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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

#81

Post by pmoriarty »

yarg wrote: post #48
freedomben wrote: post #3

Earlier 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…

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 c…

"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 designed for maximum therapeutic effect (which usually includes talk therapy both before and after the sessions)?

Having the right set and setting are both absolutely critical to get the most out of psychedelics.

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

#82

Post by adamsea »

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.

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

#83

Post by dbingham »

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…

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 isolated forms (which only have a few decades of use). There could be beneficial interactions between all those unknown substances. In some cases - again see St John's Wort - the natural herbs are more effective, safer, and with fewer side effects than the concentrated drugs. And they are infinitely more available, since they can be grown right in your back yard.

There are of course exceptions to this - there was the very popular Chinese herb that had been used for a thousand years that turned out to give you throat cancer.

Don't get me wrong, I use the medical system. I also sometimes use herbal medicine, but I'm much, much more likely to reach for Advil than I am for willow bark. But I understand those who reach for willow bark, and recognize the validity of their reasoning.

Personally, I want to see these herbs tested in proper trials so we can determine which are pure placebo, which are effective the way St John's Wort is, and which are dangerous the way that Chinese herb was. If we can identify the ones that are actually effective, then that opens up a ton of room for people to self medicate and frees up resources in the medical system for those who really need them.

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

#84

Post by heavyset_go »

derefr wrote: post #28
ergothus wrote: post #6

Earlier 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…

> I'm a skeptic that 1. CBD+THC offers any additional medical† benefits over CBD used alone

You shouldn't be, because empirical evidence shows that there are.

CBD's most overt therapeutic effect is mediated through action at 5HT1A autoreceptors and allosteric modulation of mu and delta-opioid receptors, whereas THC's MoA is mediated through CB1 agonism, to a lesser extent CB2 agonism, and to a lesser extent than CBD, allosteric modulation of mu and delta-opioid receptors.

THC has anxiogenic (and paradoxical anxiolytic) and psychotomimetic properties, and has the side-effect of inducing schizophrenia-related disorders in some people. CBD's action at 5HT1A receptors both induces an anxiolytic effect, and reduces the symptoms of psychotic disorders.

A combination of CBD+THC can reduce the negative side-effects of THC used alone, and CBD alone does not have the same effects as THC or CBD+THC. There are studies that document the synergic effects of combined cannabinoids versus isolated cannabinoids.

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

#85

Post by derefr »

monkmartinez wrote: post #77
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…

>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 thing about a drug that should be able to kill someone, is if the drug's active ingredient itself has a bad interaction with their body. "Should be" is a giant risk factor... "Don't worry Mrs. Jones, this drug shouldn't be able to kill you unless you have a terrible al…

Certainly, the creation of novel molecular compounds is risky, and you can only mitigate the risks you know about. But that's not the comparison we're talking about here. We're not talking about smoking marijuana plant-matter vs. taking new GSK LessCancerPainIum™️. We're talking about smoking marijuana plant-matter vs. taking a pill that was created by processing grown marijuana plant-matter, or with an active ingredient synthesized to be identical to the ingredient-under-test of marijuana plant-matter.

Personally, I've never heard of a case where Big Pharma has ever created a delivery vehicle for a well-known, Generally-Recognized-As-Safe active ingredient (like e.g. aspirin) that then kills, or even harms, people.

Like, the Tylenol murders? Those were big news. It'd be even bigger news if the manufacturer themselves were responsible instead of some random MITM. But there has never been that kind of big news. They don't screw up when making pills. Pills are pills. Novel active ingredients can kill you. But—presuming the active ingredient is safe—the pills themselves killing you? When has that ever happened?

> Unfortunately, I have lost track of how many people I have seen die that were the direct result of alcohol ingestion.

Well, yeah; people are consuming arbitrary amounts of alcohol. That's what's bad about recreational alcohol use.

Same goes for opioids, in a different sense; addiction drives you to consume arbitrary amounts of opioids. That's what's bad about drugs of abuse.

And yet, as an EMT, you still stick car-crash victims with fentanyl, no? Even though it's an opioid, and potentially a vector for chemical dependence. But you're not likely to kill them with it. Why? Because it's a measured dose.

----

Note that I'm not arguing that the active ingredients in medical cannabis could kill anyone. It's been pretty well shown that they don't really have an LD50.

It's not the active ingredients I'm worried about. It's the rest. It's the reason that hospitals don't get food for patients catered from arbitrary restaurants. You want to control all the variables you can. A CBD+THC tincture is going to have strictly fewer non-controlled variables than smoking the raw plant. A crystallized distillate suspended in a PEG gel pill is going to have fewer non-controlled variables still.

It's not about not-killing people. It's about treating people, successfully, with the highest ROI per treatment-hour possible and the least time spent flailing around trying to diagnose unknown brokenness while the patient continues to suffer.

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

#86

Post by Starkus »

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.

Of course they are, all the time

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

#88

Post by dx87 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #81
yarg wrote: post #48

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. 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 c…

"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.

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

#89

Post by Starkus »

cityzen wrote: post #80

Awesome! Can't wait until 2030 when it is legal in a handful of states in the US.

Denver is actually full of those little chocolates wrapped in tin foil , easy to find easy to get and also cannot get arrested for as long as no $ exchanged per the new law that was voted by the people

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

#90

Post by derefr »

heavyset_go wrote: post #84
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…

> I'm a skeptic that 1. CBD+THC offers any additional medical† benefits over CBD used alone You shouldn't be, because empirical evidence shows that there are. CBD's most overt therapeutic effect is mediated through action at 5HT1A autoreceptors and allosteric modulation of mu and delta-opioid receptors, whereas THC's MoA is mediated through CB1 agonism, to a lesser extent CB2 agonism, and to a lesser extent than CBD,…

I agree with everything you said, but you didn't say anything that relates to medical benefits of THC for any specific use-cases. Certainly CBD+THC has synergistic effects—it gets you more high—but does it relieve more pain, or fight more nausea? Because those are the criteria the treatment is being graded on here.

I'm not skeptical that THC does anything; it certainly does. What I'm skeptical of, is whether marijuana has the particular medical benefits it's prescribed for in part because of THC, rather than despite THC.

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