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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
"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: 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]