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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)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @02:56AM (7 children)
Growing mushroomws is real effort, takes space because of the high humidity necessary and is not simple as you make it out to be, also as with all these studies there is no dosage, and most people don't have the lab necessary to actually do it.
-burring the poor
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @04:16AM (4 children)
Fruiting can be done in a small closet with an existing light fixture using a daylight LED bulb.
Maintaining humidity can be done with a number of tricks. One of the easiest is to make a "cake" inside of a Ziploc Twist 'n Loc [ziploc.com] container or a similar twist container. The bottom is filled with a mix of vermiculite, brown rice flour, and water. Brown rice flour can be found at some grocery stores or milled yourself using cheap brown rice and an electric flour mill. This is sealed and put in a pressure cooker for sterilization. It won't melt because it is made of polypropylene. Poorer folks can get away with using a pot of boiling water instead of a pressure cooker.
After sterilization and cooling, you can use a legally obtainable spore syringe to inoculate. You can do it in the open air, or use a still air box, which is just a large plastic tote with two holes cut out for your arms. You can use the bottom of a coffee can heated on the stove to melt the arm holes.
Seal and store each ziploc. After 2-3 weeks, the cake should be complete. Then you open it, add some water, and close but not completely seal the lid to regulate humidity and gas exchange. Put it in the closet with a 5000K or 6500K LED on for half the day. Mushrooms will grow. Some may fail because of contamination, poor fruiting conditions, or other rookie mistakes but that is why you use 10 or 20 ziplocs at once.
Psilocybin content can be estimated. P. cubensis are the most commonly grown mushrooms and have about 0.63% psilocybin, 0.60% psilocin, and 0.025% baeocystin by weight. Self-medicating people don't need exact dose. They can just take anywhere from 2 to 5 grams dried and get the life changing effect they are looking for.
Total cost is at most $300 with no fancy lab needed. More detailed instructions for everything in the post can be found at https://www.shroomery.org/ [shroomery.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @05:22AM (2 children)
The next level up is using agar plates to transfer clean cultures in the still air box. You can use these [ziploc.com] which are also PP5 plastic. Poke a small hole in the side with a hot nail or drill and cover it with breathable tape. A heated mixture of agar powder, water, instant mashed potato flakes, and food coloring is added to each plate. Let them settle, then sterilize them in the pressure cooker.
Once you have the prepared plates, you can use them inside the still air box to clone a sample or create clean culture to use. Contamination should be apparent on the plates. Be careful not to cause a tragedy if you are flame sterilizing your knife and using isopropyl alcohol in the same box. Beginners will make contamination mistakes with the plates or improper handling when using agar to inoculate a jar, but experts can reduce contamination rates to near zero with these methods. This is your broke ass laboratory.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @06:58AM
Once you master the agar techniques, you can move to grain and monotubs. This has more complicated steps and less room for error, but just look at the results [shroomery.org]. That is shroom porn.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @09:52AM
agar plate art [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @06:17AM
Use a $30 food dehydrator to get the shrooms to cracker dry. It should take at least 6 hours. There are cheaper methods but this is the best and easiest. Store the dried mushrooms in an airtight container with a silicone gasket. You can add silica gel pillow packs which are a desiccant to keep it drier inside. If you buy these, make sure they are "rechargeable" aka can be heated in an oven at a low temperature to dry them.
If you don't like the taste of mushrooms, you can put them in empty gelatin pill capsules. Use a dedicated coffee grinder to make a powder from the dried mushrooms. Use a quarter or 1/8 teaspoon to scoop up powder, and push the big end of the pill from the top to force powder in. Repeat until packed. I find that I can fit 0.2 grams of powdered shrooms in a "0" size pill [capsuleconnection.com] this way. Store these pills in another airtight container with desiccant if you aren't immediately using them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @10:05AM (1 child)
Or you can search for magic mushroom grow kit and find any number of suppliers in Amsterdam who will ship you everything you need and simple instructions. The most difficult part seems to be maintaining your house at a temperature suitable for humans to live in - can you manage that? ;)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 15 2017, @11:15AM
70°F/21°C is optimal for fruiting but 60-80°F or 15-27°C should be fine:
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/13773187 [shroomery.org]
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/13748931 [shroomery.org]