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New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

psychnewsdaily.com

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Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#171

Post by ewindal »

loceng wrote: post #85
ummonk wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re describing situational depression. A lot of people have chronic depression, where he only hope for managing the depression involves pharmaceuticals.

*clinical depression which could easily stem from long-term, chronic situational depression, life circumstances, etc.

Which is completely irrelevant in many cases. Depression can be caused by serotonin deficiencies, and once you’ve got depressed (pun intended) values, it’s difficult to return to baseline without medical support.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#172

Post by bccdee »

gogopuppygogo wrote: post #119
ummonk wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re describing situational depression. A lot of people have chronic depression, where he only hope for managing the depression involves pharmaceuticals.

Pharmaceuticals on the market today don’t have a great track record in treating chronic depression. The first time a depression victim takes a drug it has a 66% failure rate: https://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/treatment-resistant-d... Drugs like MDMA are being evaluated as a potential treatment as well: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/mdma-depression

33% success rate on first try is better than I'd expected.

Anecdotally, I've heard it usually takes several tries to find an antidepressant that works for any given patient. But once you've found a drug that works, that helps a lot.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#173

Post by bccdee »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #99
jychang wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC there were studies done to that effect with subjects in comas with various psychedelics, where there were no effects. Regard this with a large grain of salt though, I read that somewhere a long time ago and don't have a source rn.

Sounds like an informed consent nightmare. How could this even happen? This wasn't even close to my area of legal practice though so it's I guess possible for there to be some sort of workaround. Looks like a potentially interesting study here: https://jme.bmj.com/content/45/5/299

I imagine next-of-kin have power of attorney when it comes to medical treatments done on comatose patients. That would probably include medical trials.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#174

Post by [deleted] »

ridgeguy wrote: post #139
ckosidows wrote: post #31

As hopeful as I am for unconventional drugs to have more medicinal uses, is it unreasonable for me to think there's no good medicinal depression cure? Is it unfounded to think depression generally has its roots in being disconnected from other people/society? I've felt depressed before, but I've probably never had it as bad as many people. But generally I've felt depressed when my life felt too narrow. When I've felt…

Treatment resistant depressive here. After three decades of trying different therapeutic treatment avenues, including many pharma and non-pharma options, I think that refractory (treatment resistant) depression is a phenomenon rooted in biochemistry. At least for me, disconnect from other people/society doesn’t play a role (plenty of connections, happily married, etc.). In my case, pharma pretty much works, non-pharm…

[deleted]

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#175

Post by lazyasciiart »

ckosidows wrote: post #31

As hopeful as I am for unconventional drugs to have more medicinal uses, is it unreasonable for me to think there's no good medicinal depression cure? Is it unfounded to think depression generally has its roots in being disconnected from other people/society? I've felt depressed before, but I've probably never had it as bad as many people. But generally I've felt depressed when my life felt too narrow. When I've felt…

You've been sad. It is unreasonable to draw any conclusions about depression from that experience.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#177

Post by esperent »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #86
LatteLazy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason you cannot have a double blind study is that you can tell you've been given mushrooms. So, I expect, can the therapist and the researcher etc. The moment anyone knows it's no longer double blind. I'm happy to be corrected if there is some clever way around this. I have heard people suggest you give "control" group members so other psychoactive substance (MDMA was suggested). But that doesn't have the same…

People have attempted controls in the past, and often it is a high dose of niacin. It causes flushing and increased HR. To someone who has experience with mushrooms they won't be fooled. To someone naive, they can think they got the real deal.

But how can you tell if someone has been fooled or is just saying they've been fooled? When a drug has a very clear and obvious psychoactive effect, double blind simply doesn't work.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#178

Post by esperent »

modeless wrote: post #23
cpncrunch wrote: post #16

>New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression Nope, it doesn't. The study wasn't placebo controlled. The placebo effect will have a large effect in a study like this, so we have no idea what effect the psilocybin had.

What kind of placebo could you use to stand in for a treatment that normally has immediate and obvious side effects like this one?

You couldn't use a placebo, but you could use a different psychoactive drug such as ketamine which is also being tested for use on depression.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#179

Post by esperent »

smartscience wrote: post #134
pessimizer wrote: post #74

Really sick of these "drugs feel good" stories. If we were still behaviorists, we wouldn't pretend this was news. This is declaring a full remission of depression after four weeks in half of the subjects. This is pretend science, I absolutely guarantee that an all expenses paid weeklong camping trip (or trip to Paris for those afraid of bugs, or trip to Japan for those sick of Paris) would do the same thing. Asking d…

Counterpoint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedown_(drugs) Drugs only 'feel good' for that purpose in the few hours after they are consumed. If people's psychological state is influenced (either way) several weeks after the experience, then something else is at work.

Have you ever taken psychedelics? I've used mushrooms, lsd, and a few others probably over a hundred times and one of the things that really seperates these drugs from others such as caffeine, alcohol, mdma, amphetamines, etc. is that there's no noticeable comedown except that the experience fades away and I am tired (as I would be after any intense experience). On the contrary, I usually feel really good after taking psychedelics, often for a period of days or weeks afterwards.

People's experience will vary of course, and if you have a bad or unpleasant trip you won't feel good afterwards. However, in my experience, the majority of people don't experience comedown after taking psychedelics.

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