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Medicine

Psychedelic Mushroom Dose Can Treat Stubborn Depression, Trial Suggests (msn.com) 54

Posted by EditorDavid from the medicinal-mushrooms dept.
The Washington Post reports: Psilocybin, the active hallucinogen found in psychedelic mushrooms — also known as "magic mushrooms" — can effectively alleviate a severe bout of depression when administered in a single dose and combined with talk therapy, a new clinical study found.

Adults with depression who were administered a single 25-miligram dose of psilocybin were more likely to experience significant improvements in their mental health — both immediately and for up to three months — than others who were randomly assigned smaller doses of the same drug, said the peer-reviewed study, which was published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine....

The trial's findings could be an encouraging sign for the 16 million Americans estimated each year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to have depression, many of whom struggle to find treatments that work for them. Its authors hope the study — which was relatively small, with just 79 participants receiving the 25 mg dose — will pave the way for eventual regulatory approval of psilocybin by the Food and Drug Administration for use as a drug against depression....

Notwithstanding the headaches, nausea and dizziness reported by many as adverse side effects, most of the adults enjoyed the experience.
The Post got an interesting reponse from James Rucker, a consultant psychiatrist at King's College London who worked on the trial. He said there's something about the psychedelic experience that leads to a rapid resolution of depression symptoms, adding "We don't really know what that is at the moment, but it's very different to standard antidepressants...."

"What people forget about psychedelics is that they were being used as medicines prior to 1971 when they essentially got caught up in the drugs war," Rucker added. "We're just picking up the baton of history."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Shmoodling for submitting the story.
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Psychedelic Mushroom Dose Can Treat Stubborn Depression, Trial Suggests More

Psychedelic Mushroom Dose Can Treat Stubborn Depression, Trial Suggests

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  • You can't patent naturally occurring chemicals (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday November 06, 2022 @05:03PM (#63029917)
    So this is basically useless and we need to criminalize it and lock people up right away.

    Especially anyone who might vote for a party that would disagree with criminalizing psilocybin use.

    • Re:You can't patent naturally occurring chemicals (Score:4, Insightful)

      by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Sunday November 06, 2022 @05:26PM (#63029959)

      So this is basically useless and we need to criminalize it and lock people up right away.
      Especially anyone who might vote for a party that would disagree with criminalizing psilocybin use.

      This is why it’s so important the democratic process be curtailed and a fascist dictator installed; if we left it up to the people to decide, they would just end the systems unfairly rigged to hurt the right inherently bad people and the GOP as a fear mongering party would end. Mitch and Trump agree that letting everyone vote means the GOP never holding power again, and if “the bad ones” take the helm then they will be the ones being dragged, innocent, by the neck from their vehicle by state power and publicly executed with no recourse. Thus they will fight to the death in the name of not being held to the same standard they hold others to. If it were possible for people to just realize life isn’t a zero sum game and no one needs to be needlessly murdered then this wouldn’t be the serious situation it is.

    • Re:You can't patent naturally occurring chemicals (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fazig ( 2909523 ) on Sunday November 06, 2022 @05:29PM (#63029975)
      It's really simple actually, because it's been done before.
      You keep the natural substance illegal while making a patented synthesized version legal. To quote only the first sentence of the paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine:

      In this phase 2 double-blind trial, we randomly assigned adults with treatment-resistant depression to receive a single dose of a proprietary, synthetic formulation of psilocybin at a dose of 25 mg, 10 mg, or 1 mg (control), along with psychological support.

      • Re:You can't patent naturally occurring chemicals (Score:4, Insightful)

        by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday November 06, 2022 @05:42PM (#63030003)

        It's really simple actually, because it's been done before.
        You keep the natural substance illegal while making a patented synthesized version legal.

        By synthesizing a compound you get consistency. You know that a dose of such and such size is what is needed and everyone gets that same dose. The amount of chemicals are the same for each person. That dose can then be adjusted as needed.

        Grabbing something from the wild negates that. One plant is different from the one next to it. There is no way to know what "dose" a person is getting, how strong/weak it was, the size, etc.

        As I've said before, if someone came up a drug which could be had for twenty-five cents which produced the exact same effects as people claim marijuana does for their ills, people would bitch because they couldn't take the "real" thing.

        • You can do that just by extracting the correct amount. Problem is the extraction process is a very basic and well understood thing that itself can't be patented. That means you have an instant cheap generic and one that can't be continuously patented using various legal shenanigans.

        • Re:You can't patent naturally occurring chemicals (Score:5, Informative)

          by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Sunday November 06, 2022 @06:49PM (#63030135)
          You know where most of the world's pharmaceutical morphine comes from, right? Plants are among the most cost-effective, stable, & safe ways to produce pharmaceuticals. It's much easier & safer than doing it in industrial bacteria cultures. That's why there's so much interest in genetically engineering plants to produce pharmaceuticals.

          However, I bet big pharma are lobbying like mad to ensure that only their "patentable" drugs will be considered for therapeutic use. The other thing is that it's only one part of the therapy, which is quite labour intensive & therefore expensive. A trip can last for several hours, for which time patients need to be supervised by qualified medical staff even when they're not receiving counselling therapy sessions. I suspect that this will more than likely be used as a therapy of last resort, after other therapies have failed, because of the relatively high costs & inconvenience to patients involved. Don't expect any "revolutions" in mental healthcare provision anytime soon.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by test321 ( 8891681 )

            However, I bet big pharma are lobbying like mad to ensure that only their "patentable" drugs will be considered for therapeutic use.

            Your argument is correct but is not connected with "big pharma". if you're a simple biotech engineer trying to launch this new idea you got into a drug, you better have a patent submitted, otherwise investors will not trust their money to you. You are asking 5-10 million from them to perform the endless tests required for the the full FDA / EMA regulatory approval, and when everybody is convinced that your idea works, some big pharma corp can show up and decide it's time to replicate your study and eat your

          • Don't expect any "revolutions" in mental healthcare provision anytime soon.

            It's coming. There's a big wave of healthcare providers supporting this, for better or worse.

          • You know where most of the world's pharmaceutical morphine comes from, right? Plants are among the most cost-effective, stable, & safe ways to produce pharmaceuticals.

            But morphine is a pretty cheap prescription to fill, isn't it?

            looks like it [goodrx.com].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      You don't patent chemicals. You patent processes for making them, or applications of them. You can absolutely patent naturally occurring chemicals as pharmaceuticals.

      • That's just not true. You can't patent THC you can patent means of extracting THC but those means have existed for ages and are long since past the point where they could be patented. You can't patent using an existing substance to treat an illness. Have to invent something to get a patent. There's no invention there

        • None of the 3 links in TFS mention patents. What was you intention in raising the issue? The company involved in this (apparently something called Compass Pathways) patented their synthesis method (UK patent GB2571696B, submitted 2017-10-09). On last day they could possibly delay (2019-04-17), they submitted data to try patent the application to the treatment of depression, but it was apparently refused and we only know because Taiwan issued a public disclosure (TW202103699A) (I imagine the company submitte

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Well, that will come as quite a surprise to a decent number of people who hold patents on natural substances used for various purposes. This one for instance: https://patents.google.com/pat... [google.com]. Or this one, if you're European: https://www.globenewswire.com/... [globenewswire.com]

          Actually, you can flat out patent the chemicals as well. US patent law says you can't, but there's always been an exception if you purify the stuff. The US supreme court recently invalidated a patent related to using the BRCA gene to screen for breast

    • It is a dangerous substance because you can easily go overboard on dosage and also fuck people up with it. 25 milligrams is basically a few drops of the stuff. You do not wanna be roofied with it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      So wait, now you recognize how criminally corrupt the drug industry is? Where's this skepticism when it comes to the c19 shots?

    • There are plenty of naturally occurring stuff being sold, so I am not sure of your point.

  • Pseudoscience backing up pseudoscience (Score:3, Interesting)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Sunday November 06, 2022 @05:52PM (#63030021)
    Until psychology throws away the unreplicated nonsense, goes back to basics, and becomes a real science, your anecdotes about drugtaking are as good as their research results.

  • The war (Score:5, Funny)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Sunday November 06, 2022 @08:50PM (#63030345)
    Again, I would like to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs. Well done drugs, well done.

  • "Notwithstanding the headaches, nausea and dizziness reported by many as adverse side effects"

    That's puzzling. Eating the mushrooms or a tea made from them will definitely cause nausea, but it seems like an extract of psilocybin would not need to include the substances that induce gastric distress or headaches. The psilocybin itself does not cause those symptoms as far as I know.

  • Notwithstanding the headaches, nausea and dizziness reported by many as adverse side effects, most of the adults enjoyed the experience.

    I wonder how long those negative side effects lasted, because any one of them alone would be awful but in combination they sound pretty horrible.

    Anyone who has had serious dizziness issues would really question if they want to ever take something that may have that as a side effect...

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Posting anon to preserve mod points I've already awarded. I've taken mushrooms a few dozen times. Used to grow them myself even. The nausea lasts less than 2 minutes. Headaches? Never a single one. Dizzy? It causes a loose, languid relaxed feeling that could be misconstrued as dizzy because your balance isn't as steady, but it's more your limbs than your inner ear being wonky. All the symptoms they list are just fear-mongering because they always want to cover their ass in case one of the rare outliers is a

  • Modern plague (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TJHook3r ( 4699685 ) on Monday November 07, 2022 @09:17AM (#63031633)
    SSRIs have some pretty significant side effects and if the worst that mushrooms can do is cause a slight headache and the questioning of our existence then let them be an option. Psychedelics have been an innocent victim in the drug war and it's ironic that so much harm has come from legal opioids

  • Less bitching about the politics. (Score:3)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Monday November 07, 2022 @10:05AM (#63031799)

    Everybody here seems so wrapped up in the politics of the story, and nobody's talking about the actual interesting bits.

    This is not the first time I've heard that psychedelic mushrooms are a good treatment, even in micro-doses, for depression. I wonder what it does for the brain outside of chemical changes? Like, does it allow some extra stimulation to the imagination?

    I tend towards being a creative person. I write stories, music, build things, do word-working, and have several other creative hobbies. I've noticed I have a tendency to get a lot sadder when I don't have a project going on and can't come up with one. Sometimes a little chemical dose of some kind shakes the cobwebs loose, I see a new project in my head, and get on with it. Once the project is going and I can keep the ideas flowing, I'm back to happy. If that's something that could be studied to the point where we know the exact chemical formula for "increased imagination, decreased doubt about that imagination," we'd probably have a cure-all for all sorts of mental issues that don't quite hit the target of "disorder," yet signify there may be something not quite ticking at 100% in our minds.

    I wonder how many psychedelics were ingested in pre-modern times by the average hunter-gatherer? They may have just been a staple of the diet without intention that left all of us today needing a little something/something to even begin to feel normalized.

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