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So, what’s he up to now? Nutt has been focusing all of his energy on a clinical study to see whether a small amount of psilocybin, the active ingredient in shrooms, can treat depression. Psilocybin in the past has shown promise as a therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder, tobacco and alcohol addiction, and anxiety in people with advanced cancer.
In his small pilot study at the Center for Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, six men and six women with chronic, treatment-resistant, moderate to severe major depression consented to take two different doses of psilocybin (10 mg and 25 mg), separated by one week.
Their blood pressure, heart rate, and the psychoactive effects of the compound were monitored intermittently for up to six hours after they took the pills. Psychiatrists offered support, but mostly let patients go about their own trip without interruptions.
None of the participants experienced serious or unexpected negative side effects that required medical intervention. Eight of the 12 patients responded extremely well and met the criteria for remission from depression one week after the two treatments. After three months, five of them remained in remission, while another two continued to show improvement in their depression symptoms compared to baseline. Overall, every patient showed at least some improvement in their symptoms for up to three weeks after the dose.
Much more research needs to be done, Nutt writes. “But the key point is that all agree we are now in an exciting new phase of psychedelic psychopharmacology that needs to be encouraged not impeded.”
Other studies were recently done at NYU, which involved 29 patients, and Johns Hopkins University with 51 patients. Both showed that a single dose of psilocybin can lead to immediate reduction in depression and that the effect can last up to eight months. The results have been published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology together with commentaries from leading scientists in the fields of psychiatry and palliative care, who all back further research.
Dr Stephen Ross, director of addiction psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center and lead investigator of the study that was based there, explains that depressed patients treated with psilocybin “are defined by a sense of oneness — people feel that their separation between the personal ego and the outside world is sort of dissolved and they feel that they are part of some continuous energy or consciousness in the universe.”
These findings offer hope for the estimated 10 to 30 percent of people with depressive symptoms known as treatment-resistant depression — a condition that doesn’t respond to traditional antidepressant medication and therapy.
Source: matadornetwork.com