Science

…microdosing can increase pain tolerance…

In a double-blind study, scientists utilized small doses… …was similar to what 20 mg of commonly used painkillers like oxycodone or morphine could bring about. This is important because unlike oxycodone and morphine… lack of addiction potential makes microdoses… a potential… for chronic or severe pain management. Original Article (The Swaddle):LSD microdosing can increase pain…

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The influence of society on the psychedelic experience

…expands the traditional meaning of set & setting in psychedelic therapy to include the broader contexts in which these substances are used. He calls this the “collective set and setting”: the broader cultural and social contexts in which these substances are used. This is something that pharmacological discourse has been reluctant to acknowledge over the…

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[Using baker’s yeast] to produce ‘magic mushroom’ active ingredient[s]

Researchers… approach to producing psilocybin but used baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, rather than bacteria. The yeast expresses a key enzyme involved in the same magic mushroom production pathway of psilocybin, which doesn’t involve the need for expensive chemicals. During their production of psilocybin and psilocin through synthetic biology, the yeast also produced intermediate products – molecules…

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Psilocybin Measure 109 would turn Oregonians into ‘guinea pigs’

Passing Measure 109, she said, would “set up Oregonians as really the guinea pigs to be receiving psilocybin treatment for psychological conditions with high rates of morbidity and mortality if treated quickly or left untreated.” The leader of the Oregon Psychiatric Physician Association told The Lund Report the group opposes the measure, as does American…

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Scientists induce psychedelic-like experiences from a placebo alone

New research recently published in Psychopharmacology provides evidence that inert placebo pills can induce psychedelic-like effects, including perceptual alterations. The findings highlight the importance of expectations and context when ingesting psychedelic substances. The researchers told the participants they were being given iprocin – a homologue of psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms – and that they…

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The biggest challenges for psychedelic science today

The scientific study of psychedelics is not immune from broader crises that are currently ongoing in the scientific realm, like the replication crisis… and the increasingly privatized funding of research… What may further limit the researcher’s degree of freedom, is that most studies on psychedelics are sponsored by private foundations with a vested interest. In…

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UC Berkeley launches new center for psychedelic science and education

The center plans to collaborate with the Graduate Theological Union, an independent consortium of religious schools and theological institutes based in Berkeley and the larger San Francisco Bay Area, in the development of an immersive learning program on psychedelics and spirituality. The new… Center for the Science of Psychedelics will conduct research using psychedelics to…

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Meet [a] woman… psychedelic… scientists

…an increasingly crowded field of commercial players attempting to monetize… in the pharmaceutical space.  Includes… extracting psilocybin from mushrooms… synthesizing it in a lab… extracting psilocybin from a mushroom rather than synthesizing it in a lab… [etc.] Original Article (Futurism):Meet the woman who wants to sell psychedelic drugs to scientistsArtwork Fair Use: Joe-Schraube

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…development in scalable [synthetic] psilocybin synthesis

…technique in kilogram-scale synthesis of pharmaceutical grade psilocybin in [an] open-access journal… Making this discovery publicly available is the result of… Open Science [and Praxis] commitment to advance scientific knowledge in the field. The 1.2 kilograms of psilocybin per batch that this process delivers can be used to provide nearly fifty thousand 25-milligram doses of…

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