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veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,538
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Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug
#8580644 - 06/30/08 03:20 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug June 30, 2008 - wsbt.com
NEW YORK (AP) — In 2002, at a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, a business consultant named Dede Osborn took a psychedelic drug as part of a research project.
She felt like she was taking off. She saw colors. Then it felt like her heart was ripping open.
But she called the experience joyful as well as painful, and says that it has helped her to this day.
"I feel more centered in who I am and what I'm doing," said Osborn, now 66, of Providence, R.I. "I don't seem to have those self-doubts like I used to have. I feel much more grounded (and feel that) we are all connected."
Scientists reported Tuesday that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took the drug, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience.
Two-thirds of them also said the drug had produced one of the five most spiritually significant experiences they'd ever had.
The drug, psilocybin, is found in so-called "magic mushrooms." It's illegal, but it has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries.
The study involved 36 men and women during an eight-hour lab visit. It's one of the few such studies of a hallucinogen in the past 40 years, since research was largely shut down after widespread recreational abuse of such drugs in the 1960s.
The project made headlines in 2006 when researchers reported on the volunteers just two months after they got the drug.
Experts emphasize that people should not try psilocybin on their own because it could be harmful. Even in the controlled setting of the laboratory, nearly a third of participants felt significant fear under the effects of the drug. Without proper supervision, someone could be harmed, researchers said.
Osborn, in a telephone interview, recalled a powerful feeling of being out of control during her lab experience. "It was ... like taking off, I'm being lifted up," she said. Then came "brilliant colors and beautiful patterns, just stunningly gorgeous, more intense than normal reality."
And then, the sensation that her heart was tearing open.
"It would come in waves," she recalled. "I found myself doing Lamaze-type breathing as the pain came on."
Yet "it was a joyful, ecstatic thing at the same time, like the joy of being alive," she said. She compared it to birthing pains. "There was this sense of relief and joy and ecstasy when my heart was opened."
With further research, psilocybin (pronounced SILL-oh-SY-bin) may prove useful in helping to treat alcoholism and drug dependence, and in aiding seriously ill patients as they deal with psychological distress, said study lead author Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins.
Griffiths also said that despite the spiritual characteristics reported for the drug experiences, the study says nothing about whether God exists.
"Is this God in a pill? Absolutely not," he said.
The experiment was funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The results were published online Tuesday by the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Fourteen months after taking the drug, 64 percent of the volunteers said they still felt at least a moderate increase in well-being or life satisfaction, in terms of things like feeling more creative, self-confident, flexible and optimistic. And 61 percent reported at least a moderate behavior change in what they considered positive ways.
That second question didn't ask for details, but elsewhere the questionnaire answers indicated lasting gains in traits like being more sensitive, tolerant, loving and compassionate.
Researchers didn't try to corroborate what the participants said about their own behavior. But in the earlier analysis at two months after the drug was given, researchers said family and friends backed up what those in the study said about behavior changes. Griffiths said he has no reason to doubt the answers at 14 months.
Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, called the new work an important follow-up to the first study.
He said it is helping to reopen formal study of psychedelic drugs. Grob is on the board of the Heffter Research Institute, which promotes studies of psychedelic substances and helped pay for the new work.
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dill705
Amazed



Registered: 12/10/07
Posts: 3,779
Loc: The Cat's Cradle
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Re: Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug [Re: veggie]
#8581238 - 06/30/08 06:18 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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Nice. I like that they followed up on this study.
Props to John Hopkins University
-------------------- My advice is to find those things that give pleasure and do them often without too much attachment and relax and wait for the show to end. -Icelander- I like free markets and all. Truly I do, at least in general, but there needs to be some kind of oversight in recognition of sustainability. Life works the same way, on a bunch of sustainable systems. Why not honor what made us what we are and take some lessons? Nature FTW! ~dill705~
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psthomas4
humanman



Registered: 05/21/08
Posts: 49
Loc: Milville
Last seen: 15 years, 8 months
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Re: Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug [Re: dill705]
#8581261 - 06/30/08 06:23 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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that is awesome, maybe one day the world will see how mushrooms can benefit the world of science and pschology.
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fiockthis
Stranger

Registered: 03/05/07
Posts: 30
Last seen: 15 years, 5 months
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Re: Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug [Re: dill705]
#8581388 - 06/30/08 06:48 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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Too bad Obama wants more wars in other countries (Afghanistan).
Too bad Obama still votes to fund the war.
Too bad Obama voted FOR the Patriot Act, and continues to defend it.
Too bad Obama is connected to the CFR.
Too bad Obama wants Hillary on his team.
Too bad Obama talks a lot about change, but doesn't want to change anything.
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psthomas4
humanman



Registered: 05/21/08
Posts: 49
Loc: Milville
Last seen: 15 years, 8 months
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Re: Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug [Re: fiockthis]
#8581399 - 06/30/08 06:51 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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hope...all gone. it could happen.
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dill705
Amazed



Registered: 12/10/07
Posts: 3,779
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Re: Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug [Re: fiockthis]
#8581424 - 06/30/08 06:55 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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That post was ignorant and retarded.
Maybe if Obama was even in the Senate to vote for the Patriot Act, I'd give a damn about what you just said, newb.
I just read that again... Do you realize that there already is a war in Afghanistan, and that it's quite justified?
Do you realize that if they don't pass funding legislation, and the douche of a president we have doesn't bring the troops home, the soldiers run out of food and bullets?
I'll spare giving you your first (negative) rating, but next time you want to rant, rant intelligently, or STFU.
Thank you
-------------------- My advice is to find those things that give pleasure and do them often without too much attachment and relax and wait for the show to end. -Icelander- I like free markets and all. Truly I do, at least in general, but there needs to be some kind of oversight in recognition of sustainability. Life works the same way, on a bunch of sustainable systems. Why not honor what made us what we are and take some lessons? Nature FTW! ~dill705~
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psthomas4
humanman



Registered: 05/21/08
Posts: 49
Loc: Milville
Last seen: 15 years, 8 months
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Re: Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug [Re: dill705]
#8581456 - 06/30/08 07:03 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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Weeeeee! ha burnt to a fricken crisp. I think mushrooms have a lot to offer, we can learn a lot about the mind under its influence, and can be expirimented with in the field of psychology.
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sandman_130
Neo-Classical Spiritualist



Registered: 08/17/04
Posts: 1,443
Loc: Canada
Last seen: 14 years, 4 months
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Re: Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug [Re: psthomas4]
#8581639 - 06/30/08 08:30 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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lol what was with the obama rant??
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  "There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby, and invisible. And there is where God lives, where the dead live, the spirits and the saints, a world where everything has already happened and everything is known. That world talks. It has a language of its own. I report what it says. The sacred mushroom takes me by the hand and brings me to the world where everything is known. It is they, the sacred mushrooms, that speak in a way I can understand." 
 Maria Sabina
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ShroomDoom
Friend of the Medicine



Registered: 06/07/04
Posts: 4,435
Loc: A Psychedelic State
Last seen: 1 year, 11 months
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Re: Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug [Re: fiockthis]
#8582257 - 06/30/08 10:46 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
fiockthis said: Too bad Obama wants more wars in other countries (Afghanistan).
Too bad Obama still votes to fund the war.
Too bad Obama voted FOR the Patriot Act, and continues to defend it.
Too bad Obama is connected to the CFR.
Too bad Obama wants Hillary on his team.
Too bad Obama talks a lot about change, but doesn't want to change anything.
--------------------
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danlennon3
LivingIsEasyWithEyesClosed.....



Registered: 10/29/02
Posts: 19,246
Loc: usa
Last seen: 1 year, 3 months
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Re: Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug [Re: ShroomDoom]
#8582316 - 06/30/08 11:03 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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"Study finds what people have been using as medicine for thousands of years actually may be used for medicine"
-------------------- "Psychedelics should be used not to escape reality, but to embrace it"
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dill705
Amazed



Registered: 12/10/07
Posts: 3,779
Loc: The Cat's Cradle
Last seen: 6 years, 7 months
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Re: Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug [Re: danlennon3]
#8582425 - 06/30/08 11:41 PM (15 years, 10 months ago) |
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Like duh... It's almost like any other plant (marijuana) that has been used for centuries medicinally.
And the Obama rant was because some newbie douche read my sig and felt the need to derail this thread with his completely baseless accusations of why Obama is an Obamanation. 
Responding to the call B-Rock gave us to dispell these rumors, I told him to fuck off.
-------------------- My advice is to find those things that give pleasure and do them often without too much attachment and relax and wait for the show to end. -Icelander- I like free markets and all. Truly I do, at least in general, but there needs to be some kind of oversight in recognition of sustainability. Life works the same way, on a bunch of sustainable systems. Why not honor what made us what we are and take some lessons? Nature FTW! ~dill705~
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