Magic mushrooms could have medical benefits, researchers say
Jeanwah
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Fungus Amungus! 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookou ... rchers-say
The hallucinogen in magic mushrooms may no longer just be for hippies seeking a trippy high.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have been studying the effects of psilocybin, a chemical found in some psychedelic mushrooms, that's credited with inducing transcendental states. Now, they say, they've zeroed in on the perfect dosage level to produce transformative mystical and spiritual experiences that offer long-lasting life-changing benefits, while carrying little risk of negative reactions.
The breakthrough could speed the day when doctors use psilocybin--long viewed skeptically for its association with 1960s countercultural thrill-seekers--for a range of valuable clinical functions, like easing the anxiety of terminally ill patients, treating depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and helping smokers quit. Already, studies in which depressed cancer patients were given the drug have reported positive results. "I'm not afraid to die anymore" one participant told The Lookout.
The Johns Hopkins study--whose results will be published this week in the journal Psychopharmacology--involved giving healthy volunteers varying doses of psilocybin in a controlled and supportive setting, over four separate sessions. Looking back more than a year later, 94 percent of participants rated it as one of the top five most spiritually significant experiences of their lifetimes.
More important, 89 percent reported lasting, positive changes in their behavior--better relationships with others, for instance, or increased care for their own mental and physical well-being. Those assessments were corroborated by family members and others.
"I think my heart is more open to all interactions with other people," one volunteer reported in a questionnaire given to participants 14-months after their session.
"I feel that I relate better in my marriage," wrote another. "There is more empathy -- a greater understanding of people, and understanding their difficulties, and less judgment."
Identifying the exact right dosage for hallucinogenic drugs is crucial, Roland Griffiths, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins who led the study, explained to The Lookout. That's because a "bad trip" can trigger hazardous, self-destructive behavior, but low doses don't produce the kind of transformative experiences that can offer long-term benefits. By trying a range of doses, Griffiths said, researchers were able to find the sweet spot, "where a high or intermediate dose can produce, fairly reliably, these mystical experiences, with very low probability of a significant fear reaction."
In the 1950s and '60s, scientists became interested in the potential effects of hallucinogens like psilocybin, mescaline, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on both healthy and terminally ill people. Mexican Indians had, since ancient times, used psychedelic mushrooms with similar chemical structures to achieve intense spiritual experiences. But by the mid '60s, counterculture gurus like Dr. Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley were talking up mind-altering drugs as a way of expanding one's consciousness and rejecting mainstream society. Stories, perhaps apocryphal, circulated about people jumping out of windows while on LSD, and some heavy users were said to have suffered permanent psychological damage. By the early '70s, the US government had essentially banned all hallucinogenic drugs.
But recent years have seen the beginning of a revival of mainstream scientific interest in mind-altering drugs, and particularly in the possibility of using them in a clinical setting to alleviate depression and anxiety. A 2004 study by the government of Holland (pdf) found psilocybin to have no significant negative effects.
Here in the United States, too, the climate may be shifting. In a statement accompanying the announcement of the Johns Hopkins findings, Jerome Jaffe, a former White House drug czar now at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said the results raise the question of whether psilocybin could prove useful "in dealing with the psychological distress experienced by some terminal patients?"
The hope is that the long-lasting spiritual and transcendental experiences associated with psilocybin could--if conducted in a controlled and supportive setting, and with appropriate dosage levels--help ease patients' fear and anxiety, allowing them to approach death with a greater sense of calm. (You can see one terminally ill cancer patient speak movingly about the positive effects of psilocybin here.)
Griffiths thinks the drug may have the potential to alleviate the suffering of terminal patients. He's currently leading a separate Johns Hopkins psilocybin study, using volunteers who are depressed after being diagnosed with cancer. "So far we've had--anecdotally only--very positive results," comparable to the study with healthy volunteers, he said. A study from the University of California, Los Angeles last year reported similar positive results.
But Griffiths said his study, under way for three years, has only recruited 20 patients, in part because oncologists are more interested in curing cancer than helping patients cope with its effects, so they don't refer provide many referrals. "Most oncologists just don't get it," he said. "It's not the focus of their research, and they're busy people."
But the experience of one volunteer in Griffiths's study offers a glimpse of the potential benefits. Lauri Reamer, 47, told The Lookout that she participated in two Johns Hopkins psilocybin sessions last September, not long after ending intensive chemotherapy and radiation to treat a rare form of leukemia that, several times in the preceding few years, had almost taken her life.
Reamer, an anesthesiologist from Ruxton, Md., with three young daughters, said that although her disease was in remission by that time, she was still suffering psychologically from the trauma of the illness and the treatment. She had walled herself off emotionally, she said, and was unable to show empathy for others or even for herself.
The psilocybin had an immediate impact. "At the end of the session, I was just in this joyous, happy, relaxed state," she said. "The drug was gone--what was left was just this peaceful calm."
That calm had lasting benefits. Reamer said the experience--what she called "an epiphany"--gave her the impetus to get out of a failing marriage. Since doing so, she said, both she and her daughters have been much happier.
"I don't think it was the drug that did it," she said. "It was the drug that helped me find the clarity."
That's not the only improvement. "My sleeping has gotten better. My relationships have gotten better with people," she said. "The fog has lifted."
"The best thing it did for me was heal me psychologically and emotionally and allow me to be back in my kids' lives, be back to being a mother," Reamer concluded. As she spoke, she was taking her daughters--two 15-year old twins, and a 6-year-old--on a trip to Hershey Park.
And although doctors tell her that, thanks to the effect of the illness and the treatment, she likely has only 10 or 15 years to live, she's able to approach that challenge with equanimity.
"My fear of death kind of disappeared," she said. "I'm not afraid to die anymore."
Griffiths, of Johns Hopkins, said Reamer's experience isn't an outlier among the volunteers, both sick and healthy, who have tried psilocybin. "People feel uplifted, and very often have a sense that everything is O.K. at one level," he said. "That there's sense to be made out of the chaos."
"When you see people undergoing that kind of transformation," he added, "it's really quite moving."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookou ... rchers-say
The hallucinogen in magic mushrooms may no longer just be for hippies seeking a trippy high.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have been studying the effects of psilocybin, a chemical found in some psychedelic mushrooms, that's credited with inducing transcendental states. Now, they say, they've zeroed in on the perfect dosage level to produce transformative mystical and spiritual experiences that offer long-lasting life-changing benefits, while carrying little risk of negative reactions.
The breakthrough could speed the day when doctors use psilocybin--long viewed skeptically for its association with 1960s countercultural thrill-seekers--for a range of valuable clinical functions, like easing the anxiety of terminally ill patients, treating depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and helping smokers quit. Already, studies in which depressed cancer patients were given the drug have reported positive results. "I'm not afraid to die anymore" one participant told The Lookout.
The Johns Hopkins study--whose results will be published this week in the journal Psychopharmacology--involved giving healthy volunteers varying doses of psilocybin in a controlled and supportive setting, over four separate sessions. Looking back more than a year later, 94 percent of participants rated it as one of the top five most spiritually significant experiences of their lifetimes.
More important, 89 percent reported lasting, positive changes in their behavior--better relationships with others, for instance, or increased care for their own mental and physical well-being. Those assessments were corroborated by family members and others.
"I think my heart is more open to all interactions with other people," one volunteer reported in a questionnaire given to participants 14-months after their session.
"I feel that I relate better in my marriage," wrote another. "There is more empathy -- a greater understanding of people, and understanding their difficulties, and less judgment."
Identifying the exact right dosage for hallucinogenic drugs is crucial, Roland Griffiths, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins who led the study, explained to The Lookout. That's because a "bad trip" can trigger hazardous, self-destructive behavior, but low doses don't produce the kind of transformative experiences that can offer long-term benefits. By trying a range of doses, Griffiths said, researchers were able to find the sweet spot, "where a high or intermediate dose can produce, fairly reliably, these mystical experiences, with very low probability of a significant fear reaction."
In the 1950s and '60s, scientists became interested in the potential effects of hallucinogens like psilocybin, mescaline, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on both healthy and terminally ill people. Mexican Indians had, since ancient times, used psychedelic mushrooms with similar chemical structures to achieve intense spiritual experiences. But by the mid '60s, counterculture gurus like Dr. Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley were talking up mind-altering drugs as a way of expanding one's consciousness and rejecting mainstream society. Stories, perhaps apocryphal, circulated about people jumping out of windows while on LSD, and some heavy users were said to have suffered permanent psychological damage. By the early '70s, the US government had essentially banned all hallucinogenic drugs.
But recent years have seen the beginning of a revival of mainstream scientific interest in mind-altering drugs, and particularly in the possibility of using them in a clinical setting to alleviate depression and anxiety. A 2004 study by the government of Holland (pdf) found psilocybin to have no significant negative effects.
Here in the United States, too, the climate may be shifting. In a statement accompanying the announcement of the Johns Hopkins findings, Jerome Jaffe, a former White House drug czar now at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said the results raise the question of whether psilocybin could prove useful "in dealing with the psychological distress experienced by some terminal patients?"
The hope is that the long-lasting spiritual and transcendental experiences associated with psilocybin could--if conducted in a controlled and supportive setting, and with appropriate dosage levels--help ease patients' fear and anxiety, allowing them to approach death with a greater sense of calm. (You can see one terminally ill cancer patient speak movingly about the positive effects of psilocybin here.)
Griffiths thinks the drug may have the potential to alleviate the suffering of terminal patients. He's currently leading a separate Johns Hopkins psilocybin study, using volunteers who are depressed after being diagnosed with cancer. "So far we've had--anecdotally only--very positive results," comparable to the study with healthy volunteers, he said. A study from the University of California, Los Angeles last year reported similar positive results.
But Griffiths said his study, under way for three years, has only recruited 20 patients, in part because oncologists are more interested in curing cancer than helping patients cope with its effects, so they don't refer provide many referrals. "Most oncologists just don't get it," he said. "It's not the focus of their research, and they're busy people."
But the experience of one volunteer in Griffiths's study offers a glimpse of the potential benefits. Lauri Reamer, 47, told The Lookout that she participated in two Johns Hopkins psilocybin sessions last September, not long after ending intensive chemotherapy and radiation to treat a rare form of leukemia that, several times in the preceding few years, had almost taken her life.
Reamer, an anesthesiologist from Ruxton, Md., with three young daughters, said that although her disease was in remission by that time, she was still suffering psychologically from the trauma of the illness and the treatment. She had walled herself off emotionally, she said, and was unable to show empathy for others or even for herself.
The psilocybin had an immediate impact. "At the end of the session, I was just in this joyous, happy, relaxed state," she said. "The drug was gone--what was left was just this peaceful calm."
That calm had lasting benefits. Reamer said the experience--what she called "an epiphany"--gave her the impetus to get out of a failing marriage. Since doing so, she said, both she and her daughters have been much happier.
"I don't think it was the drug that did it," she said. "It was the drug that helped me find the clarity."
That's not the only improvement. "My sleeping has gotten better. My relationships have gotten better with people," she said. "The fog has lifted."
"The best thing it did for me was heal me psychologically and emotionally and allow me to be back in my kids' lives, be back to being a mother," Reamer concluded. As she spoke, she was taking her daughters--two 15-year old twins, and a 6-year-old--on a trip to Hershey Park.
And although doctors tell her that, thanks to the effect of the illness and the treatment, she likely has only 10 or 15 years to live, she's able to approach that challenge with equanimity.
"My fear of death kind of disappeared," she said. "I'm not afraid to die anymore."
Griffiths, of Johns Hopkins, said Reamer's experience isn't an outlier among the volunteers, both sick and healthy, who have tried psilocybin. "People feel uplifted, and very often have a sense that everything is O.K. at one level," he said. "That there's sense to be made out of the chaos."
"When you see people undergoing that kind of transformation," he added, "it's really quite moving."
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Comments
I don't know though, would talking therapy have helped just as well? In my experience (which is limited, two family members died of cancer, and a number of the patients I see at work are terminal), the numbness and non-acceptance of death is part of the process of accepting it. A hard part but it's a part that most people seem to go through. Is this taking a short-cut?
I guess it's individual choice though.
Not sure I would take it though my experience amounted on various occasions to believing there was a badger in my sleeping bag, wall paper coming alive, being chased by the dark and an unusual feeling of being reborn.
the goodness goes on and on but when it is time to be over, it's just over
a short mellowing out and the poof it's gone
(or so i've heard)
"what a long, strange trip it's been"
:-? :shifty:
If so, this is how I deal most effectively with stress and funks.
Actually said 'talking therapy', it get's called that over a bit. But I have got a friend who is a therapist who swears by walking therapy. He gets good results.
Hail, Hail!!!
psychologically, the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Can you guys believe, before psilocybin and lsd, I was a capitalist republican? I still am wearing the artifacts of those days, such as my MBA.
"keep the lasagna flying"!!!
uhhhh..me too
Godfather.
Well argued (but obviously lacking any substantial "proof") text that focuses primarily (in the first part) on the thesis that some form of mushroom was probably the genesis of the original "religious experience" and also the source point of the self-aware consciousness of man, followed by argument that this same sacrament began the organization of primitive mother goddess worship culture, and cow worship (since mushrooms grow in cow poop, primarily). Also, that mushrooms were inadvertently the advent of beer, through the process of preservation in honey, fermentation of said honey, the reduction of the mushroom to honey ratio over time, and the eventual supplementation of the mushroom with straight fermented honey resulting in a non hallucinatory but arguably equally intoxicating "mead" that eventually turned in to beer with the advent of other fermentable items gradually being added to and replacing honey.
McKenna can be pretty wacky at times, but I always thought this book made some valid points.
PS -- Ya'll need to start using the infamous "SWIM" if ya'll keep talking like this. ("Someone Who Isn't Me)
If I opened it now would you not understand?
I'd also point out that part of the McKenna book (Food of The Gods) is devoted to a discussion of how materialist western culture has stamped out, shunned, tabooed, and made specifically illegal, entheogenic experiences. He makes the case that these drugs were *deliberately* removed from the reach of the mainstream and replaced with worker-bee\productivity encouraging stimulant drugs (like nicotine & caffeine) by The Materialist Powers That Be in order to further their own greed driven agendas. He FURTHER argues that the COOPERATIVE & communal psychological effects (generally, "we are ALL one") of these entheogens was\is WELL known by said powers, and that they were deliberately stamped out of mainstream culture in order to KEEP US SEPERATED, to keep us dependent on their imperial economic system, and to "keep us in line".
To conclude his argument\thesis, he takes the entire notion full circle and argues that the ONLY way out of our current dilemma is to have, what I believe he terms, an "archaic revival". That is, McKenna argues that THE BINDING AGENT OF PRIMITIVE CULTURE, almost *universally* (that is, ALL primitive cultures), WAS THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE. That the only way to overcome the mental walls thrown up by brother against brother is to break those walls down with the commonality of the psychedelic experience, and that what was true in the past is true now, and for the future. This he argues is our great hope for the future, an "archaic revival" and some new psychedelic culture that helps inculcate brotherhood, understanding, and sharing through common ecstatic and visionary drug induced group experiences.
Sounds crazy huh?
But 89% of participants seem to agree in spirit.
PPS -- SWIM says that although not as "benign" (in terms of physiological after effects) ... the combination of pure mdma with psilocybin (available now in synthesized pill form, if you can find it) is a far more "therapeutic" experience than either by itself. Be careful out there, all you would-be psychonauts.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
I've read that book!!! I prefer McKenna in small doses (a whole book is a "heroic" dose
Sounds like an interesting read. May have to look into it. Please tell me it's not "new age" at all though. No offense Drifting, but I'm burned out from New Age reading after reading Icke.
Icke is a poor representation of "New Age" thought, imho. If you want to read "real" New Age thought, as relates directly to "the Great White Brotherhood" at least, you should be reading Blavatsky & Bailey. A lot of the other modern "occult" writers -- Crowley being a prime example -- would appear, based on Bailey's own description of the term (ie. practitioners of sex magic, being one standout, specifically) to be members of "The Dark Lodge" or "The Dark Brotherhood", a group that Bailey insists is bent on physical control of our physical world through the institutions of politics, media, and industry. I'm not sure WHAT you would term people like Icke, although he does co-opt (reuse) certain specifics used by Blavatksky herself ... to name one, Icke claims to be contacted by a transcendent master named "Rakorski", who seems to be identical to the same named being that Blavatsky names. I tend to think folks like Icke are either deliberate mainstream disinfo agents sponsored by "someone" (possible "The Dark Lodge", whatever that is, or just the CIA\Government to keep us misinformed) to keep us from learning the "real" truth, whatever that may be ... or they (folks like Icke) are just well meaning, misinformed goofs or disingenuous goofs.
As to McKenna specifically ... mmm, i dunno. I wouldn't say he is "New Age". He probably held a lot of beliefs that meshed with a broad \ vague notion of New Age thought, but he wasn't discussing transcendent masters, eyes in triangles, masonry, the mysteries, etc. I think he sometimes gets "lumped in" with the "New Age" writers, but I think that was more by default of the times he lived through. He was hip to a lot of that "vibe" and picked up on some of it in passing, but he certainly was not "occult", professed no membership to ANY type of lodge, and he spoke about none of the primary things a "new age" writer should be writing about (ie: new world order, universal brotherhood, sirius, transcended masters, light work, etc). He did sometimes touch on magic and meditation but those were both very popular among certain circles during the 60's and 70's.
He had another theory, Timewave Zero ... which i regard as absolutely nutzoid-whack (the guy did, admittedly, a LOT of DMT) which did, eventually, conclude that the world would come to some sort of Zero-Point\Singularity of "novelty" on 12.20.2012 ... but only after he had heard of the "mayan prophecy" and revised his own strange conclusions to fit this model more exactly. In THAT way, i SUPPOSE you could call him "new age", but as far as *I* am concerned '2012' has relatively little to do with actual "new age" backbone writers. Neither Blavatsky nor Bailey once mentions it. Their focus is on a "new age", "the age of Aquarius", and if you wanted any specific date, Bailey does write about "the new order" commencing in 100 years --- written from the date of 1960, which would put that at 2060 ... but certainly not 2012.
I dunno.
Read McKenna at your own risk.
Food of The Gods was the only thing of his i ever really bothered to take seriously.
If I opened it now would you not understand?