The study seems to be this one:
https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2017.00974
Would it kill the PopSci article to include the DOI to the actual study?
Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study
41–50 of 236 posts
Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d steer you toward kava kava as a legal and otc way to change your mind and emotions for the better or more open. Also St. John’s wort.
After googling, it appears that kava causes liver damage, thanks but no thanks
Yes you probably would not want to take it for an extended period of time [1] There is not a direct causation link to liver damage as of yet. It may be that people have a preexisting issue that is exacerbated by kava.
Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm very optimistic as well. My family has hard-to-treat depression and there's a lot of reason to be optimistic about psilocybin. Michael Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind" was a fantastic read. It only makes me wonder what other possibilities have been out there but banned and therefore unavailable for study and experimentation. Luckily the days of censoring and hoarding information seem to be coming to an end. Of…
From my experience it's incorrect to think of psilocybin as some magic pill that will magically make your depression go away. I'm in the camp that depression is rarely just some "chemical imbalance" in the brain that you were unlucky to be born with, and yet that is how we currently think of it and treat it. It's most often the case there is something in one's past, very often from one's childhood, that has been avoi…
[deleted]
Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study
#44I'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.
> I've always been on the skeptical side of medical marijuana usage in all but the most extreme cases, Really? I've always found the milder claims fairly believable (fighting nausea or chronic low level pain relief). As an anecdote, I can attest to dealing with kidney stone pain well (rather than stopping the pain it reduced how much I noticed it) and it ended up more effective and felt less dangerous than the opiods…
I tend to agree with grawprog. I think it is powerful in cases like chemo (I had a friend who used MM on chemo and it curbed his nausea like no other drug could). For chronic pain I think it is better than opiates, but I'm not sure that the side-effects out-weigh the benefits. My mother has knee issues and is a MM user, but the marijuana is not helping at all with the root cause (she is severely overweight at 5ft 4in and over 300lb). Mainly I think that I see medical marijuana as being over-prescribed where there are better solutions. I personally don't have any problems with marijuana overall as I am a recreational user.
Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study
#45There is a dangerous pro drug agenda being pushed here. The owners of this website are not good people.
Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've always been on the skeptical side of medical marijuana usage in all but the most extreme cases, Really? I've always found the milder claims fairly believable (fighting nausea or chronic low level pain relief). As an anecdote, I can attest to dealing with kidney stone pain well (rather than stopping the pain it reduced how much I noticed it) and it ended up more effective and felt less dangerous than the opiods…
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…
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 they have no faith in to tell them its safe (and what they are expecting).
Basically, there are a lot of people very skeptical of the corporate drug system (for good reasons, frankly), and the availability of natural herbal medicines does (for the most part [aside 1.]) no harm to them, and actually can do quite a bit of good.
If they don't trust aspirin, then let them use willow bark.
1. Obviously there are exceptions to this. There are some herbs that are considerably more dangerous and harmful than the useful compounds isolated from them. But there are also many herbs that are perfectly safe to use, and still effective to one degree or another. In some cases, they are every bit as effective, and even safer, than the isolated, concentrated alternatives (see St John's Wort).
Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study
#47I was performing my own informal tests on various psychoactive agents in the late 60's and early 70's and can attest to the efficacy of psilocybin, as best as I can remember...
Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study
#48I'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.
I'm very optimistic as well. My family has hard-to-treat depression and there's a lot of reason to be optimistic about psilocybin. Michael Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind" was a fantastic read. It only makes me wonder what other possibilities have been out there but banned and therefore unavailable for study and experimentation. Luckily the days of censoring and hoarding information seem to be coming to an end. Of…
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.
One thing that I have read is that the whole life-changing thing requires a transcendental experience - and that participants who failed to reach that echelon didn't experience long term improvement.
I can't really comment on that - because I simply never reached that breakthrough dose.
The biggest issue for me is that magic mushrooms taste kinda bad - it's rather hard to eat enough of them.
Truffles on the other hand, are completely inoffensive - tasting (in some way) like a slightly off nut.
I could quite happily snack on a big-ass bowl of those things, and watch enthralled as the world turned weird.
Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm very optimistic as well. My family has hard-to-treat depression and there's a lot of reason to be optimistic about psilocybin. Michael Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind" was a fantastic read. It only makes me wonder what other possibilities have been out there but banned and therefore unavailable for study and experimentation. Luckily the days of censoring and hoarding information seem to be coming to an end. Of…
From my experience it's incorrect to think of psilocybin as some magic pill that will magically make your depression go away. I'm in the camp that depression is rarely just some "chemical imbalance" in the brain that you were unlucky to be born with, and yet that is how we currently think of it and treat it. It's most often the case there is something in one's past, very often from one's childhood, that has been avoi…
Agreed. Imo, psilocybin won't just magically fix a chemical imbalance in your head. But it can open you up (for the duration of its effect) to some thoughts and ideas that could help you resolve your internal issues causing you depression, and those thoughts and realizations are what can help with getting rid of depression, as those realizations can stay with you even after the trip is over.
Which is somewhat similar to what i have read about the ketamine therapy, which essentially just makes certain areas of your brain more neuroplastic for a short duration, helping you get out of your routine thought patterns and help create new neural pathways and reshape the existing ones easier.
Note: I am not a brain researcher myself at all, so what I said could totally be just some pseudoscientific bs, but that's what I got after reading a bunch on both of the topic in a lot of places, including other HN threads. If you want to correct some misunderstandings in my post, please feel free to reply. I will be very happy to correct my misunderstandings.
Re: Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study
#50Now 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.
Perhaps not club, but most definitely festival