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 bodynotdead
TrichodermaCultivator
 
Registered: 05/10/07
Posts: 271
Loc: U.S.A
Last seen: 4 years, 10 months
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 Mushroom Magic 
#7361207 - 09/02/07 11:35 AM (5 years, 9 months ago) |
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http://www.springerlink.com/content/v2175688r1w4862x/
The latest on magic mushrooms is pretty exciting. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have published what has been described as a "landmark" study seeking further understanding of drugs that can affect human consciousness and, beyond that, how thought, emotion and, ultimately behavior are grounded in biology. The Hopkins researchers looked at the effects of psilocybin, the active agent in sacred or magic mushrooms responsible for their spiritual or mystical effects. Controversy surrounding the drug culture of the 1960s pretty much closed the door on scientific research into what substances like psilocybin might reveal about the nature of consciousness and what beneficial effects they might have. The Hopkins study was published in the July 11, 2006, online edition of Psychopharmacology and generated front-page news around the world.
The researchers noted that more than 60 percent of their 36 volunteers reported effects that met criteria for a "full mystical experience" as defined by established psychological scales. One third of the participants said that the experience was the single most spiritually significant of their lives and more than two-thirds rated it among their five most meaningful and spiritually significant events. The effects appeared to be lasting: two months after the study ended, 79 percent of the subjects reported "moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction" compared with volunteers who got a placebo rather than the psilocybin.
On the downside, about one third of the study subjects reported extreme anxiety in response to the drug that researchers said could escalate into dangerous behavior under less carefully controlled conditions. In my experience, effects of psychoactive drugs are very dependent on set and setting (expectation and environment), and the probability of negative reactions to them can be minimized by attention to these variables.
The average age of the study volunteers was 46 and none had a history of drug abuse or mental illness. Because of the reputed effects of psilocybin, the researchers sought out volunteers with an interest in spirituality. Each of the subjects attended two eight-hour drug sessions, two months apart. At one session they got the psilocybin; at the other, they got Ritalin, the active placebo.
The same group of researchers is now planning a study to test psilocybin on patients suffering from depression or anxiety related to advanced cancer and is designing other studies to investigate whether psilocybin can help treat drug dependence.
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"absolute power corrupts absolutely".
Lord Acton,
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curenado
73rd Man
Registered: 04/01/03
Posts: 2,601
Loc: North Central Arkansas
Last seen: 2 years, 4 months
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Wow. It's interesting on how John's Hopkins is re-doing everybody else's research and claiming "landmark" and "clean status" for things everybody else pretty much already knew. I guess if I could find one thing they weren't doing that hasn't already been shown it might not seem so hype-y to me but I can't escape the money trail and above all the "pretense of discovery" (=$)
How....academically pathetic...if we are supposed to go along on the hope of that angle bringing open legalization it is purely financial and pharmaceutical. It is also the opening of another kind of pandora's box and can you hear the shaman screaming clarice?
...or rather, can you hear the shaman laughing Alfred E. Neuman???
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Yours in the Natural State!
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep; but I have patches to keep, and jars to sterilize before I sleep...."
Edited by curenado (09/02/07 01:05 PM)
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