Psilocybin treating depression? Apparently yes--at least short term. A little, although with only 16 patients it's not something I'd bank on. But it's the mechanism and their proposed further applications that I don't quite follow. They seem to imply that depression is locked in somehow by "modularity" in the brain. Some pathways can't change. The psilocybin reduces the "modularity" and allows more generic thinking--or something like that. I'd think "modularity" would help with concentration, but this is way out of my area of expertise.
One of the authors is quoted (here) as predicting that this therapy might also be useful for anorexia or addiction. That seems like a bit of a leap, though maybe addiction problems might benefit from learning to avoid "near occasions."
Is this legit, or a lot of wishful thinking around a chemical variety of percussive maintenance?
3 comments:
Ketamine infusion therapy is developing quite a track record of success in treating both mental health issues(treatment resistant depression, PTSD, anxiety, etc) and chronic pain (including migraine).
Because of ketamine's successes, there's increased interest in other dissociatives to learn if they can also be therapeutically useful.
Bottom line: it seems a little wishful, but the success of ketamine leads me to withhold judgement until more (and better) clinical studies can prove or disprove psilocybin's usefulness.
I covered some of this over a year ago, with Dr. Scott Alexander (Siskind) of Astral Codex Ten as my best source. But I haven't followed through since then. Multiple posts following this one https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2021/02/trauma-depression-anxiety-new-treatments.html
Robert Graves, the poet, has interesting things to say in his collected correspondence about wild mushrooms specifically psilocybin containing kind. He was not so keen on derived or synthetic psilocybin. Scott Adams mentions it frequently lately
This topic, here in AVI, is one more example of frequency of occurrence, at least anecdotally.
Having seen others under the influence, and administered ketamine professionally, I can attest these are powerful agents. I hope beneficial but don't know.
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