Tag: mental health

America’s First ‘Shroom Clinic’ Opens In Oregon

America’s first licensed health clinic to sell ‘magic mushrooms’ opened in June in Oregon and has been swamped with surging demand. The waitlist for the clinic exceeds 3,000 people, some of whom are searching for ways to treat depression and PTSD. 

No prescription or referral is needed for Epic Healing Eugene, but customers must be over 21 to receive psilocybin services. 

AP News said some customers complained the ‘mind-bending’ experience is too costly: 

“A client can wind up paying over $2,000, which helps cover service center expenses, a facilitator and lab-tested psilocybin. Annual licenses for service centers and growers cost $10,000, with a half-price discount for veterans.” 

Even though The Oregon Psychiatric Physicians Association opposed legalizing psilocybin in 2020, voters thought otherwise and also decriminalized the possession of hard drugs. 

Epic Healing Eugene’s owner Cathy Jonas told AP that providing legal access to mushrooms is a ‘dream come true’: 

“The plant medicines have communicated to me that I’m supposed to be doing this thing.”

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Ketamine Therapy Is Now Being Offered Across the US by an Insurance Provider

Ketamine-assisted therapy is now available as a health benefit across the U.S.

Enthea, a benefits company focused on providing insurance coverage for psychedelic treatments, announced it is offering ketamine-assisted therapy to its benefit plans nationwide. The company already has ketamine-assisted therapy on benefit plans in California, New York, and Texas. 

But the number of Americans receiving this type of treatment as a benefit is limited. Currently only 1,500 people are offered it while the company hopes that number will reach 200,000 by the end of 2024. 

Ketamine is the only psychedelic that can legally be used to treat mental health conditions, and there’s been an influx of clinics offering the drug, sometimes in conjunction with psychotherapy, in the last few years. Sessions range from $300 to $1,500 a session without insurance—usually several sessions are recommended. 

Enthea’s ability to offer ketamine as a benefit nationwide is due to new partnerships with two companies—Skylight Psychedelics and Innerwell—that facilitate psychedelic experiences at clinics around the country, remotely, and in people’s homes, according to a news release. 

Employers looking to offer the benefit to its workers can add it on to existing plans, similarly to dental and vision plans, Enthea said. 

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Children on puberty blockers saw mental health change – new analysis

The majority of children in a landmark study on puberty blockers experienced positive or negative changes in their mental health, new analysis suggests.

The original study of 44 children, who all took the controversial drugs for a year or more, found no mental health impact – neither benefits nor harm.

But a re-analysis of that data now suggests 34% saw their mental health deteriorate, while 29% improved.

The authors of the original report have welcomed the new evidence.

The re-analysis, which has been seen by BBC Newsnight, questions some of the conclusions from the 2021 study about the potential mental health impact of puberty blockers on under 16s. It also sheds some light on this much-debated, but little understood, area of children’s medicine.

The new study has not been in a peer-reviewed journal yet. The authors say they felt there was an urgency in getting the information into the public domain.

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EXPLORING SEX AND PSYCHEDELICS

The connection between sex and psychedelics dates back to the sexual liberation movement throughout the 1960s and 70s. Psychedelics, in particular LSD, were associated with loosened sexual inhibitions and the resolution of past sexual trauma. Inspired by Timothy Leary’s infamous calls to ‘turn up, tune in, drop out’, psychedelics appeared as a tool for pleasure, love and self-expression. 

For sex guru Annie Sprinkle, using psychedelics through the 60s, 70s and 80s had profound positive impacts on her sex life. From opening doors to alternative realities, to increasing connectedness and sexual satisfaction between partners, Annie calls them her ‘greatest sexual educators’. 

She notes that the connection between sex and psychedelics is much deeper than arousal. Through each experience the user gains new information, allowing them to see themselves from a new perspective. This, in turn, can inform the individual’s sexual life.

Even though psychedelics remain illegal across much of the world, anecdotal evidence suggests that using psychedelics to enhance sexual experiences is still just as popular as it once was. However, as sex on drugs has inevitably been labelled a high-risk activity , there is a clear lack of hard-line statistics to back up such an assumption. 

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Young People At Risk Of Psychosis Saw Symptoms ‘Surprisingly’ Improve With Marijuana Use, Study Finds

A new study of teens and young adults at risk of developing psychotic disorders found that regular marijuana use over a two-year period did not trigger early onset of symptoms—contrary to the claims of prohibitionists who argue that cannabis causes mental illness. In fact, it was associated with modest improvements in cognitive functioning and reduced use of other medications.

A team of researchers at Zucker Hillside Hospital, Stanford University School of Medicine, University of Michigan and University of California at Davis carried out the study, which was published Tuesday in the journal Psychiatry Research.

“Recreational cannabis use has recently gained considerable interest as an environmental risk factor that triggers the onset of psychosis,” the study authors wrote. “To date, however, the evidence that cannabis is associated with negative outcomes in individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis is inconsistent.”

To investigate, the team tracked 210 CHR patients ages 12–25 who participated in an Early Detection and Intervention for the Prevention of Psychosis Program (EDIPPP). Over the course of two years, researchers compared the mental health and prescription medication usage of people who regularly consumed marijuana to non-users.

The study found that “continuous cannabis use over 2-years of follow-up was not associated with an increased psychosis transition rate, and did not worsen clinical symptoms, functioning levels, or overall neurocognition.”

“Nevertheless, our findings suggest that continuously using cannabis may be associated with slightly elevated, albeit non-significant, attenuated positive symptom levels relative to non-users,” the researchers said.

“CHR youth who continuously used cannabis had higher neurocognition and social functioning over time, and decreased medication usage, relative to non-users,” they reiterated. “Surprisingly, clinical symptoms improved over time despite the medication decreases.”

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The Return of MDMA

In 2006 a Florida man named Zulfi Riza reached out to Rick Doblin, the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Riza was suicidal. He was suffering from PTSD, anxiety, depression, and anger issues. He had tried countless remedies, and he felt that Doblin was his last hope. Riza had heard that an underground network of psychiatrists practiced therapy using the illegal drug MDMA, better known as ecstasy or molly. And Doblin knew of such a therapist.

But Riza also suffered seizures. Should a medical emergency take place during a session, the therapist would be exposed and could lose their license, or worse.

Doblin told him he couldn’t help. Riza killed himself the very same morning.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had unilaterally outlawed MDMA in 1985 under emergency powers granted to it by Congress. To back up the ban, the agency cited flimsy evidence about MDA, another drug entirely. It was a catastrophic case of government overreach. Zulfi Riza was just one of many people whose lives may have been saved had they not been forced to seek help in secret.

The DEA isn’t the only villain in this story. In 2002, a senator from Delaware named Joe Biden proposed the Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act. This eventually passed, in somewhat watered-down form, as the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act. It basically made party organizers liable for drugs consumed on the premises. This made it much more complicated to organize services such as testing partygoers’ drugs for dangerous ingredients, as it would implicitly admit there was drug-taking on-site.

At a time when Americans are dying in record numbers from accidentally ingesting substances such as fentanyl, a de facto ban on drug checking in places where Americans take drugs—clubs, festivals—seems especially criminal.

Now that the war on weed is all but lost—federal legalization of marijuana feels like a matter of when, not if—the next battlefront will be over MDMA and other psychedelics. This year Australia allowed licensed therapists to give patients the drug. (It did the same as well for magic mushrooms.) Meanwhile, the Biden administration expects MDMA and psilocybin to be approved therapeutically within the next few years.

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States With Legal Weed See Drop in Mental Health Treatment

States that have legalized recreational marijuana use for adults have also seen a drop in mental health treatment admissions, according to newly published research.

The findings, which came in a study published last month in the journal Health Economics, were based on data from ten states that have legalized adult-use cannabis. 

“Recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) continue to grow in popularity, but the effects on mental health treatment are unclear,” wrote Alberto Ortega, a professor at O’Neill School of Public Health at Indiana University and the author of the study.

In the abstract, Ortega said that the study “uses an event-study within a difference-in-differences framework to study the short-run impact of state RMLs on admissions into mental health treatment facilities.” 

“The results indicate that shortly after a state adopts an RML, they experience a decrease in the average number of mental health treatment admissions,” Ortega wrote. “The findings are driven by white, Black, and Medicaid-funded admissions and are consistent for both male and female admissions. The results are robust to alternative specifications and sensitivity analysis.”

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MDMA: Australia begins world-first psychedelic therapy

Earlier this year, researchers raised eyebrows when Australia’s traditionally conservative medicines regulator approved the use of psychedelics to assist therapy sessions.

The decision will see psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, used for treatment-resistant depression. It will also allow MDMA, known as ecstasy in tablet form, for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The changes come into effect on Saturday, making Australia the first country to classify psychedelics as medicines at a national level.

While initial access to the drugs will be limited and costly, many experts and patients are hailing it as a landmark moment.

But major health organisations have also urged caution.

Marjane Beaugeois was diagnosed with severe depression in 2017. “Within two months, I lost my mother, grandmother, beloved pet dog and my romantic relationship,” she recalls.

She couldn’t eat, shower, or leave her house in Melbourne – but says prescription antidepressants left her “zombie-like, unable to cry, self-soothe or feel better”.

“I’d still go to bed praying not to wake up,” the 49-year-old says.

When her research for alternative therapies led her to a psilocybin clinic in Amsterdam, she was hesitant.

“I have no history of drug or alcohol use. As an addiction counsellor, I was always very against it,” she says.

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FDA creates path for psychedelic drug trials

Federal regulators are laying out guidance for psychedelic drug trials for the first time, in a move that could encourage the mainstreaming of substances like magic mushrooms and LSD as behavioral health treatments.

Why it matters: Psychedelics are turning into a multi-billion industry and gaining widespread acceptance after decades of concerns about recreational use of the products — and the high risk for misuse. But research to date has largely been backed by private sponsors.

Driving the news: The Food and Drug Administration on Friday released first-ever draft guidance outlining considerations — including trial conduct, data collection and subject safety — for researchers looking into psychedelic treatments for a variety of conditions, including PTSD, depression and anxiety.

  • The agency filed the 14-page document two days after a bipartisan coalition in Congress led by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) introduced legislation directing the issuance of clinical trial guidelines.
  • It also came as 10,000 attendees and hundreds of exhibitors converged on Denver for what was billed as the “largest psychedelic conference in history,” with guests ranging from New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers to National Institute of Mental Health director Joshua Gordon.

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Healing brain trauma with psychedelics

Ian McCall is a former professional Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter who suffered from symptoms of traumatic brain injuries. After retirement, McCall experienced confusion, anger issues, depression, addiction and suicidal ideation. He tried brain stimulation therapy, but that did not work. So, he turned to a less traditional form of therapy: psilocybin mushrooms.

“I am a very loving, happy person, and I wasn’t for a large portion of my life. Because I was just tortured. I was tortured, and then I was confused, and I was addicted, and I was just crazy for a long time,” McCall said.

Psilocybin mushrooms, also known as magic mushrooms or shrooms, are naturally occurring psychedelics that can affect all senses. They can alter a person’s way of thinking and can cause hallucinations.

“The most important thing to know is that if you take psilocybin or LSD, they’re incredibly safe from a physiological standpoint. You can’t really overdose on them,” Dr. Daniel F. Kelly, a practicing neurosurgeon in Santa Monica said. “They don’t create an addictive behavior like say opiates or alcohol do or nicotine. And in fact, as you probably know, they’re used to break addiction.”

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