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Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study

independent.co.uk

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Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study

#101

Post by pmoriarty »

dx87 wrote: post #88
pmoriarty wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Magic mushrooms were the first substance to make me feel like myself after years and years of deep depression. But I didn't get quite the one hit, life changing state of mind that is often attributed to psychedelics." Did you take them under the supervision of a trained psychedelic therapist, with the appropriate dose, with the right intention, in a therapeutic context, over multiple sessions, using a protocol desig…

They're not talking about multiple sessions, they're talking about people advocating psychodelics who often claim that magic mushrooms are a wonder drug that you take once and it completely changes your outlook on life.

There's no way to guarantee a powerful, life-changing experience. Some people do have one on their first try, some take more tries, others never do. All one can do is optimize the dose, set and setting to increase the odds that it'll happen.

Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study

#102

Post by derefr »

dbingham wrote: post #83
derefr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that if they don't trust aspirin, they should buy a kit that lets them make aspirin (or salicin, rather) at home from willow bark. Still safer than consuming arbitrary unknown amounts of salicin, together with whatever else is in the bark besides salicin. Let me put it this way: the big-pharma drug manufacturing (and more generally, medical-equipment manufacturing) pipeline is set up such that the only…

IV Saline Solution is not a good analogy, that's a very different case from herbal medicine. People have been using willow bark for pain relief for hundreds if not thousands of years. They have not been injecting saline solution. There's reason to believe that, in some cases, it is better to get medicines in their tried and true forms (those used for hundreds or thousands of years) rather than their more recent isola…

The thing is, unless you operate in a system that also has a pipeline for manufacturing and delivering medical marijuana to pharmacies—and the patient is likely to take advantage of that, rather than just using their medical-marijuana card to go to their local head shop—then you as a doctor have a choice to make, between "prescribe them something they can only [in this country] get at a pharmacy, which is therefore likely to be okay", and "prescribe them something they will get wherever the market allows, and thus is of whatever quality the market will bear."

It's the "whatever quality the market will bear" part that I worry about.

Consider: if you buy a bottle of ground willow-bark sitting on a store shelf in a random bodega... where did it come from? Who made it? Where did they grow it? What are the legal requirements re: pesticides, soil toxicity, etc. in the country they grew it [since it probably wasn't here]? And how certain are you of those answers?

And mind you, Chinese herbs are a bit better, even, since they're mostly just considered "food" by standards bodies, and so it's pretty hard to import them (or even derivatives of them) and local growers get regulated for "food purity" by entities like the FDA. (No standards body can protect you from things that inherently contain compounds nobody is aware they inherently contain, of course. Unless some other compound in the herb was considered the active ingredient, and isolated out...)

But, well, let me put it like this: my local pharmacy has some homeopathic tinctures (for some reason. At least they're on the bottom shelf out of most people's sight.) Who made those? And, given that they started as poisons before being diluted, how sure are you that they actually "did homeopathy correctly" and diluted them so that they're not actually going to poison you? DIY, then? How sure are you that you can "do homeopathy correctly", instead of accidentally poisoning yourself because you didn't stir your cyanide tincture well-enough? And then, how confident would you be that some big-pharma company could—if they wished—do homeopathy correctly? I'm guessing a lot more than your confidence in either BestElsewhere Imports Co or in your own two hands.

That's what I'm getting at. It's not about what happens when you grow it yourself. It's about the worst quality of product the market could potentially deliver to you when you go looking, and what that means for a doctor considering which delivery-vehicle to prescribe.

Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study

#103

Post by alexpetralia »

adamsea wrote: post #82
sawyerjhood wrote: post #2

I'm personally excited to see what sorts of new treatments will come out of using psychedelics medically. I've always been on the skeptical side of medical marijuana usage in all but the most extreme cases, but I have a feeling that LSD and psilocybin can really provide mental turning points and help people break out of depression.

There’s a great book by Michael Pollan, called “Change Your Mind”, I think, which talks a lot about the history of psychedelic research in the US. Great read.

This is a fantastic book. If anyone is interested in exploring the therapeutic uses of psilocybin in a safe, controlled setting, one of my best friends runs the Atman Retreat (recommended here by Pollan: https://michaelpollan.com/resources/psychedelics-resources/)

Edit to add link: https://atmanretreat.com/

Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study

#104

Post by scarejunba »

vmchale wrote: post #18
kasperni wrote: post #12

Now that mainstream club drugs such as MDMA, Ketamine, and LSD/Magic Mushrooms are finding their way into therapeutic usage. I'm wondering if and how governments will change the current narrative about "all drugs are bad for you". Edit: I'm not advocating recreational drug usage. Just saying, that if mum is on magic mushrooms and studies like these have established safety dosage and clear therapeutic benefits. You ca…

I don't think Psilocybin mushrooms or LSD are used as a club drug.

They're a party drug for sure. LSD is great for festivals, and though I've never done shrooms, I know my friends have gone to shows on them.

In fact, I'd say LSD is used more as a party drug than it is used for anything else.

Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study

#105

Post by sigstoat »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #57
derefr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'm a skeptic that 1. CBD+THC offers any additional medical† benefits over CBD used alone; 2. that it makes any medical sense to prescribe a (non-dose-controllable) plant over a pill, or at the very least an extract with tested dosage. I'm not skeptical of the medical benefits of (some of) the compounds in marijuana; I'm just a skeptic of prescribing marijuana itself as a way of delivering those compounds…

Hydroponic cannabis is grown in highly controlled environments and the dosage levels are tested to be within an acceptable range. There are also dozens (hundreds) of other cannabinoids found in marijuana which (may) have additional medical benefits. >It's like prescribing willow bark for a headache when aspirin exists. Willow bark contains salicin, not aspirin, while marijuana contains both THC and CBD. Willow bark a…

> Hydroponic cannabis is grown in highly controlled environments and the dosage levels are tested to be within an acceptable range.

the cannabis testing industry is largely garbage.

the labs that are properly equipped to do the testing are either forbidden from doing it because they're DEA registered, or they make plenty of money without dealing with fly by night operations that can only pay in cash.

Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study

#106

Post by heavyset_go »

derefr wrote: post #66
dbingham wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of pain treatment, it seems likely that the psychoactive affects of THC may be a large contributor to its effectiveness. In that it distracts you from the pain. And there are a lot of people who are going to be more comfortable taking a plant in its natural state, than using an isolated compound that's been through a processing plant they have no control over, and which depends on a regulatory structure t…

I would argue that if they don't trust aspirin, they should buy a kit that lets them make aspirin (or salicin, rather) at home from willow bark. Still safer than consuming arbitrary unknown amounts of salicin, together with whatever else is in the bark besides salicin. Let me put it this way: the big-pharma drug manufacturing (and more generally, medical-equipment manufacturing) pipeline is set up such that the only…

> Something like medical marijuana, meanwhile, can kill you by heavy-metal soil toxicity; by pesticides; by coincidental allergens in non-active-ingredient plant matter; etc.

> None of these things will be checked for when you get a dose of medical marijuana.

Medical marijuana is grown in controlled environments by licensed medical growers, the products are tested for heavy metals and contaminants like mold, and are tested for levels of active ingredients.

Strains are grown for their medical benefits and standardized yield of constituent active ingredients, and for patients that need an absolutely standardized product, extracts and formulations are produced that meet those requirements.

No one is selling some crop that was grown in Mexico, someone's basement or downstream from an oil refinery.

Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study

#107

Post by goldcd »

This is sub-anecdotal, I know - but I recently after many years of "don't mess with my head" took mirtazapine for mild-depression/over-awareness-of-the-actual-state-of-the-world-around-me.

I feel better. Only noticeable effects were that I fell asleep much faster and woke up (refreshed) remembering all manner of weird clear dreams. Previously was one of those people who for the last decade couldn't recall a single dream (and had trouble nodding off). My random guess is that dreaming/tripping just loosens the mind up.. maybe like a deep tissue massage for the mind.. allowing things to mentally move about a bit and drop back into place (or mentally gives your mind a chance to beat the previous day into manageable lumps)

Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study

#108

Post by scarejunba »

mikelyons wrote: post #14
kasperni wrote: post #12

Now that mainstream club drugs such as MDMA, Ketamine, and LSD/Magic Mushrooms are finding their way into therapeutic usage. I'm wondering if and how governments will change the current narrative about "all drugs are bad for you". Edit: I'm not advocating recreational drug usage. Just saying, that if mum is on magic mushrooms and studies like these have established safety dosage and clear therapeutic benefits. You ca…

MDMA, Ketamine and LSD sure, but mushrooms have been in use for spirituality far longer than mainstream clubs have even been a concept.

And K started with medical use.

Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study

#109

Post by gus_massa »

dmurray wrote: post #37
arkades wrote: post #8

This is NOT a trial that was designed to assess the safety of psilocybin. This was a trial meant to show that a particular dosage of psilocybin is /safe enough/ to pursue further research in that dose range. This was a /phase one/ clinical trial. Phase One: administer small doses under very close supervision in a tiny number of people to determine whether it's immediately dangerous, or safe enough /for further study/…

Are controlled experiments necessary for proving safety? Intuitively, there shouldn't be a placebo effect, and you could get twice as powerful a study by giving twice as many people the drug and using statistics for the general population as the control group.

What is general population? I guess the study exclude people with more than 95 year old and people with terminal cancer. Other exclusion factors are not so clear, so you need to know the results of no treatment in the same population. For this, you need to split the group at random.

Note also that the study probably include some regular visits to the hospital. Some people may eat more healthy food a few days before a blood exam so the doctor gets happier. Some people may change other habits, like no binge drinking. So you need to measure the results in a group that follow the same explicit and implicit rules.

Does the report of the symptoms use the same criteria in the study than in general population? What about dizziness? Does this produce dizziness? Does the general population report dizziness to their family doctor? Replace dizziness with chest pain, or constipation, or whatever symptom you are interested.

Also, people lie to their doctor because they try to be nice. It's not a voluntary lie, but if there is a study about curing something, people want to be nice and give optimistic feedback. You must have a double blind control group so you can compensate this.

Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study

#110

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

vmchale wrote: post #18
kasperni wrote: post #12

Now that mainstream club drugs such as MDMA, Ketamine, and LSD/Magic Mushrooms are finding their way into therapeutic usage. I'm wondering if and how governments will change the current narrative about "all drugs are bad for you". Edit: I'm not advocating recreational drug usage. Just saying, that if mum is on magic mushrooms and studies like these have established safety dosage and clear therapeutic benefits. You ca…

I don't think Psilocybin mushrooms or LSD are used as a club drug.

Oh they are for sure, they are a big part of club/electronic music culture (both for the producers of said music, and the listeners) - or at least have been in the past - I'm sure trends change.
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