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Psychedelic Mushrooms Are Closer To Medicinal Use (nytimes.com)
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have recommended that psilocybin, the active compound in hallucinogenic mushrooms, be reclassified for medical use, potentially paving the way for the psychedelic drug to one day treat depression and anxiety and help people stop smoking. The New York Times: The suggestion to reclassify psilocybin from a Schedule I drug, with no known medical benefit, to a Schedule IV drug, which is akin to prescription sleeping pills, was part of a review to assess the safety and abuse of medically administered psilocybin [Editor's note: the story may be paywalled; alternative source]. Before the Food and Drug Administration can be petitioned to reclassify the drug, though, it has to clear extensive study and trials, which can take more than five years, the researchers wrote. The analysis was published in the October print issue of Neuropharmacology, a medical journal focused on neuroscience.
The study comes as many Americans shift their attitudes toward the use of some illegal drugs. The widespread legalization of marijuana has helped demystify drug use, with many people now recognizing the medicinal benefits for those with anxiety, arthritis and other physical ailments. Psychedelics, like LSD and psilocybin, are illegal and not approved for medical or recreational use. But in recent years scientists and consumers have begun rethinking their use to combat depression and anxiety.
The study comes as many Americans shift their attitudes toward the use of some illegal drugs. The widespread legalization of marijuana has helped demystify drug use, with many people now recognizing the medicinal benefits for those with anxiety, arthritis and other physical ailments. Psychedelics, like LSD and psilocybin, are illegal and not approved for medical or recreational use. But in recent years scientists and consumers have begun rethinking their use to combat depression and anxiety.
And now shrooooooms. Joy, what a cesspit this country is becoming.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Many cultures use hallucinogens. Changing how the brain works for a limited amount of time, can have profound effects on how people view themselves and society around them. Harnessing this to help people isn't a new thing, its simply a return to things that have worked over time.
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Here we go round the mulberry bush
US6630507B1
https://patents.google.com/patent/US6630507B1/en
Assignee: US Department of Health & Human Services
"Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention"
Slashdot has been doing literally nothing but copying their front page for the past year.
Meanwhile the rest of the world makes less money per day than virtually anyone in the first world makes in an hour, and they can afford to have children, lots of them, and they generally report higher levels of happiness than those who live in western nations.
So is the solution really for us all to smoke weed and take shrooms?
"...The heavens parted. God looked down and rained down gifts of forgiveness onto my being, healing me on every level, psychically, physically, emotionally.
... You can see why the government is cracking down on the idea of experiencing unconditional love.”
And I realized that our true nature is spirit not body, that we are eternal beings that God’s love is unconditional. There is nothing that we can ever do to change that, It is only our illusion that we are separate from God or that we are alone. In fact, the reality is, we are one with God and he loves us.
Now if that isn’t a hazard to this country? How are we going to keep building nuclear weapons? What’s going to happen to the arms industry if we realized that we’re all ONE?
It’s going to fuck up the economy. The economy that’s fake anyway. Which would be a real bummer
Those cultures have a whole framework in which the shroomz or whatever it is they're using are just tools along with the rest of what they do. If you fish out just the "active" stuff, according to modern medical science, you miss out on the larger part of the whole thing.
Coincidentally I'm reading through some of Castaneda's work, and boy is that guy dense. Completely focused on things like "but the shrooms, they do stuff!" when even he admits (several books later!) that this focus made him miss the more important other stuff entirely. Despite being told at every opportunity. For ten years.
And he was just an anthropologist by training. Now imagine what a fully trained-up medical researcher would make of it. I think, if you could harness that density and make it into actual matter we'd be awash in fissionables.
Now that pot is legal, I can't go to a public park without smelling the stuff. Cigarettes weren't so bad since they had a 5 foot radius. But dammit, if somebody is smoking pot within a 100 feet everyone in my family (kids included) go "Ugh! It smells like a skunk around here!" It's only going to get worse...
Any attempts to reclassify Schedule 1 drugs will probably never happen because the big pharma companies are strongly opposed (since all the things on Schedule 1 are drugs that the big pharma companies can't patent or control and that any drug maker would be able to produce)
Plus you have the anti-drugs campaigners who would argue that (as with weed) the harmful effects of hallucinogenic drugs outweigh any medical benefits.
and organized religion and I will go full teetoler with you on banning all other recreational substances.
What? We need to get rid of drugs but keep God?
There is a reason religion was called the opiate of the masses. If you're not willing to start with the worst drug, why both with the little ones?
You've done a lot for mainstream acceptance of taking shrooms!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So let eat this mushroom and fly to Miami. What could possibly go wrong?
Millennial alert: Then why does every one of these pieces sound like it refers to recreational use? Would you be all in the same way if it were only permitted to be prescribed after a diagnosis, and then only in the modified form of a pill? I highly doubt it. Nice try, though, kids. Do you really think that in your 20s you know better than people that have been around drugs for decades?
Some of the medical benefits 'shrooms provide are already well studied and known.
For example, we know that aerobic exercise is good for you. Which is just the kind of exercise you get when running from the angry bull or cows in the field, or the farmer, or ....
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
But not to own a mushroom.
Yeah, PopeRatzzo's "ratztarded" method was to make some stupid post that would be modded to +5 doing something evoking an emotional response like "How DARE you talk about women and blacks like that?" storing up a bunch of karma, and going on a trolling spree against anyone he doesn't like. In this case, it's conservatives.
PopeRatzo: We know your modus operandi. Since Slashdot changed how much karma you can hoard, you are no longer cruising along at +2. Bravo to the Slashdot team for this!
Retard Pusher
I don't like getting blasted on them as they can make you wonder off into some dark places vs say acid but when I go out to a nightclub to rave I'll take about .4 grams and about 1-1.5 hours later I'll take another .5 sometimes in smaller portions over 30min. Usually I'd have done one chocolate which I make into 1 gram worth of shrooms. You get an almost weed high with out the body stone so your visual perception changes a bit and things seem more clear and happy. The come down is like a MDA come down you feel a little distanced from others for about 30 min then it goes away. Sleeping is no problem BUT the next few days as long as I didn't drink too much alcohol and done MDA I feel so refreshed and clear minded and happy.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I for one would love it if they were legal. Tried both shrooms and acid in college. More silly than "enlightening" but still a very pleasant and refreshing way to spend an evening. Like a vacation, without having to take a week off to drive across the country. It would be a lovely thing if once a year or so I could enjoy something like that without risking all I hold dear. It's been almost 20 years, and I miss it.
Pot's legal here, but I don't enjoy it very much. Booze is plentiful, but it's probably the worst for my health. But some occasional strangeness brings some of the fun back to normality.
This brain scan thing is gonna be the new techno phrenology.
This is like all the stoner proposals to make everything out of hemp.
Sure, the stuff won't work better than anything we already use for those purposes, but ... it's hemp man, so it's good!!