Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

psychnewsdaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 201 posts

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#91

Post by giantg2 »

okareaman wrote: post #4
beepboopbeep wrote: post #2

+ With (exceptionally) long term, positive effects when coupled with therapy before, during, and after strong psychedelic trips. Ultimately, the research results (and anecdotal evidence) for psilocybin are too great to ignore. The next question is - How does it get legalized (which we're seeing the stirrings of) and who gets access to it and how when it is?

Just passed in Oregon: Oregon Measure 109. Legalize Psilocybin Permits licensed service providers to administer psilocybin-producing mushroom and fungi products to individuals 21 years of age or older.

I forget. This done undersupervision, right? They aren't allowed to prescribe and send them home if I remember correctly.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#92

Post by tasty_freeze »

pessimizer wrote: post #74

Really sick of these "drugs feel good" stories. If we were still behaviorists, we wouldn't pretend this was news. This is declaring a full remission of depression after four weeks in half of the subjects. This is pretend science, I absolutely guarantee that an all expenses paid weeklong camping trip (or trip to Paris for those afraid of bugs, or trip to Japan for those sick of Paris) would do the same thing. Asking d…

> Of course drugs feel good, that's why people do them.

Drugs can feel good, but that isn't universal and that isn't the goal of these drug-assisted therapies.

Often psychedelics can be scary and anxiety producing. An introspective trip often isn't "fun" but can lead to personal insight -- the internet is littered with such testimonials. That is the hope of these therapies, not to give the person a joy ride for a few hours.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#93

Post by bigphishy »

LatteLazy wrote: post #54

Full disclosure, I have severe clinical depression. Multiple comments here have asked for double blind placebo trials. But you can't really do that with something psycho active, at least not ethically. I can appreciate wanting high standards, but that doesn't mean banning everything that doesn't fit the neat mold we use in other cases. Also, suicide is the leading cause of death for multiple age/sex demographic group…

In the correct setting, psychedelics can critically alter one's view on the world and themselves. This is very powerful, but very unknown. We must tread on light ground when approaching these substances. So, more research must be done under the right trip settings, but not in haste.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#94

Post by cwkoss »

b34r wrote: post #3

As someone with major depression, it helps temporarily but doesn’t last.

Are there any pharmaceuticals that provide permanent rather than temporary benefits?

Maybe vaccines or antibiotics (depending on how you define 'permanent'), but I don't think any psychopharmaceuticals fit this description.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#95

Post by neonate »

fakeacct112020 wrote: post #87

Survivor bias alert; as someone who cured themself of clinical, multi-year depression with one, self-administered dose of Psilocybin in 2005... this is real. This can work. And I will never, ever take Psilocybin again.

Would you be willing to share more about this? What was your experience? Why will you never take it again? How do you think it cured your depression?

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#96

Post by newbie789 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #76
newbie789 wrote: post #64

This is fascinating. I'm glad that they're allowing psychedelics for certain types of treatment, but I hope that the choices open up further than psilocybin. Back in my teenage years I took pretty much every psychedelic I could access, and trip-sat (like babysitting) for about two dozen of my friends over the course of a few years. I found in tripsitting that psilocybin was among the more difficult to manage psychede…

The study used psilocybin as an adjunct to 11 hours of professional therapy. This study is not the same as taking psilocybin or other psychedelic drugs in an ad-hoc manner.

I agree! I don't know how all this works, I just had a related thought pop into my head.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#97

Post by LatteLazy »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #86
LatteLazy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason you cannot have a double blind study is that you can tell you've been given mushrooms. So, I expect, can the therapist and the researcher etc. The moment anyone knows it's no longer double blind. I'm happy to be corrected if there is some clever way around this. I have heard people suggest you give "control" group members so other psychoactive substance (MDMA was suggested). But that doesn't have the same…

People have attempted controls in the past, and often it is a high dose of niacin. It causes flushing and increased HR. To someone who has experience with mushrooms they won't be fooled. To someone naive, they can think they got the real deal.

I guess (I'm no expert) we would want a little of both: A blind, Niacin trial that is not placebo controlled AND a Placebo controlled but not blind trial? I wonder what Tim Ferriss has gotten up to recently on this...

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#98

Post by zxcmx »

diegoholiveira wrote: post #73
jb_s wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If depression really is a "software" rather than a "hardware" issue that makes it much harder to solve right? You can't just toggle some biochemical switches and restore normal function. But if you can rewire the software in just the right way then maybe

> If depression really is a "software" rather than a "hardware" issue that makes it much harder to solve right? I bet you have the 3 scenarios: - "hardware" only - "software" only - both

Broken computer. Could be hardware, could be sofware, could be both.

But even though there are common scenarios, each computer can also be broken in a different way.

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#99

Post by Gene_Parmesan »

jychang wrote: post #17
scarmig wrote: post #5

I'm curious if we have insights into whether psychedelics' mental health effects work by changing something by a direct chemical interaction, or if they work by just encouraging the patient to rewire their own brain while tripping. If e.g. you administered psychedelics on someone in an induced coma, would you see the same benefit?

IIRC there were studies done to that effect with subjects in comas with various psychedelics, where there were no effects. Regard this with a large grain of salt though, I read that somewhere a long time ago and don't have a source rn.

Sounds like an informed consent nightmare. How could this even happen? This wasn't even close to my area of legal practice though so it's I guess possible for there to be some sort of workaround.

Looks like a potentially interesting study here: https://jme.bmj.com/content/45/5/299

Re: New study finds psilocybin greatly and quickly relieves depression

#100

Post by cwkoss »

tyingq wrote: post #32

"Two psilocybin sessions (session 1: 20 mg/70 kg; session 2: 30 mg/70 kg) were given (administered in opaque gelatin capsules with approximately 100 mL of water) in the context of supportive psychotherapy (approximately 11 hours)." Curious if that's enough for the patients to have a psychedelic experience.

From wikipedia on Psilocybe cubensis:

"The concentrations of psilocin and psilocybin, as determined by high-performance liquid chromatography, are in the range of 0.14–0.42% and 0.37–1.30% (dry weight) in the whole mushroom"

My napkin math: 20mg is equivalent to roughly between 1.1g to 3.9g of dry weight (lots of variance in potency). This weight range is roughly equivalent to typical recreational dosages.

Post reply on HN