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Sugabearcrisp
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Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga)
#27081893 - 12/10/20 10:06 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction December 9, 20203:24 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered Jon Hamilton 2010 JON HAMILTON
A chemically tweaked version of the psychedelic drug ibogaine appears to relieve depression and addiction symptoms without producing hallucinations or other dangerous side effects.
The results of a study in rodents suggest it may be possible to make psychedelic drugs safe enough to become mainstream treatments for psychiatric disorders, the authors report Wednesday in the journal Nature.
"What we need is a medicine that is so safe that you can take it home and put it in your medicine cabinet just like you would aspirin," says David Olson, the paper's senior author and an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. "And that's really what we were trying to achieve."
The success with ibogaine is "a promising first step," says Gabriela Manzano, a postdoctoral fellow at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and a co-author of a commentary on the study.
Rigorous Study Backs A Psychedelic Treatment For Major Depression SHOTS - HEALTH NEWS Rigorous Study Backs A Psychedelic Treatment For Major Depression "This provides a road map on how we could start tweaking these chemical compounds to make them very useful in the clinic," she says. "Keep the good parts, get rid of the bad parts."
For decades, psychedelic drugs, including ketamine and psilocybin, have shown promise in treating people with mental health problems including addiction, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. But doctors and researchers have been wary of using the drugs because of their side effects.
Olson's team selected ibogaine because it seemed to have the most daunting side effects, including hallucinations and potentially fatal heart problems. It's also increasingly hard to find the plants that naturally contain ibogaine, and synthetic versions of the drug have been difficult to make in large quantities.
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These obstacles make ibogaine "the Mount Everest of psychedelics," Olson says.
But ibogaine, which comes from the roots of a West African shrub, also has great potential, Olson says. Small studies have suggested it can dramatically reduce drug cravings and withdrawal symptoms.
So Olson and a team of researchers set out to answer a question: "Can you take a really complex molecular structure like ibogaine and distill it down to its essential elements that give rise to the beneficial effects?"
The team started by giving the ibogaine molecule some nips and tucks.
"We lopped off the parts of the structure that gave rise to a lot of the deleterious effects," he says, "and we left the part of the structure intact that still was able to have anti-addictive and antidepressant properties."
These changes resulted in a substance that was not only safer, but easier to manufacture. The scientists named their creation tabernanthalog, or TBG.
The team began testing TBG in rodents, including some mice raised to binge on alcohol. "Every single animal in the experiment reduced their consumption of alcohol, which was really, really surprising," Olson says.
TBG also helped rats that had been addicted to heroin. Usually, these rats relapse in response to light or sound cues they've been taught to associate with the drug. But rats given TBG were much less likely to relapse.
Finally, the team tested TBG on mice with behaviors associated with depression. Those symptoms improved.
None of the animals given TBG experienced heart problems or behaviors associated with hallucination.
Olson, who has a financial stake in TBG, says drugs based on psychedelic substances have great potential because they work in a different way than most conventional drug treatments.
"They don't mask disease symptoms," he says. "They're really designed to try to rewire the brain."
It's still unclear, though, whether trip-less synthetic versions of hallucinogenic drugs will work as well as their natural counterparts.
"One of the big questions in the field is, is the hallucinogenic experience necessary for getting better," says Dr. Conor Liston, an associate professor of neuroscience and psychiatry at Weill Cornell and the other author of the TBG commentary. "There's some evidence both ways."
Regardless, Liston says, it's time for scientists to figure out finally what psychedelic drugs and their trip-less counterparts can do for people with depression, addiction, PTSD and other disorders.
"Let's gather the data, let's see what works, let's make sure we understand the safety profile," he says. "But let's also be open to the possibility that these compounds could really help a lot of people who need help"
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Holybullshit
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Sugabearcrisp]
#27083522 - 12/11/20 07:06 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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I imagine the hallucinogenic portion may not be strictly necessary, if helpful, but is possibly inextricable from its actions. At least its actions on the same messaging systems that are responsible for its psychedelic properties.
As in, if a non-hallucinogenic version existed that possessed exactly the same pharmacological properties and produced all the same changes at a neurological level it might work, and be just as effective in rats but not in humans.
And on top of that, in reality, the non-hallucinogenic version might mostly illicit the same actions and produce the same changes in brain function but do it less efficaciously.
But this theoretical molecule may work well enough that it being less effective is a tolerable trade off to it being both easier to use and more palatable to regulators.
Ibogaine's method of action may be multi-faceted, and in losing the hallucinogenic properties you are losing one of those facets, but it may not render it useless.
Edited by Holybullshit (12/11/20 07:13 AM)
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Sugabearcrisp
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Holybullshit]
#27083534 - 12/11/20 07:21 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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MDMA does not cause haulicinations, usually in pure form at therapuetic doses (before people rush in with their one time i saw tracers stories) but seems to have a benefit just the same.
I suspect that while they may be able to tweak the haulicinations out of ibogaine in this new molecule it will still produce a strong epiphanic type experience. It is unclear from the article if the rats were given a single dose or if they were continously dosed with the TBG. I will try to dig more.
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Holybullshit
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Sugabearcrisp]
#27083548 - 12/11/20 07:37 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Well I think the word hallucinogenic is a stand in for psychoactivity resulting in extreme changes in consciousness, and not about the visuals in and of themselves. They aren't trying to produce an ibogaine like compound without visuals, they are trying to find one that doesn't get you high at all.
Plus MDMA and Ibogaine are very different, both regarding medical utility and pharmacologic profiles. MDMA isn't useful in treating addiction, at least not outside its role in assisting in psychotherapy, and if useful for long term improvement in depression from acute dosing then it probably does so in a very different way and mostly by allowing talk therapy to be more effective.
I don't know what dosing regimen was used in the above, but the compounds in Ibogaine have definitely demonstrated said effects from acute dosing. But what I would like to see is some research using ibogaine alkaloids chronically at sub-threshold levels, I have a feeling ibogaine could be a very good micro-dosing candidate.
Edited by Holybullshit (12/11/20 07:49 AM)
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Fractal420
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Holybullshit]
#27086645 - 12/13/20 02:48 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Am I the only one who isn’t a fan of this “remove the psychedelia from psychedelics” idea? Doesn’t seem to work with ketamine.
We already have SSRIs. Just freakin prescribe the damn psilocybin strips. And decrim mushrooms so no one goes to jail for growing medicine
However if the Anti-opioid mechanic can be isolated from ibogaine and used as treatment that Is a far fetched but miraculous concept
-------------------- Dreaming of That face again. It's bright and blue and shimmering. Grinning wide And comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes. Prying open MY third eye
Edited by Fractal420 (12/13/20 02:54 AM)
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Camwritesgonzo
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Fractal420]
#27088879 - 12/14/20 01:36 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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What gets me is the "we need something that can be taken home and put in the medicine cabinet" bit. I can see that being true of most psychedelics, but (at least to my understanding) Ibogaine is a physically jarring experience at the doses necessary for coming off junk. It seems to me that there's a reason it is administered for that purpose in clinical settings. If not monitored, a person whose body is extremely weakened and damaged can go into cardiac episodes.
Don't get me wrong, I think Ibogaine has great potential to prevent innumerable unnecessary deaths. I just think some care is needed when administering it. It's not the same compound as other psychedelics.
-------------------- "I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits "I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
 
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Holybullshit
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Fractal420]
#27089939 - 12/15/20 06:33 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Your not alone, but...
While on one hand it seems to obviously be an excuse to continue making psychedelics illegal. On the other hand, I know the vast majority of the population who could benefit from psychedelics will never take them even if they were readily and legally available, and I don't feel like people who could benefit should have to continue to suffer just because they don't want to have a psychedelic experience.
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Fractal420
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Holybullshit]
#27096085 - 12/18/20 03:58 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Iboga esp is no joke, I had some around at one point. Dosing that plant material is scary
-------------------- Dreaming of That face again. It's bright and blue and shimmering. Grinning wide And comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes. Prying open MY third eye
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durian_2008
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Fractal420]
#27097720 - 12/19/20 12:58 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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I respect the ability of psychedelics, to bring dark emotions to the surface, and that responsible use would require a sitter.
I found it ironic, how opiates can be defended, by state interests, while the cures can be forbidden, by force.
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Fractal420
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: durian_2008]
#27100290 - 12/21/20 04:46 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Also: you would think the primary use of Iboga would be addiction rather than depression? (Though theyre actually not that different)
I would imagine it makes more sense to focus on Psilo and such for depression/ptsd. Iboga has actually cured opioid addiction by many accounts, so why is that not the prime focus?
Quote:
"What we need is a medicine that is so safe that you can take it home and put it in your medicine cabinet just like you would aspirin,
As opposed to suphentanil maybe which is active at 10ug? Or even a bottle of max strength Tylenol. Even aforementioned Aspirin I’d say is more dangerous than most psychedelics.
What’s the problem with giving people psychedelic medicine to take home? If you buy a sheet of L does that mean you’re at risk of consuming entire strips (well, some people are lol, but for me a strip can last a looong time)
Or if you get an O of mol does that mean you’re gonna down a couple 2g crystals?
-------------------- Dreaming of That face again. It's bright and blue and shimmering. Grinning wide And comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes. Prying open MY third eye
Edited by Fractal420 (12/21/20 04:54 AM)
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Holybullshit
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Fractal420]
#27100568 - 12/21/20 09:32 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Probably because far fewer people suffer from addiction than depression, and pharmacology alone is basically never successful in treating addiction.
The reports of Iboga "curing" opioid addiction are very overblown, especially by the people profiting from it. And I say this has someone who has used Iboga for addiction, and benefitted from it, but it was not a magic bullet. It can be helpful in breaking the cycle and getting past withdrawal, but I'd say the vast majority of people who use Iboga relapse shortly after because they don't put the work in, don't make the life changes they need to, and don't have a support network ready. Sure you hear about lots of people who got "sober" with it right after the treatment, but you don't get many updates of their status 6 weeks later.
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durian_2008
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Fractal420]
#27102418 - 12/22/20 11:49 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Fractal420 said: Also: you would think the primary use of Iboga would be addiction rather than depression? (Though theyre actually not that different)
I keep hearing iboga users saying how they return to the point of their forgotten traumas.
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Camwritesgonzo
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: durian_2008]
#27102436 - 12/22/20 12:03 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Under the right conditions, that could be beneficial, since it gives a person the opportunity to face that trauma head-on. Maybe MDMA therapy could be of help, after the recalling of that trauma.
-------------------- "I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits "I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
 
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durian_2008
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Camwritesgonzo]
#27102489 - 12/22/20 12:42 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Some people use a different drug, for each stage of their addiction cure.
But, it's considered unsafe, to use iboga with anything else, at the same time.
My instincts are altruistic and libertarian, but, in the real world, many people lack responsibility.
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Camwritesgonzo
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: durian_2008]
#27103153 - 12/22/20 09:31 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
durian_2008 said: But, it's considered unsafe to use iboga with anything else, at the same time.
I didn't mean to imply administering Iboga and MDMA simultaneously. I was thinking more along the lines of if that person isn't able to overcome the past trauma under Ibogaine, they can at least put a name to the face, so to speak, and have something to go on in the future, if they were to pursue MDMA therapy. Naturally, there would need to be some time to process between those two sessions. This is what fascinates me about the therapeutic application of psychedelics in psychology. There is great potential.
-------------------- "I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits "I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
 
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durian_2008
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: Camwritesgonzo]
#27104224 - 12/23/20 01:22 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Camwritesgonzo said: I didn't mean to imply administering Iboga and MDMA simultaneously.
You sound like a smart person.
But, go, research trip reports, and it's mostly poly drug users.
It would literally result in deaths, if iboga was cheap and widely available.
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Camwritesgonzo
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Re: Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction (iboga) [Re: durian_2008]
#27104290 - 12/23/20 02:04 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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That's mainly why I was saying that Iboga is one that should be administered in a clinically monitored and supervised environment. Otherwise it could turn tragic really quickly. I'm willing to do basically any psychoactive I can get my hands on, but Iboga is one I avoid, mainly because I have heart problems.
-------------------- "I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits "I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
 
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