

 

[abandonallhope]

Depression is normal. It becomes abnormal when the symptoms persist over a long period of time.

LSD, Cannabis, a bottle of rum ... all will probably make you feel better until the effects wear off and reality strikes ... you have still not accomplished much.

P.S. probably also not a good idea to take all of these substances at the same time

So it will only help for when I have no idea why I am feeling depressed ?

 

[rubytox]

So it will only help for when I have no idea why I am feeling depressed ?

Nope, not what I said.

 

[RiaX]

Yes, I understand that. My point is that a drug is used to cure a drug addiction ( with a very low success rate) but for now that's the best choice.
Anti depressants are addictive and its advisable not to quit cold turkey. Major depression is incurable, at least for most that suffer from it. Depression is like being sucked into a dark void, finding no joy in life and lacking the ability to solve life's problems. If LSD opens up a depressed person's mind and lifts the dark cloud, which may add to the person's quality of life, its worth pursuing, right?

you absolutely right. I dont see the problem researching it. I see the problem in using it as is. The issue is not the science but rather the ethics.