Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — Psychedelic mushrooms have many names, including pizza additives, magic mushrooms, and others that increase with each generation.
However, Paul Stamets, a leading mycologist, thinks it is time for psilocybin fans to ditch these childish names.
“Psilocybin is a non-addictive, life-altering substance,” Stamets told CNN.
Limited clinical trials have shown that use of psilocybin in a therapeutic setting, such as taking one or two doses of it, produces dramatic and long-lasting changes in people with treatment-resistant acute depressive disorder that do not usually respond to conventional antidepressants.
Based on this research, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) called psilocybin “exceptional,” Stamets said.
Psilocybin, which the gut turns into the psychoactive chemical psilocin, has also been shown to combat cluster headaches, anxiety, anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and various forms of drug abuse.
Its effect on your brain
Classic drugs, such as psilocybin and the hallucinogenic drug known as “LSD”, enter the brain through the same receptors as the “feel-good” hormone, that is, serotonin, which helps control body functions such as sleep and sexual desire, and psychological states such as contentment, happiness, and optimism.
People with depression or anxiety often have low levels of serotonin, as do people with post-traumatic stress disorder, cluster headaches, anorexia, smoking addiction, and drug abusers.
Treatment usually involves the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which increase levels of serotonin available to brain cells.
But it may take weeks for improvement to begin, experts say, if the medications given were effective in the first place.
Even so, the scientists could detect a change in brain neuron communication in the lab “within 30 minutes”, through the use of psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and LSD, said Brian Roth, a pharmacologist and professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of North Carolina.
brain cell growth
And there’s more, as the researchers say that anesthetics help brain neurons create new dendrites to increase communication between cells.
“These drugs can increase neuronal growth, they can increase this branching of neurons, and they can increase synapses,” said David Knott, director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Department of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London. It’s neuroplasticity.”
The growth of dendrites helps build and solidify new circuits in the brain, allowing us to create more positive pathways, for example when we practice gratitude.
Matthew Johnson, a professor of hallucinogens and consciousness at Johns Hopkins Medicine, emphasized that the use of drugs does not work for everyone, but when they work well, they become a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, or depression.
But how long does it last? Nutt stated that studies in which patients were given only one dose of an anesthetic drug showed “some people improved after 8 years, but for the majority of people with chronic depression, the disease creeps in again after 4 or 5 months.”
What about smaller doses?
Stamets believes that small doses are the answer – using small amounts of psilocybin a few times a week to keep the brain healthy.
On his website, surveys of people using small doses have shown significantly positive benefits when consuming small doses of psilocybin.
However, scientific studies have so far failed to find any benefits from small doses, which has left many researchers skeptical.
“People love to use it, but it doesn’t prove the claims in small doses,” Johnson said.
need to be careful
Of course, not all hallucinogenic trials turned out positive, so nearly every drug study involved trained therapists to intervene when things went wrong, and to make the most of the outcome if it was positive.
Drugs also have side effects that aren’t just about having a bad experience.
LSD, mescaline and DMT, the active ingredients in ayahuasca tea, can increase blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
This tea can also cause vomiting, while LSD drugs can cause tremors, numbness, and weakness, and mescaline can cause uncoordinated movement.
People looking for psychedelic mushrooms can confuse poisonous mushrooms with psilocybin, resulting in unintended and fatal poisoning.
In addition, not everyone is a candidate for this type of treatment.
This method won’t work for people who currently use SSRIs, since the receptors in their brains are practically flooded with serotonin.
People with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or a family history of psychosis are almost always excluded from clinical trials, explained Frederic Barrett, co-director of the Center for Research on Hallucinogens and Consciousness at Johns Hopkins University.
“Hopefully, we can eventually use this information to make drugs that mimic the benefits of psychedelic drugs, but without drug testing,” Roth said.