'Magic Mushrooms' Can Improve Psychological Health Long Term -- according to Jewess

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

:think: ---in case you didn't know already... and it looks like the original "Dopers"-- Time Magazine -- is cranking up the "Hippie bus" ride again... after 40-50 years for a new generation...  as a corrupting Jewess below writes...  --CSR

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'Magic Mushrooms' Can Improve Psychological Health Long Term

By Maia Szalavitz Thursday, June 16, 2011 | View Comments  


The psychedelic drug in magic mushrooms may have lasting medical and spiritual benefits, according to new research from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

The mushroom-derived hallucinogen, called psilocybin, is known to trigger transformative spiritual states, but at high doses it can also result in "bad trips" marked by terror and panic. The trick is to get the dose just right, which the Johns Hopkins researchers report having accomplished.

In their study, the Hopkins scientists were able to reliably induce transcendental experiences in volunteers, which offered long-lasting psychological growth and helped people find peace in their lives — without the negative effects.

(PHOTOS: Inside Colorado's Marijuana Industry)

"The important point here is that we found the sweet spot where we can optimize the positive persistent effects and avoid some of the fear and anxiety that can occur and can be quite disruptive," says lead author Roland Griffiths, professor of behavioral biology at Hopkins.

Giffiths' study involved 18 healthy adults, average age 46, who participated in five eight-hour drug sessions with either psilocybin — at varying doses — or placebo. Nearly all the volunteers were college graduates and 78% participated regularly in religious activities; all were interested in spiritual experience.

Fourteen months after participating in the study, 94% of those who received the drug said the experiment was one of the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives; 39% said it was the single most meaningful experience.

Critically, however, the participants themselves were not the only ones who saw the benefit from the insights they gained: their friends, family member and colleagues also reported that the psilocybin experience had made the participants calmer, happier and kinder.

Ultimately, Griffiths and his colleagues want to see if the same kind of psychedelic experience could help ease anxiety and fear over the long term in cancer patients or others facing death. And following up on tantalizing clues from early research on hallucinogenic drugs like LSD, mescaline and psilocybin in the 1960s (which are all now illegal), researchers are also studying whether transcendental experiences could help spur recovery from addiction and treat other psychological problems like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

For Griffiths' current experiment, participants were housed in a living room-like setting designed to be calm, comfortable and attractive. While under the influence, they listened to classical music on headphones, wore eyeshades and were instructed to "direct their attention inward."

Each participant was accompanied by two other research-team members: a "monitor" and an "assistant monitor," who both had previous experience with people on psychedelic drugs and were empathetic and supportive. Before the drug sessions, the volunteers became acquainted enough with their team so that they felt familiar and safe. Although the experiments took place in the Hopkins hospital complex in order to ensure prompt medical attention in the event that it was needed, it never was.

As described by early advocates of the use of psychedelics — from ancient shamans to Timothy Leary and the Grateful Dead — the psilocybin experience typically involves a sense of oneness with the universe and with others, a feeling of transcending time, space and other limitations, coupled with a sense of holiness and sacredness. Overwhelmingly, these experiences are difficult to put into words, but many of Griffiths' participants said they were left with the sense that they understood themselves and others better and therefore had greater compassion and patience.

(MORE: A Mystery Partly Solved: How the 'Club Drug' Ketamine Lifts Depression So Quickly)


"I feel that I relate better in my marriage. There is more empathy — a greater understanding of people and understanding their difficulties and less judgment," said one participant. "Less judging of myself, too."

Another said: "I have better interaction with close friends and family and with acquaintances and strangers. ... My alcohol use has diminished dramatically."

To zero in on the "sweet spot" of dosing, Griffiths started half the volunteers on a low dose and gradually increased their doses over time (with placebo sessions randomly interspersed); the other half started on a high dose and worked their way down.

Those who started on a low dose found that their experiences tended to get better as the dose increased, probably because they learned what to expect and how to handle it. But people who started with high doses were more likely to experience anxiety and fear (though these feeling didn't last long and sometimes resolved into euphoria or a sense of transcendence).

"If we back the dose down a little, we have just as much of the same positive effects. The properties of the mystical experience remain the same, but there's a fivefold drop in anxiety and fearfulness," Griffiths says.

Some past experiments with psychedelics in the '60s used initial high doses of the drugs — the "blast people away with a high dose" model, says Griffiths — to try to treat addiction. "Some of the early work in addictions was done with the idea of, 'O.K., let's model the 'bottoming-out' crisis and make use of the dark side of [psychedelic] compounds. That didn't work," Griffiths says.

It may even have backfired: other research on addictions shows that coercion, humiliation and other attempts to produce a sense of "powerlessness," tend to increase relapse and treatment dropout, not recovery. (And the notorious naked LSD encounter sessions conducted with psychopaths made them worse, too.)

Griffiths is currently seeking patients with terminal cancer to participate in his next set of experiments (for more information on these studies, click here); because psychedelics often produce a feeling of going beyond life and death, they are thought to be especially likely to help those facing the end of life. Griffiths is also studying whether psilocybin can help smokers quit.

Griffiths and other researchers like him are hoping to bring the study of psychedelics into the future. They want to build on the promise that some of the early research showed, while avoiding the bad rep and exaggerated claims — for example, that LSD was harmless and could usher in world peace — that became associated with the drugs when people started using them recreationally in the 1960s. The resulting negative publicity helped shut down the burgeoning research.

This time around, caution may be paying off. Dr. Jerome Jaffe, America's first drug czar, who was not involved with the research, said in a statement, "The Hopkins psilocybin studies clearly demonstrate that this route to the mystical is not to be walked alone. But they have also demonstrated significant and lasting benefits. That raises two questions: could psilocybin-occasioned experiences prove therapeutically useful, for example in dealing with the psychological distress experienced by some terminal patients?

"And should properly-informed citizens, not in distress, be allowed to receive psilocybin for its possible spiritual benefits, as we now allow them to pursue other possibly risky activities such as cosmetic surgery and mountain-climbing?"

The study was published in the journal Psychopharmacology.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/16/m ... long-term/



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A Mystery Partly Solved: How the 'Club Drug' Ketamine Lifts Depression So Quickly
By Maia Szalavitz Wednesday, June 15, 2011 | View Comments


Glass capsules containing ketamine
NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images

A new study sheds light on why the anesthetic and "club drug" ketamine can relieve depression rapidly — in hours, instead of weeks or months. The findings may help provide new targets for developing antidepressants and increase researchers' understanding of the devastating disorder.

The study, published in the journal Nature, offer support for wider use of ketamine in depression and suggests new leads for scientists aiming to create fast-acting drugs with fewer side effects. A drug that could relieve depression quickly has long been sought by pharmaceutical companies and patients: for the 20 million Americans suffering from depression, the early weeks of treatment are a high-risk time for suicide, which kills nearly 35,000 people each year.

The new research involved numerous experiments in mice aimed at teasing out what happens to both brain and behavior when ketamine takes effect. In one such test, mice were forced to swim in a water-filled tube that they cannot escape. Previous research has shown that mice given antidepressants swim longer before giving up: a sign that the drugs are working.

The new study found that just one dose of ketamine produced the same effect in a half an hour — compared with the weeks or months this can take with standard antidepressants, in mice as well as in humans. Further, the new study found that the antidepressant effect of a single dose of ketamine lasted for a week.

(More on TIME.com: How a Study of a Failed Antidepressant Shows That Antidepressants Really Work)

"It's a nice, elegant experiment," says Carlos Zarate, chief of experimental therapeutics of the mood and anxiety disorders program at the National Institute of Mental Health and author of an early randomized trial of ketamine for depression. He was not associated with the study. "It's very good work," he adds.

The researchers, led by Lisa Monteggia, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, also measured brain changes after animals underwent behavioral tests. Monteggia and her colleagues found that ketamine acted by increasing synthesis of BDNF, a nerve growth factor that supports the health of brain cells, helps them grow and can promote the development of new neurons.

Some researchers have previously theorized that all effective antidepressants ultimately act by promoting nerve cell growth, which would help explain the fact that although the drugs change neurotransmitter levels within hours, it takes much longer to lift mood. Nerve cells take time to grow, they argued, and that accounts for the delay. But the rapid action of ketamine shows that this certainly can't be the whole story, whether or not the growth of new cells matters for long-term recovery.

Digging further, Monteggia's group found that ketamine increases BDNF by deactivating a chemical called eEF2 kinase (also known as CAMKIII), which normally suppresses BDNF production. Consequently, when eEF2 kinase is inactivated, brain cells produce more BDNF.

"We know that ketamine can produce a fast-acting antidepressant response in treatment-resistant patients, but no one really knows how that works. What we found is a necessary pathway for ketamine to trigger [that response]," says Monteggia. "We've identified a novel pathway never before linked to any behavior, let alone an antidepressant response — that could be a novel drug target."

That means drugs that inhibit or block eEF2 kinase could potentially work as antidepressants — ones that would take effect faster than any current medication and possibly without the "trippy" side effects that make ketamine desirable to some recreational users. Compounds like this currently exist.

"It sounds very, very exciting," says Emery Brown, professor of computational neuroscience at MIT, who was not associated with the research. "If they're correct, it most certainly could lead to new drug development. This is the first time I've heard of this possible mechanism."

(More on TIME.com: Treating Depression: How Bright Light Can Help)

However, none of these compounds are currently on the market for any use and it's not known what other kinds of side effects they might have, Monteggia says.

The implications of the research go beyond possible drugs based on eEF2 kinase. The research shows that ketamine acts on brain circuits that are constantly active "in the background" — cells that are activated not when you do something or have an experience, but that are always sort of humming along, no matter what else you are doing or thinking.

"That background stuff might not just be the background," Monteggia says. "It might be important. The problem in mental illness may be a function of background neurotransmission."

"This is bringing a whole new insight into how we might want to construct these types of drugs," says Brown. "It could make us rethink how we approach this entire problem."

Ketamine is already widely used in anesthesia and for pain treatment. But it is not yet widely available to the 5% of Americans over 12 who suffer severe depression, even though such "off-label" use is legally allowed.  rown and Zarate say that one reason may be that while anesthesiologists are comfortable using the drug, psychiatrists do not have much experience with it and may be scared about side effects.

However, with another recent study suggesting that ketamine may be useful for treating the depression associated with bipolar disorder as well, it could be time for some psychiatrists to offer compassionate use in people whose depression hasn't responded to existing treatments.

(More on TIME.com: Drugging the Vulnerable: Atypical Antipsychotics in Children and the Elderly)

"In good hands and perhaps in a specialized clinic and with larger controlled trials, we can start to figure out how and when to use it," says Zarate.

    Related Topics:
    antidepressant, antidepressants, BDNF, Depression, Drugs, glutamate, ketamine, Lisa Monteggia, Mental Health, NMDA receptor

http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/15/a ... o-quickly/

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

'Magic Mushrooms' Trigger Lasting Personality Change

By Maia Szalavitz Monday, October 3, 2011 | View Comments

Denmark Imposes a 'Fat Tax' to Encourage Healthy Eating
Rob & Ann Simpson / Getty Images


The psychedelic drug psilocybin (the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms") may produce lasting, positive changes in personality, new research finds. People who took the drug showed increases in the key personality dimension of openness — being amenable to new ideas, experiences and perspectives — more than a year later.

"It was sort of like an anti-inflammatory for the ego," says Brian, a 50-year-old scientist, who participated in the research (he declined to reveal his last name). "The swelling went down and I got to see what was underneath."

Researchers led by Katherine MacLean, a postdoctoral student at Johns Hopkins University, analyzed personality data on 52 participants (average age 46) who had participated in the group's earlier research on the drug. These volunteers took psilocybin during two to five sessions, at various doses, under highly controlled conditions at the hospital. They were also given personality tests before taking psilocybin, again a couple of months after each drug session, then again about a year later.

The earlier study had found positive psychological changes — documented by both participants and their family members and other associates — in calmness, happiness and kindness. The new research found that the drug takers also saw long-term changes to their underlying personality. "The most surprising thing was that we found a change in personality that is really not expected in healthy adults, not after such a discrete event," says MacLean.

MORE: 'Magic Mushrooms' Can Improve Psychological Health Long Term

While other research has found that some therapies, including intensive meditation, effective treatment with antidepressants or dialectical behavioral therapy to treat borderline personality disorder, can change adult personality, lasting positive change has never been documented as a result of just a few doses of a drug.

The personality changes also ran counter to those expected as people age. Normally, as people grow older, they become increasingly less open to new ideas and new experiences. In contrast, in participants who experienced had what researchers call a "full mystical experience," the scientists saw a shift toward increased openness, as though the volunteers had become decades younger.

People became more curious and more interested in new ideas and experiences and in trying new things. "It ended up being the best experience of my life," says 67-year-old retiree Maria Estevez. "It was marvelous, radiant. I felt like I was coming into a magnificent palace, expansive and joyous."

Those who didn't have a full mystical experience showed no personality change, however. The researchers defined full mystical experiences as those that engendered the sense that "all is one" and that everything is connected, an experience of having transcended time and space, a sense of sacredness and peace and an inability to describe accurately the experience in words.

Brian's mushroom trip was exactly that. But it didn't happen during his first drug session. For his first dose, he had been randomly assigned to get placebo, so he simply sat blindfolded, listening to classical music through headphones in a calm, elegant room attended by a study monitor, whom Brian had met with over the several preceding weeks to prepare for the experiment. "Four hours went by and nothing really happened," he says.

Meanwhile, Estevez had the opposite initial experience. She was randomized to receive the highest possible dose first, which ended up being the worst experience of her life. "I was slammed, I was inundated, I felt like I was drowning," she says. "I was knocked around and tumbling beyond all sanity."

The monitors helped her through it, but she still considered dropping out. She reconsidered after realizing that she might never get another chance to have a better psychedelic experience. Estevez had originally learned about the study in a classified ad, a day after she'd re-read Aldous Huxley's famous account of his mescaline experience, and wished she could try something similar for her own spiritual exploration.

Indeed, many of the participants in the experiment were self-motivated to enroll, out of curiosity about the effects of magic mushrooms or because they too wanted the opportunity to self-reflect. Many participants already engaged in spiritual activities like meditation, religious services and prayer. That may help explain why they were so sensitive to the effects of the drug, the researchers acknowledged.

MORE: More Evidence That Marijuana-Like Drugs May Help Prevent PTSD

Brian had always been a deeply spiritual man. He had recently been drawn to Eastern religions and the notion that the separation of our selves from the rest of the world was illusory, and said he signed up for the study because he was curious. He jokes that he hadn't tried psychedelics earlier because "I was actually a victim of my own good judgment in my youth."

During his experience with a higher dose of psilocybin, he says, "I was just able to drop ego totally and experience the world without all those filters, and experience Brian without all that."

He describes his experience on the highest possible dose of psilocybin this way:

    There was this point where, basically, I forgot about anything Brian-like or who Brian was. I was really in touch with all experience: whatever happened was part of me. I was not observing — I was whatever was happening. The other thing that was so memorable was that everything was so beautiful and it made me cry because the beauty was so exquisite. And then I'd remember how painful and how messy it all was. I was laughing and crying for like three hours straight.

    I was absolutely that certain that everything was just the same thing, just different flavors and tastes of one underlying reality and being so grateful to be alive and able to experience it.

Brian says that this recognition made him more tolerant and more compassionate. "What was happening to me was real and [yet] the person next to me might not be seeing the same thing. It became absolutely obvious that perspective determines your experience with reality and that maybe being able to take more perspectives than one will give you a more rich and probably more true version of what reality is."

MORE: Ecstasy as Therapy: Have Some of its Negative Effects Been Overblown?

In her most positive session, Estevez describes the experience of having a godlike presence with her. "It said to me, 'Is there anything you want?' I thought, 'want?'" says Estevez. "[I knew that] there was this person named Maria in space and time and that she had long lists of things she wanted. That was me. But I just said no. Later, I thought, Wow, if that was case, who was answering?"

Estevez says that she, too, has become more open and empathetic since taking psilocybin. "I am much more forgiving of friends and strangers," she says. "I'm much more accommodating because I've been there, and it really isn't such a big deal."

Of course, most drugs that are powerful enough to do good also have the power to do harm, so careful study will be needed to see if long-lasting negative effects also occur.

"We haven't seen [any evidence of lasting negative effects] in our studies,"says Roland Griffiths, a co-author of the research and professor of behavioral biology at Hopkins. "People can have very negative effects of psilocybin and have anxiety or fearfulness but that's time-limited, and none of those people report lasting negative effects."

The researchers are currently seeking participants for a new study on the potentially mood-enhancing effects of psilocybin in current or former cancer patients who are anxious or depressed. (Click here for more info.) The scientists ultimately hope to be able to use psychedelics in treatments for mental illness and to study the nature of consciousness itself.

The new research was published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Updated: The original post did not include the full title of the journal in which the research appeared.

Maia Szalavitz is a health writer for TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/03/w ... ty-change/

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Yep...as suspected... a J-Triber

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Overcoming Christmas Envy
How a free menorah, tossed at me as I stood outside my 12-step meeting, helped me learn to appreciate Hanukkah.    

BY: Maia Szalavitz    

My earliest memories of Hanukkah are similar to those I've heard of first Christmases: anticipation; aching desire for presents; joy at receiving them; disappointment at not getting what I wanted or because the present wasn't half as cool in real life as it was in my imagination or on television; and festive food, everywhere food.

Hanukkah is one of many Jewish holidays I've heard described collectively as "Someone tried to annihilate us. They couldn't. Let's eat." It's not even one of the most important festivals. But it is unique because its position in the calendar puts it in line for comparison with the biggest, most commercial holiday in the Christian year. As a result, many, perhaps most, American Jews suffer Christmas envy.

When I was a kid, it didn't bother me much. My parents noted that we got presents for eight days, compared with the one day that the Christians had. (The full 12 days of Christmas were fortunately not commonly celebrated among our suburban New York neighbors.) My relatives went out of their way to make the holiday fun and exciting.

Though we never had a tree or electric lights, my grandmother would often take my sister Kira and I to New York City to view the Rockefeller Center tree and the intricately decorated store windows. Each year, when we were young, my mom took us to the Nutcracker ballet at Lincoln Center. On the way home at night, we'd count the lights and see how many decorated buildings we could spot.

I remember distinctly the year I realized that the tree in the ballet didn't really grow inexplicably larger but simply emerged from a hole in the stage. Perhaps it was then that holiday magic, for me, went into decline. I was probably around 11.

As I grew up, I began to wonder about the meaning of Hanukkah. Christmas held numerous lessons about peace and love and giving--but Hanukkah began to seem almost militaristic. It celebrated victory in battle, and the main miracle--one day's worth of oil keeping the Temple's menorah lit for eight days--seemed pretty pale in comparison with a virgin birth marked by signs in the heavens. I felt guilty about my misgivings--and couldn't, like so many secular or mixed-marriage Jews, decide to celebrate the idea of Christmas with a tree or other symbols. It felt wrong.

When I left home for college, my religious life itself pretty much ceased. I had been through a period of spiritual seeking with psychedelic drugs and an exploration of Buddhism, but I remained confused and questioning and unsure about my Judaism. I came home for the holidays, but it felt strange and perfunctory. My parents divorced, and celebrations became strained reminders of the split. Rather than anticipation, I began to feel dread. All the cards and trees and commercials with perfect families began to mock me and make me feel as though I was alone in my ambivalence.

And then there was my drug problem. At 17, I had become involved with cocaine, and by 20 I was shooting coke and heroin daily. The drugs replaced the magic and comfort I'd felt as a child--ironically, they made me feel safe, and quieted my fears about failure and death. But when I realized that my addiction was going to make me compromise everything I desired and believed in, I sought help and entered recovery.

The 12-step program I used for support once again encouraged my spiritual search. I began to pray regularly and to read about religious topics. The fact that I'd gone from an 80-pound, pale, tired junkie to a young woman with life and hope and promise gave me a sense that I'd experienced my own miracle. I understood the joy and calm that comes with gratitude for having been pulled from the brink.

And, in 12-step meetings, people often talked about the contrast between holiday expectations and reality. Many had families far more dysfunctional and unhappy than mine--and many never came to the reconciliation that I did as I moved away from drugs.

Still, while I knew other Jews in recovery, we were a small minority. 12-steppers talked about addiction as a threefold disease--physical, mental, and spiritual--and many joked that that also stood for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's (since holidays brought not only expectations that might be disappointed but temptation to relapse). The 12-steppers didn't mention Hanukkah.

One December, after a particularly Christmas-focused meeting held in a Christian prep school, I and several other Jewish recovering addicts stood outside discussing Christmas envy. There were Christmas trees and lights everywhere, and one guy said he wished there was something to remind us of our holiday.

Just then, we heard a loud burst of Hanukkah music. We looked up and saw several cars topped with giant menorahs coming toward us. Inside were groups of Lubavitcher Jews who were tossing menorahs and candles to everyone who reached for them.

We laughed and caught them in the cold air and discussed the spiritual nature of coincidence. I went home and lit mine and thought about how small acts of kindness can change lives. As I sang the blessing over the candles, I felt peaceful and calm. It's OK to celebrate survival, I thought. And even better to bring that light and hope to others.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Judaism ... y.aspx?p=2

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

As expected... it always goes back to some sort of escapist Jew "Holohoax" babble ........ --CSR

http://books.google.com/books?id=pltsIb ... &lpg=PA191