Tag: psychedelics

A Single Dose Of Psilocybin Can Lead To ‘Rapid’ And ‘Long-Lasting’ Improvements In Depression, Study Indicates

A single dose of psilocybin, coupled with therapy sessions, significantly improved symptoms of depression within days and lasting for a period of months, according to a first-of-its-kind study out of Sweden that was published by the American Medical Association.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the Brain Stimulation Clinic in Stockholm conducted the phase 2 randomized clinical trial, which involved 35 participants with moderate-t0-severe depression who received either a 25 milligram dose of psilocybin or a placebo of niacin.

For the study, published in JAMA Psychiatry last week, patients also underwent five psychotherapy sessions to supplement the psychedelic or placebo experience.

The psilocybin cohort, on average, showed clinically observable improvement in their symptoms compared to the placebo group at day 8.

“This finding implies that psilocybin can be an option to standard treatments when rapid symptom relief is important,” the paper says.

By the sixth week of the trial, 53 percent of the psilocybin cohort were considered to be in remission for depression, while just 6 percent of the placebo group said the same by that point.

However, researchers found that the overall effect seemed to subside after a year.

”Our results suggest that psilocybin can provide rapid, clinically meaningful improvement in depression and may serve as an alternative to standard treatment when fast symptom reduction is important,” lead study author Hampus Yngwe said in a press release.

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Your Brain Restricts Full Access to Reality. But Scientists Found a Way to Turn Off the Filter.

In 1956, British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond coined the word “psychedelic” from Greek roots meaning “mind-manifesting” or “soul-revealing.” The term proved fitting. Users report that seconds stretch into eternity, sounds turn into color, and you very self begins dissolving. And now, after decades in scientific exile, those same once-ostracized compounds are undergoing a dramatic scientific renaissance. Researchers are investigating them not only for depression, trauma, and addiction, but also as a potential window into one of neuroscience’s deepest mysteries: how the brain constructs reality itself. And a small, egg-shaped structure buried deep in the center of the brain, the thalamus, may play an important role in that process.

Scientists once viewed the thalamus largely as a relay station: a kind of biological switchboard routing sensory information to the cortex, the brain’s outer layer responsible for higher thought, perception, and conscious awareness. But newer theories suggest something far stranger. Increasingly, neuroscientists suspect reality may partly reflect the brain’s constantly updated “best guess” about the world—built from memory, expectation, sensory input, and context, as Michelle J. Redinbaugh, PhD, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, puts it.

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TBI survivors turn to psychedelics for symptom relief

A new study from the University of Victoria (UVic) has identified a segment of traumatic brain injury survivors who are using psychedelics to self-medicate for cognitive, mood and somatic symptoms such as headaches. In a first-of-its-kind study, clinical psychology researchers analyzed more than 6,100 responses collected from the global psychedelic survey. Researchers found that nearly 1,200 respondents reported using psychedelics to treat or manage a physical health condition.

Of these, some 208 participants, or 3.4% of the total sample, reported using psychedelics to manage brain injury-related symptoms.

The paper, Psychedelics for the management of symptoms of traumatic brain injury: Findings from the global psychedelic survey, was published in Progress in Neuropsychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry, co-authored by UVic clinical psychology professors Jill Robinson and Mauricio Garcia-Barrera.

Some 60 million people worldwide experience traumatic brain injuries (TBI) every year. Garcia-Barrera says there isn’t a one-size-fits-all treatment for TBI survivors, and he says some are looking for alternative support, including from psychedelics.

“Although research into using psychedelics to manage TBI symptoms remains quite limited, the field is gaining momentum as awareness grows around how widespread brain injury is globally and its impact on the quality of life of those who experience a TBI,” Garcia-Barrera says.

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Trump’s Embrace of Psychedelic Therapy Leaves Most Users on the Wrong Side of the Law

On Saturday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order aimed at “accelerating medical treatments for serious mental illness” by facilitating regulatory approval of ibogaine and other psychedelics that have shown promise as psychotherapeutic catalysts. Although the case for doing that is compelling, the medical model embraced by the president excludes most psychedelic use, which will remain illegal even if the “historic reforms” that Trump announced work as planned.

Trump takes it for granted that Americans should be allowed to use psychedelics only for reasons that the government recognizes as legitimate. Otherwise, they are criminals rather than patients, subject to arrest, prosecution, and potentially severe penalties for daring to assert sovereignty over their own bodies and minds.

The injustice of that policy is readily apparent when people use psychedelics in ways that manifestly improve their lives. Many combat veterans, for example, have found that ibogaine, which is derived from the root of an African shrub, provides dramatic relief from the constellation of problems known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“It absolutely changed my life for the better,” former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, whose Afghanistan memoir inspired the 2013 movie Lone Survivor, remarked as Trump signed his executive order. “I was reborn,” says Luttrell’s twin brother, Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R–Texas), also a former Navy SEAL. “It is one of the greatest things that ever happened to me.”

Because ibogaine is banned in the United States, the Luttrell brothers had those transformational experiences at a clinic in Mexico. So did the 30 subjects of a recent Nature Mental Health study, which found that ibogaine, combined with magnesium as a safeguard against the drug’s cardiac side effects, “safely and effectively reduces PTSD, anxiety and depression and improves functioning in veterans” with traumatic brain injuries.

Research on ibogaine, which also is reputed to be remarkably useful for people struggling with drug addiction, is relatively limited so far. But the evidence supporting the use of MDMA (for PTSD) and psilocybin (for depression), both of which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated as “breakthrough” therapies, is strong enough that they may soon be approved as prescription medications.

If that happens, some people who could benefit from these drugs will be able to use them legally, provided they can obtain a diagnosis and a prescription. But where does that leave all the psychedelic users who can’t meet those requirements?

In a 2023 survey of psilocybin users, the RAND Corporation found that the most common motivations included “fun” (59 percent), “improved mental health” (49 percent), “personal development” (45 percent), “curiosity” (43 percent), and “spiritual growth” (41 percent). Although very few of those people would qualify for the medical exception that Trump advocates, that does not mean their reasons for using psilocybin should be dismissed as frivolous, let alone that they should be treated as criminals.

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The Least Psychedelic President in History Supports Psychedelic Research More Than Any of His Predecessors

This is the way the drug war starts to end, not with a bang or a whimper, but with an executive order signed by a president who must surely be the least-psychedelic occupant ever of the Oval Office, even when you think about characters as glum and dour as Millard Fillmore and Calvin Coolidge. In recent weeks, Donald Trump has picked figurative and literal fights with everyone from the Pope to Iran’s ayatollah. Last year, he released an animated video of himself in a fighter plane dropping feces on “No Kings” protestors. If there is an American alive over the age of 30 who has never listened to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band all the way through, it’s Trump.

But there he was this past Saturday, flanked by, among others, a pumped-up podcast host known for smoking weed on the air (Joe Rogan), an ibogaine evangelist (Bryan Hubbard), and a Cabinet member who has bragged about snorting cocaine off toilet seats (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.). The president was eagerly putting his John Hancock on “Accelerating Medical Treatments for Serious Mental Illness,” an executive order that fast-tracks “innovative research models and…drug approvals to increase access to psychedelic drugs that could save lives and reverse the crisis of serious mental illness in America.” The order calls for expedited approval of “psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine compounds,” that “show potential in clinical studies to address serious mental illnesses for patients whose conditions persist after completing standard therapy.” A president who famously ingests nothing more psychoactive than Diet Coke is now pushing ibogaine—dubbed the “Mount Everest of psychedelics” because of the intensity of the trips it induces and its immense potential to reverse brain damage—into respectability. What’s next? Ayahuasca in juice boxes for K-12 cafeterias?

The people present at the signing show how drug policy reform springs from a mix of popular-culture discussion and hardcore, in-the-trenches policy work. Trump himself thanked Rogan for calling his attention to psychedelics and ibogaine, and RFK Jr. wrote on Instagram, “Thank you, [Joe Rogan] for helping bring national attention to these potentially life-saving treatments for veterans and others living with mental illness, and for pushing this conversation into the mainstream.” Rogan has used his immensely popular podcast for years to tout psychedelics and a wide array of conventional and unconventional therapies, supplements, and protocols (some more credible than others). Without him and his show, Saturday’s signing just doesn’t happen. Whatever else one might think of him, Rogan embodies better living through chemistry and self-directed experimentation with all sorts of drugs, exercise programs, and ways of creating a personalized life plan.

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Trump Signs Order To Accelerate Legal Access To Psychedelics For Patients With Mental Health Conditions

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at expanding and expediting research on the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelics, a move aimed at making substances such as psilocybin, ibogaine, LSD and MDMA more readily available to patients in clinical settings.

The move will “dramatically accelerate access to new medical research and treatments based on psychedelic drugs,” Trump said.

The order, which the president signed in the Oval Office on Saturday alongside federal health officials, advocates and the podcaster Joe Rogan, directs the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue new guidance for researchers on conducting clinical trials on psychedelics.

“In many cases, these experimental treatments have shown life-changing potential for those suffering from severe mental illness and depression—including our cherished veterans,” Trump said.

Steps taken under the order will “clear away unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles, improve data sharing among the FDA and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and facilitate fast rescheduling of any psychedelic drugs that become FDA approved,” the president said.

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Scientists Engineered a Plant to Produce 5 Different Psychedelics at Once

What do plants, toads, and mushrooms have in common? They can all produce psychedelic substances – and now their powers have been combined in one plant, like a trippier Captain Planet.

In a wild first, scientists have taken the genes these organisms use to make five natural psychedelics and introduced them into a tobacco plant (Nicotiana benthamiana), which then produced all five compounds simultaneously.

As interest grows in psychedelics as potential treatments for illnesses such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD, the newly developed system could offer scientists a new way to produce these compounds for research purposes.

“[Our] strategy established a heterologous plant system for the production of five prominent therapeutically valuable compounds, their derivatives, and nonnatural plant analogs, providing a starting point for their production in plants,” writes a team led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Tryptamine psychedelics are a class of compounds that includes psilocin, psilocybin, and a number of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) compounds. The ability to produce these substances has emerged in diverse organisms across the tree of life – plants, fungi, and animals.

In recent years, a number of studies have shown that tryptamine psychedelics may represent an untapped resource when it comes to mental health treatments.

However, progress in this field remains limited, in part due to regulatory restrictions, underscoring the need for more research. This creates practical challenges for scientists.

“Traditionally, the supply of psychedelics relies on natural producers, mainly plants, fungi, and the Sonoran Desert toad,” the researchers write.

“Harvesting these organisms for their psychoactive compounds raises ecological and ethical concerns, being increasingly threatened by habitat loss and overexploitation.”

In an effort to tackle this, plant scientists Paula Berman and Janka Höfer and their team set out to map and rebuild the biochemical pathways behind these compounds.

They identified the key genes used by two plants – Psychotria viridis and Acacia acuminata – to make DMT, and the step-by-step chemical pathways involved in producing the compound.

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AOC Slams Federal Drug Laws That Restrict Marijuana And Psychedelics Despite Their Medical Value

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tore into the current U.S. drug scheduling system on Thursday—making the case that placing substances like marijuana and LSD in the most restrictive category runs counter to evidence showing their medical potential, hinders research and is associated with criminal penalties that haven’t effectively prevented harms from substance misuse.

In some cases, the congresswoman said during a hearing before the House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee, classifying drugs as Schedule I under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) can exacerbate the overdose crisis, leading to the introduction of new, sometimes more dangerous drugs into the illicit marketplace.

The panel on Thursday took testimony on a variety of bills aimed at curbing overdose deaths and responding to emerging public health threats posed by illegal drugs such as xylazine and other opioid-like synthetics that are often more potent than the analogues that came before them.

Ocasio-Cortez said it was time to “take a step back” and “really explore and examine the scheduling system in the United States as a whole and really how we think about this,” directing her questions to Nabarun Dasgupta, a senior scientist at the University of North Carolina who served as an expert witness for the hearing.

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