“Keeping the politics out” is a rhetorical move we should always be skeptical of, particularly so in the realm of psychedelics. This move tries to turn a blind eye to the reality that the criminalization of psychedelics and other drugs in the 1960s, leading up to the draconian Controlled Substances Act, wasn’t driven by scientific…
In Jackson and Iacono’s analysis, marijuana use and IQ were completely uncorrelated, and IQ measures fell equally in both the users and abstainers. Subsequent twin studies, including one performed with U.K. data by the Dunedin team, corroborated these findings of no relationship between marijuana use and a falling IQ. Next, investigators uncovered shared underlying vulnerability factors that explained…
[In the 1950’s and 60’s] psychedelics were of little interest to pharmaceutical companies as the intervention seemed to treat illness, rather than alleviate symptoms. Consequently, the financial imperatives were lacking; fully recovered patients would not require continued medication… Sandoz was reluctant to share such proprietary and patented data (Bonson, 2018). When required by the FDA, the company…
Some participants in studies using pure, synthetic psilocybin report nausea as a side effect of their treatment. This points the finger at [synthetic] psilocybin as a possible cause of nausea… Also, because the body quickly converts psilocybin to its active form psilocin, this suggests that psilocin may play a role in nausea. Original Article (Psychedelic…
In contrast to the primary hypothesis, psychedelics had no long-lasting effects on the ADE (alcohol deprivation effect) in male and female rats… …when administered in a high dosage regime that is comparable to the one used in clinical studies… Original Article (Nature):Psilocybin and LSD have no long-lasting effects in an animal model of alcohol relapseArtwork…
…human intervention further altered the habitat of the Amazon-Cerrado toads. One could hypothesize that this disturbance could not only affect the habitat, and thus the available food, but it may also put stress on the toads… This stress could conceivably cause them to produce different combinations and amounts of compounds in their secretions by way…
This work has shown that the new dynamic model of the whole brain is capable of addressing one of the major challenges in neuroscience: to explain the paradoxical flexibility of brain function despite having a fixed anatomical structure. An international team of researchers has developed a computational biophysical model of the entire brain that integrates…
…production [of psilocybin] in bacteria [such as e-coli] comes with a wide range of concerns [some of which] can be addressed by using yeast instead. In yeast, the scientists prove that psilocybin can be produced de novo, which means that you can produce the molecule by simply growing the yeast with sugar and other nutrients,…
Studies have shown that it may alleviate pain and aid in reducing alcohol and opioid dependence. The mechanisms for these actions are thought to be mediated through the mu, delta, and kappa opioid receptors… also has an affinity for several other receptor types that may be involved in its effects. Original Article (Psychedelic Review):Kratom compound…
Psilocybin-[containing mushrooms work] along a similar pathway to serotonin, which results in your brain producing a similar effect to serotonin. The main effect is to stimulate a serotonin receptor called “5-HT2A” which is found in the prefrontal cortex. Stimulating this receptor results in two key results. The first being triggering the production of “Brain Derived…
