Mushrooms Can Reset Brains of Depressed Patients. Depression is the most common disease these days, and everybody faces a difficult situation in their life. Few handle it brilliantly, however, someone went in depression. This is the situation where active ingredients in magic mushrooms psilocybin may have to restore the effect on the brain that helps patients overcome depression.
The participant who took part in this study voluntarily expresses a sense of their brains rebooting after just two psilocybin experiences. Therefore, the psychoactive substance in the first instance disintegrates the “default mode network” which is a highly-connected set of brain regions that are most active during introspection and when we are under stress.
The researchers of the Imperial College of London do the psilocybin experiences and found those areas of the brain reintegrated. The patients became more stable and felt immediate and continued relief from their depression. Thus, Imperial College London’s head of psychedelic research, Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, and his team recruited 20 participants whose depression had been unresponsive to traditional antidepressants to try the substance that makes mushrooms magic. All but one subject did the psilocybin treatment twice.
Moreover, the participants experienced the come down from their “trips” they were interviewed by the scientists. Without being prompted or asked, several of them described the feeling of having their brains “rebooted”. One person compared their brain to a hard drive and it was like a defragmentation process. Things seemed to be working more proficiently afterward.
Dr. Carhart-Harris says that psilocybin’s effect on the default network is like taking a system and provisionally scrambling it, then allowing it to reform. However, in the brain scans taken during and after the psilocybin experience, the default mode networks of the patients became steadier.
The after-effects of the psilocybin seemed to reach their maximum level five weeks later, but they saw continued improvement in the patients for as many as six months. What’s more, the benefits of the treatment started instantly, unlike conventional antidepressants that characteristically have to be in the system for weeks before patients notice improvements.
He said, to give people such a window of relief from their depression, after, in this case, just two experiences, really bodes well for the future. The patients did not seem to enter a hyper state after their psilocybin experiences. Hence, they don’t talk about or show loose, impractical thinking. They’re quite balanced, tranquil, and normalized.
Depressed persons are often quite fixed. They become quite rigidly pessimistic. You can’t just tell someone who’s depressed to cheer up it’s not under their control, almost like an addiction. They’ve really reinforced this way of thinking. Moreover, research has also shown that psilocybin and other psychedelics may have potential uses for treating alcoholism and addictions, but psychedelics are still illegal in most countries, and far from being approved for clinical use.
If you really want to convince people, then being able to show how it works is really important. This isn’t magic or some kind of wishful thinking on part of the researchers; sure we will see its effects. He cautions that this doesn’t mean that the experience of a psilocybin trip is a walk in the park,’ or that running out and buying magic mushrooms will cure depression. The study was set up as a composite treatment, combining the drug with psychotherapy.
The drug works to open a window of chance, and if that window provided a relaxed setting and empathy with them to guide them through the experience, it can help them to get better. I sometimes worry that people are going to hear about this and think oh I’m going to go off and find magic mushrooms and this will be the treatment of depression, and then they go out to the pub. That wouldn’t be good.
Though, even in a supportive context, that about half of the participants had challenging or unfriendly experiences during their trips but felt ‘relief’ afterward. Dr. Carhart-Harris compares using psilocybin with psychotherapy to physical exercise. If you want to get really fit, you might have to go for a bit of pain in order to get really fit. Maybe the same thing is true for mental health.
