Researchers study treating depression with hallucinogen: ‘I felt more joy than I thought possible’

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“I had a complete mystical revelatory experience – the grand psychedelic show of multicolored lights and sounds.”

This is how Brit Steve remembers his first dose of a hallucinogenic drug, psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms (or hallucinogenic mushrooms).

His experiment was part of a clinical trial that some scientists are calling a big step towards a revolution in the treatment of depression.

This is a scientific experiment complicated by the fact that the drug is illegal in the UK, where it is carried out. Psilocybin is a controlled substance; its use is very strictly regulated.

That is, by current rules, this type of drug cannot be used for medicinal purposes. But this experiment, which examined participants’ brains after treatment with psychedelics, painted an extraordinary physical picture of the effect and experience of psilocybin. Brain scans showed “more connectivity” between different brain regions.

The researchers say their findings reveal how hallucinogens lift a depressed person “out of a rut of negative thinking” – that psilocybin “reintegrates” a depressed brain, making it more fluid, flexible and connected.

Brazilian scientists are also researching psilocybin, as well as other substances that originate from nature, such as ibogaine and ayahuasca, as well as synthetic compounds such as LSD and MDMA, to treat depression and chemical dependency, as BBC News Brazil showed in a report published in 2020. .

So what’s it like to have your brain “reintegrated” by psychedelic drugs?

“It’s an ineffable experience – words like the ones we’re using right now aren’t enough,” Steve tells the BBC. “With the first dose, I felt a joy like I’ve never experienced – for the first time, I was able to be myself.”

But the second dose of testing, he adds, was very grim.

Steve, who is now in his 60s, was diagnosed with depression over 30 years ago.

Traditional antidepressants just didn’t work for him.

These drugs work by increasing levels of a chemical called serotonin in the brain. Serotonin, known as the “happiness hormone,” is one of the chemical messengers that carry signals from one part of the brain to another; Low serotonin levels have been linked to depression since the 1960s.

But while antidepressant drugs that “correct” the serotonin imbalance numbed the impact of Steve’s lows — lows that he said can often make him feel like his life was completely useless — they also numbed the highs.

“(When I was taking these drugs) there was just no color – no joy in my life. You end up living like a functioning zombie.”

Steve made the difficult decision to give up drugs. He continued his long-term regimen of meditation, yoga and running that he said helped him manage his depression all these years.

But when he heard a radio interview about a new experiment investigating the use of psychedelics for depression, he called to volunteer.

“I had to wait a year, and the selection criteria were very difficult.”

Participants had to show not only that other antidepressants had not been successful in treating their depression, but that they had no other mental disorders, including psychosis, that could make using psychedelics especially risky.

Finally, after careful checking and under the supervision of a professional therapist, Steve received his first dose of psilocybin.

“It was wonderful,” he recalls. “I felt more connected to myself – it was extraordinary.”

“My life has changed from water to wine.”

What Steve felt showed up on brain scans, the researchers said.

Images of participants’ brains before and after a shot of “magic mushroom juice” showed what lead researcher Professor David Nutt of the Imperial Center for Psychedelic Research described as a reset of the brain.

The images showed that psychedelics induce a connectivity, from which different brain regions communicate much more, revealing new ways of thinking.

“I didn’t have the conscious feeling that my brain was ‘scrambled’, but there was certainly a lot more going on there than I could ever have imagined,” Steve recalls.

His second experience with psilocybin, however, was much more difficult.

“I had to struggle with these feelings and emotions that I tend to suppress.”

“So the second session, while it was hard work, was probably more therapeutically helpful, because I had to deal with things that I hadn’t dealt with before.”

Professor Nutt is campaigning for these illegal drugs to be reclassified for research purposes, to make experiments like his less complicated legally – and to enable what could be a “revolution” in the treatment of depression, in his own words. .

brain connectivity

But the drug – both Steve and Professor Nutt emphasize – does not work magic against depression.

In the experiment, treatment was combined with professional therapy. Ongoing work at the Center for Psychedelic Research and elsewhere is focused on the safe development and testing of new therapeutic protocols, ways to combine drug treatment with therapy to treat depression in a new way.

“The drug gives us part of a healing process. It exposes the patient to different possibilities – another way of being,” says Steve.

The real challenge, he adds, starts after the experience and needs a therapist’s guidance to make it meaningful.

“It’s one thing to develop a drug, but we need protocols to help people like me,” says Steve. “But I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything – it was wonderful – and I don’t think I’ll ever experience anything like that again.”

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