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posted by martyb on Sunday October 15 2017, @12:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the things-are-looking-up dept.

An fMRI study has found evidence of a reduction in depressive symptoms after treatment with psilocybin:

A hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms can "reset" the brains of people with untreatable depression, raising hopes of a future treatment, scans suggest.

The small study gave 19 patients a single dose of the psychedelic ingredient psilocybin. Half of patients ceased to be depressed and experienced changes in their brain activity that lasted about five weeks.

However, the team at Imperial College London says people should not self-medicate.

There has been a series of small studies suggesting psilocybin could have a role in depression by acting as a "lubricant for the mind" that allows people to escape a cycle of depressive symptoms. But the precise impact it might be having on brain activity was not known.

Psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression: fMRI-measured brain mechanisms (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-13282-7) (DX)


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday October 15 2017, @12:37AM (13 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday October 15 2017, @12:37AM (#582450) Homepage

    Government types don't want people to have the enlightening experience of psychedelics. They want people to stay stuck in their mental prisons and physically-addicted. That's where big pharma's opioids and readily-available CIA heroin come in.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:15AM (9 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:15AM (#582534)

    I think Government types are mostly concerned with psychedelics infiltrating things like the water supply - with such tiny doses having such dramatic effects, a one gallon jug dumped in a lake could be a serious problem.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:20AM (6 children)

      by SanityCheck (5190) on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:20AM (#582540)

      Or things like people on psychedelics freaking out and murdering innocent people... you know shit that normal people are concerned about.
      https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=high%20on%20mushrooms%20kills [google.com]

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:32AM (4 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:32AM (#582548)

        Oh, hey, Reefer Madness [wikipedia.org] style propaganda has been put out on every schedule 1 drug in almost every media channel available.

        I think the junkies on Meth, PCP, and desperate to score their next rock of crack/push of H are a bigger concern than LSD users and the like - but, it's all relative, and thanks to propaganda the public's perception has no correlation with reality - but that's what's going to be addressed: the perception of problems.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @06:51AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @06:51AM (#582567)

          Yeah it's propaganda. [deadspin.com] Not shit that actually happens. Fake news, huh? Yeah and I'm sure the headline makes it sound a lot worse than it actually was.

          You have something missing in your cortex if you thing people should ever be allowed to take shit that makes you do these type of things. Or you could just be deceptively evil.

          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @07:05AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @07:05AM (#582569)

            People do this same type of shit on alcohol. Or without drugs because they are just psychotic to begin with.

            If there is such a thing as responsible alcohol use, there is responsible mushroom use. Millions have done it without murdering their friends.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @09:56AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @09:56AM (#582584)

            Look, let's keep it real, if we really cared about collateral damage we'd do something about guns. But no, that's our precious Freedom(tm) and this is teh bad drugs.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @01:29AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @01:29AM (#582863)

          Be careful of not being a self-seeker. A century or so ago, would you have been on the British side in the Opium wars?

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday October 15 2017, @09:56AM

        by sjames (2882) on Sunday October 15 2017, @09:56AM (#582585) Journal

        Chantix occasionally causes things like that too, but nobody in government seems too concerned about it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @11:59AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @11:59AM (#582607)

      a one gallon jug dumped in a lake could be a serious problem.

      Won't somebody think of the fish!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:52PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:52PM (#582679)

    Psychedelics don't lead to enlightenment. If they did there would have been enough enlightened people that prohibiting them wouldn't have be been necessary.

    In truth, they're used in some traditions as part of the work towards enlightenment, not as the whole trip.people that claim otherwise are just using spirituality as an excuse to do what they already wanted to do

    What's more, there are other traditions that don't use drugs and outright ban all of them including legal ones not being used for medicinal purposes.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @08:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @08:14PM (#582749)

      A fair response but:

      If they did there would have been enough enlightened people that prohibiting them wouldn't have be been necessary.

      That was just stupid and illogical. I can't even.

    • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday October 15 2017, @09:23PM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Sunday October 15 2017, @09:23PM (#582767)

      Psychedelics don't lead to enlightenment.

      Probably not, but what mushrooms at least do is alter your perception enough so that you see everything with equal importance. Look at your faded jeans, they are actually more made up of white fibers than blue, you are just trained to perceive them as blue. Shadows become as important to your perception as the item casting the shadow. If you think about relationships (people, job,whatever) in your life at the time you'll maybe find you see things for what they are, not what you are trying to believe they are. Lots of little things like that. Hallucinations perhaps are simply your mind trying to reorder these various equalizations of perception into something "acceptable", I remember being briefly startled by a couple odd sights before I realized they were something familiar seen with a different perspective. Perhaps "bad" trips come to those whose perspective of the world is so fixed and important to them that any such reordering is perceived as an attack (or they just take too much) rather than something to experience and learn from, my guess would be that more introspective people would enjoy it more. If you can hold onto these newly equal perspectives you may end up enlightened, whatever that is, most likely though the euphoria from the experience will fade away and you will slip back into your normal ways.
      Be nice if one could legally experiment more, as things are I would have no idea how to get this sort of stuff any more.