Magic mushroom chemical psilocybin could be key to treating depression - studies

[OrbitalDawn]

Immediate reduction in depression and anxiety for up to eight months seen in patients with advanced cancer given a single dose of psilocybin

A single dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient of magic mushrooms, can lift the anxiety and depression experienced by people with advanced cancer for six months or even longer, two new studies show.

Researchers involved in the two trials in the United States say the results are remarkable. The volunteers had “profoundly meaningful and spiritual experiences” which made most of them rethink life and death, ended their despair and brought about lasting improvement in the quality of their lives.

The results of the research are published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology together with no less than ten commentaries from leading scientists in the fields of psychiatry and palliative care, who all back further research. While the effects of magic mushrooms have been of interest to psychiatry since the 1950s, the classification of all psychedelics in the US as schedule 1 drugs in the 1970s, in the wake of the Vietnam war and the rise of recreational drug use in the hippy counter-culture, has erected daunting legal and financial obstacles to running trials.

“I think it is a big deal both in terms of the findings and in terms of the history and what it represents. It was part of psychiatry and vanished and now it’s been brought back,” said Dr Stephen Ross, director of addiction psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center and lead investigator of the study that was based there.

 

[Aquila ka Hecate]

Immediate reduction in depression and anxiety for up to eight months seen in patients with advanced cancer given a single dose of psilocybin

Brilliant. The Machine Elves really know what they're doing.

 

[TriGuN]

Legalize mushrooms, seriously. I want to speak to the ancestors again..