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Magic Mushrooms 'Reboot' Brain In Depressed People, Study Suggests (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Magic mushrooms may effectively "reset" the activity of key brain circuits known to play a role in depression, the latest study to highlight the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics suggests. Psychedelics have shown promising results in the treatment of depression and addictions in a number of clinical trials over the last decade. Imperial College London researchers used psilocybin -- the psychoactive compound that occurs naturally in magic mushrooms -- to treat a small number of patients with depression, monitoring their brain function, before and after. Images of patients' brains revealed changes in brain activity that were associated with marked and lasting reductions in depressive symptoms and participants in the trial reported benefits lasting up to five weeks after treatment.

Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, head of psychedelic research at Imperial, who led the study, said: "We have shown for the first time clear changes in brain activity in depressed people treated with psilocybin after failing to respond to conventional treatments. Several of our patients described feeling 'reset' after the treatment and often used computer analogies. For example, one said he felt like his brain had been 'defragged' like a computer hard drive, and another said he felt 'rebooted.' Psilocybin may be giving these individuals the temporary 'kick start' they need to break out of their depressive states and these imaging results do tentatively support a 'reset' analogy. Similar brain effects to these have been seen with electroconvulsive therapy." The study has been published in Scientific Reports.

23 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Honest lol by oldgraybeard · · Score: 4, Funny

    That is exactly what I was trying to do 45 years ago ;) lol

    1. Re:Honest lol by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      First time I tried to do magic mushrooms, the only thing that got rebooted were the magic mushrooms.

      It took a few tries, but I finally got them to work. God, I was so young then.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re:Honest lol by freeze128 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The first time you use a magic mushroom, it doesn't seem to do much but make you a little bigger. If you take another one after that, then you can shoot fireballs!

  2. Bring it on by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe it could help put the brakes on the recent suicide epidemic.

    1. Re:Bring it on by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe it could help put the brakes on the recent suicide epidemic

      I sure hope so. It's a damn shame that research with entheogens was limited (or outright banned) for all these decades. A lot of people might have been helped.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re:Bring it on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      On one hand, that's true, lives could have been saved if we weren't insistent on imprisoning people for various substances (with the bonus of less social destruction in heavily targeted minority communities). But on the other hand, think of the financial and political gains made by a small elite handful!

      Next you'll be saying that the money spent on the military industrial complex's 'War on Terror' would have been better used developing cures for diseases far more likely to kill you than terrorism or something crazy like that.

    3. Re:Bring it on by Evtim · · Score: 2

      There is no epidemic as such (in my mind this word implies illness), just the results of our way of life.

      If you throw the heavy math on the data you come up with wide variety of dependencies, some of which are startling. For instance, rapid social change always increases suicide rate irrespective of the nature of the change - even if society firmly marches towards utopia or becomes very rich and prosperous, there will be more corpses along the way...
      Another positive correlation is with easiness of life - the less our lives are endangered (and more care free and comfortable) the less we value them (rate drops to almost zero during wars; rich countries have higher rates).

      In fact, if you assume that your aim is to decrease suicide (or you take the extreme religious stance that it is a sin - BTW that was not the case for the first 1000 years of Christianity for example - back then they actually encouraged the suicide of martyrs) the way to go is to reverse most of the social advances we have achieved and re-model society into something (IMO) unpleasant. Religious people - lower rates. Peasants versus city dwellers - lower rates. High intelligence - high rates. War, famine, strife - lower rates. Have kids - lower rates. Have strong family cohesion - lower rates. There is also a genetic component where for example within the white race Hungaro-Finns have the highest rate and Slavs the lowest (Russia being a very good example of societal change overriding the genetic predisposition - they quadrupled their rate after the fall of the Wall).

      I for one await the day (alas, won't live that long) when all of us will have to voluntarily leave life since technology will make us physiologically immortal. For me there is no greater achievement than conquering death - not ultimately, mind you (that is not only impossible but highly undesirable - imagine being immortal and cannot stop it by your free will!), just temporarily - having a very long and healthy life and quick and painless death at the time of your choosing. Any takers?

    4. Re:Bring it on by plopez · · Score: 2

      I think better jobs, reduction in racial tensions, and affordable health care would work wonders

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
  3. Re: Interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Around bullshit.

  4. My experience by future+assassin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've never done shrooms till about a year ago, done them about 15-20 times. Started off with 1 gram chocolates and took 1/2 of one. When I felt like something after 45+ min I took the other 1/2. There were no hallucinations but you get an almost weed high but really special feeling where feel your surroundings more. If I take them at say at 8pm and don't take anymore after 10pm then I can fall asleep around 2am. Next morning though I feel great and clear brained and no mood swings for a couple of days. Bonus is you can (or at least if worked for me) fuck like a champ and get really horny on them. Now that's with the lower doses. Higher doses right under loosing your ego is still ok not not as enjoyable as your mind wonders too much and at times some darker places and then full trips are meh too taxing on the brain, maybe if I was younger.

    --
    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
    1. Re:My experience by future+assassin · · Score: 2

      I did 2 of really strong ones, lol my buddy called me after I got them and warned me that the batch was strong. I though he was BS as I took a whole chocolate (1gram) and nothing happened after an hour. Was like WTF? so I took another 1/2 and then I started to feel a bit. About 1.5 hours later I took the other 1/2. Was feeling ok and smoked some weed with the wife. About 15 min later sitting on the couch got the oh oh something is different this time as I saw my arm melt into the couch arm rest. Anyways should have not somked the weed as it gave me a roller coaster paranoid 6 hour trip.

      --
      by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
  5. Re:pfft at hippies by Khyber · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ah, look at th' wee lad, LSD. How cute. Come get summa dis DMT when you get another 20 years older.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  6. A Perfect Moment by Vasheron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I a had a "perfect moment" on mushrooms. Out on a camping trip with friends, I dropped mushrooms and I looked out over the water and into the sun. All of a sudden everything just seemed to "fit" and I felt a sensation of warmth and wholeness envelope my body. Anxiety, fear, and doubt dropped away and briefly, for the first time in my life I felt completely at peace. I imagine some people search their entire lives for such a moment. It didn't last and, for various reasons, I haven't attempted to duplicate the experience, but I will always remember it.

    1. Re:A Perfect Moment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've had experiences that I would describe very similarly to how you describe yours, but without taking mushrooms. What happened in both our cases was probably a flood of serotonin. Many of the experiences that people who have done LSD or mushrooms describe as religious, mystical, spiritual etc can also easily be triggered by other drugs that affect the levels of the same neurotransmitters.

      I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble, though; that feeling of peace and well-being can very well lead to positive personal insights with lasting effects on your life. Achieving that without taking substances that confuse your senses thus keeping you from fully enjoying and remembering it just seems better to me.

    2. Re:A Perfect Moment by nadaou · · Score: 2

      I had a similar experience many years ago playing Rogue. I quaffed a potion with a funny name because I couldn't carry any more and it made me feel warm all over. It probably was not as spiritual as yours, but I seem to remember that it was fun and tasted great.

      --
      ~.~
      I'm a peripheral visionary.
    3. Re:A Perfect Moment by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      Just because you have an experience that you used the same words to describe doesn't mean you understand the experience or had the same experience. It just means the words to describe it are as muddy as your understanding.

      Scots wah hae, hae. Scots wah nay hae, nay hae.

      Go and have the experience discussed, then claim to know how it compares to your other experiences. Don't be smug dumb-ass in an ivory tower claiming to be worldly.

  7. Similar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    I have read about research being done to use psychedelics to treat PTSD. Sorry I don't have a citation for that. The reasoning for PTSD treatment sounded much like what this article says about depression. There was or is a controversy about research to test whether such a treatment is effective. The research was approved in Europe and denied in the US. This was a few years ago so I do not know the current status.

  8. Fucking assholes by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

    Fuck, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey have a lot to answer for. If not for their disgusting antics, we would have had this medicine decades ago. But no, they had to dance around like frightening spectres, "I'm going to dose your kids with hallucinogens, and then they'll never come home to you again! They'll hate everything about you! Muhahahaha!" All so they could try to tear down society, because they deemed it unjust. Fuck those fucking pricks. Their persuasion worked! These drugs were made hugely illegal, even for research, largely due to the scare tactics they used. When you go back and look at the coverage, it's not surprising people reacted this way. We had this increidble medicine this whole time, and they just wanted to use it for recreation. They're worse than Harvey Weinstein in my book.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    1. Re:Fucking assholes by Greyfox · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sure, sure, because Nixon wasn't looking for any excuse he could find to crack down on the blacks and the hippies. And there was no shortage of twatwaffle cronies who were happy to make up whatever bad science the administration wanted to make that happen. And the pharmaceutical companies had absolutely no reason not to do everything in their power to suppress the natural drugs that worked so much better than the shit they were peddling. And not satisfied just to have the USA stick its head up its ass about the subject for the last 50 years, they went out of their way to export their hairbrained policies to the rest of the world. I hope history judges them harshly for the damage they've done, to generations of African Americans and the public well-being as a whole.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  9. Re: Alcohol by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2

    I'm pretty sure that regardless of an object's shape the phrase "How else are you going to kick it if not with a foot" applies.

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  10. Brain Help desk by valinor89 · · Score: 3, Funny

    User: My brain seems to be slow and moody as of late.
    Support: Have you tried turning it on and off, sir?
    User: Mmmm

  11. Re:Why not just put them inchocolate by boudie2 · · Score: 2

    Or boil them in water and make some tea. Put a dash of sugar in it and drink it down fast.

  12. I would love to try this by DaMattster · · Score: 2

    As someone whom suffers from depression and has to take these god-awful medicines produced by Big Pharma, I would love to be able to try this. I am sick of managing depression. If this offers a cure for it, than I would rather a cure. Too bad that Big Pharma is all about profit and they know that there is no profit in curing disease: they'd much rather manage it.