Compass Pathways' Phase IIb psilocybin trial shows reduced depression symptoms

Wow, 5% reported suicidal ideation or self harm, in a clinical setting. That’s pretty horrible.

I am pretty prone to depression and I definitely feel it lifting for a while after microdosing or taking a larger dose. Unfortunately I have never experienced a life changing trip that solved all problems as you may want to believe when you read some of the latest articles about the miracle of psilocybin and other psychedelics. Same for Ayahuasca. It seems to help a lot of people but for me it was more just a very interesting experience.

For example I think a lot of film makers are/were taking psychedelics. During my trips I noticed so much more detail in my environment and different light reflections which you often see in movies.

Depression is a quite significant cause of death, above many other major diseases especially for younger people.

Some quick points:

> 233 patients

Very small, can't generalize results based on such a small number. Doesn't mean the study's trash or anything, but don't jump to any conclusions here - good or bad.

> "The trial, which had all patients stopping antidepressants before participating, compared two active doses of COMP360, 25mg and 10mg, against a comparator 1mg dose."

- COMP360 was, I assume, their therapeutic psilocybin but it's unknown if that differs from raw psilocybin or not, and if so in what way.

- Did they TEST and PROVE discontinuation of antidepressants at all stages of the trial? Which kinds of antidepressants did they test for? SSRI? TCA? MAOI? How did they test? Uranalysis? Blood? Or did they just take 233 people's word for it?

> "[...] 179 patients reported at least one adverse event — the most common being headaches, nausea, fatigue and insomnia."

- Likely unrelated to the medication itself, as those can be caused by hundreds (thousands) of factors. Literally included in every possible side effect list for nearly every medication known to exist. Doubtful that the medication caused any of these.

> "There were 12 patients who reported more serious adverse events, such as suicidal behavior, intentional self-injury, and suicidal ideation."

- Do we know how many experienced which specific "serious adverse event"? Was it 11 ideations and 1 behavior that could be interpreted as self-injury, for example?

- Do we know for certain that none of these 12 had any of those adverse events occur in the last few months prior to starting the medication?

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Again, I'm not crapping on this at all here, but folks should take it with a grain of salt and realize there's more to this, that only 12 adverse events isn't a significant concern unless we can show with high confidence that it was caused by the therapy, and at only 5%, even then it sounds like manageable risk as long as a prescriber would know the patient's history before hand.

The announcement - not the study data itself just the press release - is here: https://ir.compasspathways.com/news-releases/news-release-de...

I had to look it up to put it in perspective. 25mg pure psilocybin could be around 5g of dried p. cubensis if they are .5% (which varies considerably...) point being this is no microdose. These patients are really tripping! So they are saying a psychedelic experience, which could reconstruct your entire ego, really can be a significant life-changing event.