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"Leon" is a young Brazilian man who has long struggled with depression. He keeps an anonymous blog, in Portuguese, where he describes the challenge of living with a mental illness that affects some 300 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
Leon is among the roughly 30 percent of those patients with treatment-resistant depression. Available antidepressant drugs like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors do not alleviate his depressed mood, fatigue, anxiety, low self-esteem and suicidal thoughts.
A new study may offer hope for Leon and others like him.
Our team of Brazilian scientists has conducted the first randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial of ayahuasca – a psychedelic drink made of Amazonian plants. The results, recently published in the journal Psychological Medicine, suggest that ayahuasca can work for hard-to-treat depression.
Source: Amazonian psychedelic may ease severe depression, new study shows
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:05AM (3 children)
Invest in a mouse with a scroll wheel that glides, and you will be wasting mere milliseconds with this vertical space problem.
One of the primary active components of ayahuasca [wikipedia.org] is DMT. Unlike the ~10 minute "businessman's trip" that you get by smoking or injecting DMT, ayahuasca lasts longer but is said to have milder effects. It seems that an IV drip of DMT [vice.com] could mimic this experience, probably with less vomiting too. That delivery method could cut down on the ayahuasca tourism if it ever catches on.
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(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:19AM (2 children)
I dunno - it sounds like we're assuming that the puking is a symptom and not the 'active ingredient' in the cure.
I propose a study the examine the effect of regular vomiting against depression. I suspect that you could easily find your participants (and the chemical means) in any college fraternity...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:40AM
There are several psychedelic substances that have been investigated for depression treatment, including ketamine [soylentnews.org] (approval could be imminent [soylentnews.org]), psilocybin [soylentnews.org], MDMA [maps.org], LSD [jneurosci.org], mescaline/peyote [discovermagazine.com], etc. These substances could also help people to laugh at bad jokes.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 04 2018, @11:49AM
Sometimes a side effect is just a side effect, in this case they're related, but I would hope that the study shows a stronger depression reduction response for ayahuasca than for their ipecac control group.
Vomiting involves strong stimulation of the vagus, and apparently bulimia is (for many sufferers) an addiction to this stimulation - one which can be replaced with electrical stimulation of the vagus [eurekalert.org].
There has been a lot of study (and application) of VNS as a treatment for depression [webmd.com] - if that's what you're looking for, I'd suggest going the electro-stim route rather than washing your upper GI tract with stomach acid on a regular basis.
🌻🌻 [google.com]