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Increased amygdala responses after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression

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81–90 of 104 posts

Re: Increased amygdala responses after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression

#81
post #67
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To some degree, it absolutely is. At the very least, your reality needs to shift. That's the whole idea of healing depression Hold on now, you're deciding what the mechanism of action is without merit. Consider some of the studies being done for depression with Ketamine. In those studies, they're finding that the psychoactive component isn't the one causing the improvement- just a byproduct of it created during met…

For psilocybin it looks like the more powerful experience means more pronounced and longer lasting therapeutic effect: "Reductions in depressive symptoms at 5 weeks were predicted by the quality of the acute psychedelic experience." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29119217 And there are more and more studies about the mechanism of psychedelics such ad psilocybin and LSD coming out, essentially telling the same st…

That's correlation, not causation. What if the more intense experience comes from the same root cause as the more pronounced effect (ie: maybe some people are just wired differently and it has multiple effects?)

More study is needed before we go off saying that the psychedelic experience is the cause of the improvement, in my view.

Re: Increased amygdala responses after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression

#82
post #62
post #60

I can vouch for the antidepressant properties of psilocybin, as well as it's nearly miraculous efficacy at stopping cluster headaches. If any of you are unaware of cluster headaches, they are also called suicide headaches, because the pain is so great that many people just kill themselves. The pain level has few peers, it's been compared to amputation without anaesthetic. For me, the bulk of the sensation is of one o…

You can naturally find them in nearly any climate. Maybe worth a try

You can also order the extremely similar yet legal chemical, 4-AcO-DMT

Re: Increased amygdala responses after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression

#83
post #60

I can vouch for the antidepressant properties of psilocybin, as well as it's nearly miraculous efficacy at stopping cluster headaches. If any of you are unaware of cluster headaches, they are also called suicide headaches, because the pain is so great that many people just kill themselves. The pain level has few peers, it's been compared to amputation without anaesthetic. For me, the bulk of the sensation is of one o…

very happy you managed to avoid these experiences

I wonder if you could put yourself into high morphine diet until the pain goes away but right now I'm just very happy you found a trick

Re: Increased amygdala responses after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression

#84

This is fascinating as this is the plague of our generation. depression is such a debilitating condition, and in the UK mental health care has fallen to the level where it doesn't really exist outside of prescription medication. There was an earlier study in the UK [0] which showed similar effects, again on a small sample. The following interested me > A clinical trial, which took years and significant money to compl…

are you sure about the addictive nature ? http://www.depression-guide.com/seroxat.htm says no

there are clear withdrawal symptoms (no one should drop this treatment without gradual dose lowering) but addiction seems the wrong word

Re: Increased amygdala responses after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression

#85

Joins other studies from NYU investigating psilocybin mitigation of anxiety in advanced stage cancer patients. As well as a comprehensive survey by psychiatrists at Johns Hopkins showing 84% of those who tripped describing the experience as somewhat beneficial: Survey study of challenging experiences after ingesting psilocybin mushrooms http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/026988111666263... As federal dollar…

I wonder how such drugs can make patient take different treatment options for cancer. My uncle did his best after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, at times he wanted to try things but very often he ended up rejecting ideas.

Re: Increased amygdala responses after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression

#86
post #78
post #60

I can vouch for the antidepressant properties of psilocybin, as well as it's nearly miraculous efficacy at stopping cluster headaches. If any of you are unaware of cluster headaches, they are also called suicide headaches, because the pain is so great that many people just kill themselves. The pain level has few peers, it's been compared to amputation without anaesthetic. For me, the bulk of the sensation is of one o…

Are you sure growkits are illegal? Truffles? Although nowadays I am rather conservative regarding recreative use of entheogenics Azarius ships their growkits seemingly to entire Europe [1]. Anecdata: it is fairly easy to grow champignons and psilos. The kits I used were complete with straightforward guides. I wrote "psilos" because there is also A. Muscaria, though it has less severe effects care must be taken when p…

On the legal front I'm less concerned about punishment than I am about convenience. I don't really care to get into growing mushrooms just to have one dose every year or two, just wish I could easily purchase them ready to go.

I actually don't know if psilocybin works better. I was unclear when I said it was the only effective treatment, I just meant psychedelics in general. I actually prefer LSD, but at the time I could only get mushrooms.

According to everything I've read they seem pretty equal for cluster headache treatment.

Oh, and "Into the Wild" definitely made me wary of attempting to identify wild plants to eat.

Re: Increased amygdala responses after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression

#87
post #60

I can vouch for the antidepressant properties of psilocybin, as well as it's nearly miraculous efficacy at stopping cluster headaches. If any of you are unaware of cluster headaches, they are also called suicide headaches, because the pain is so great that many people just kill themselves. The pain level has few peers, it's been compared to amputation without anaesthetic. For me, the bulk of the sensation is of one o…

> it's nearly miraculous efficacy at stopping cluster headaches. Relevant talk from Horizons: https://vimeo.com/10918637

Great talk. Thank you, @Alex3917.

It is incredible to see the pain these individuals go through (sometimes for an hour every two hours - 12 times a day). It is even more impressing how resilient some humans are and the pain they can endure.

Re: Increased amygdala responses after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression

#88
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can naturally find them in nearly any climate. Maybe worth a try

You can also order the extremely similar yet legal chemical, 4-AcO-DMT

Illegal in most of europe (we banned analogs years ago when the legal drug thing boomed). I am generally not the biggest fan of psychodelic analogs, have had bad experience with some of them. There is a reason real shrooms, acid and DMT are still the king of the scene :) [not entirely true for LSD, as 1P-LSD and AL-LAD are virtually the same as LSD-25]

Re: Increased amygdala responses after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can abuse mushrooms if you take them in lower dosages. This keeps the antidepressant effect, but doesn't allow you to trip. I had done this - nothing bad happened to me, but not suggesting to try this at home. The point still stands though: please don't misinform people around you since that just reinforces the negative agenda around theses substances.

Curious as someone who has considered micro dosing - what would you say the effects of taking the lower dosages repeatedly were that would put it in the 'abuse' category?

It’s the general anti-depressant effect. Over a course of a few days you get used to the fact that your mood is more swingy - that would be “your ups are higher and the downs are lower”.

Now you get used to it, and returning to a less emotional state of mind would be similar to stopping “wake and bake’ing” - there’s no physical dependence, but there’s a routine of keeping yourself more moody every day.

Re: Increased amygdala responses after psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression

#90
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can abuse mushrooms if you take them in lower dosages. This keeps the antidepressant effect, but doesn't allow you to trip. I had done this - nothing bad happened to me, but not suggesting to try this at home. The point still stands though: please don't misinform people around you since that just reinforces the negative agenda around theses substances.

What is the abusive component of the regimen you're describing?

The abusive component is where you forget that life isn’t as impressive as it is on shrooms. It gets harder to return to life full of paler colours (or let’s say - you start reacting to the fact, that compared to being a bit high, life isn’t as impressive).

Also don’t forget that there’s next to no studies about long-term (let’s say: microdosing for a month) effect of shrooms.

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