Science

…psychedelic vape

Democratization of psychedelic chemistry and extraction methods, coupled with ubiquitously available and cheaply manufactured disposable vaporizer technology, has packed the most powerful known psychoactive substances into portable devices… DMT… 2C-B… [etc.] the long-term effects of vaping are largely unknown to science, let alone any potential adverse effects derived from the psychoactive chemicals being layered on…

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…thousands of possible psychedelics

“AlphaFold is an absolute revolution. If we have a good structure, we should be able to use it for drug design,” says Jens Carlsson, a computational chemist at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. Efforts to apply AlphaFold to finding new drugs have been met with considerable skepticism, says Brian Shoichet, a pharmaceutical chemist at…

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Chronic lower back pain: Can a psychedelic… come to your rescue?

“It’s a massive problem,” said Patrick Finan, the Harold Carron Professor of Anesthesiology in the School of Medicine and the co-principal investigator for the trial. “Chronic lower back pain is growing in prevalence, particularly as people age and medicine improves to keep people active longer.” Finan said there is encouraging research now that psilocybin may…

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…kratom extracts

History has shown that developing enriched natural product elixirs or purified active agents, as with cocaine from the coca shrub and morphine from the opium poppy, can be both a blessing and a curse. Concentrated kratom extracts are analogous to these historical examples. Though the extracts may provide benefits to some, they may also result…

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Cannabis holds potential to prevent and reduce severity of COVID-19, while treating long-term symptoms, study finds

Researchers at Dalhousie University in Canada carried out a comprehensive review of the scientific literature, publishing their findings about marijuana as a preventive therapeutic in the Journal of Clinical Medicine… The study found that “cannabinoids have been shown to prevent viral entry, mitigate oxidative stress, and alleviate the associated cytokine storm” of early COVID-19 infections.…

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Effects of external stimulation on psychedelic state neurodynamics

Stronger external stimulation increases baseline entropy and reduces the drug effect. Results show that while brain entropy increases with LSD under all of the experimental conditions, it exhibits the largest changes when subjects have their eyes closed. Furthermore, brain entropy changes are consistently associated with subjective ratings of the psychedelic experience, but this relationship is…

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Psychedelic mushrooms existed millions of years before humans, largest-ever study reveals

Dentinger and his team found that psilocybin-making in Psilocybe sprung up in evolutionary history around 65 million years ago. To put that in perspective, the earliest human species appeared on the scene roughly 2 million years ago, with modern Homo sapiens evolving 300,000 years ago. Original Article (Vice):Psychedelic mushrooms existed millions of years before humans, largest-ever study revealsArtwork Fair…

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No comparison… alcohol vs. psilocybin…

Notably, [alcohol is] prohibited or discouraged in certain social, religious, and cultural groups for this reason. While both substances alter consciousness and can affect mood and perception, they do so through very different mechanisms and carry different risks, experiential effects, and legal statuses. Although alcohol is culturally ingrained in many social contexts, its high potential…

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…psilocybin could be powerful… for pain – without opioids’ dwindling effects over time, study says

“Recent neuroimaging studies combined with small sample interventions with classic psychedelic agents,” authors wrote, “may point towards a possible means of improving the treatment of chronic pain on a mechanistic and experiential level.” Numerous small trials of… psilocybin for chronic pain have already shown a good safety profile, with minimal physical dependence, withdrawal syndrome, or…

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Psilocybin’s ‘efficacy and safety’ for bipolar II depression demonstrated by American medical association study

“12 patients met both response and remission criteria” at the end of a 12-week study period, the trial found, meaning that measures of the diagnosis had dropped by more than half and fell below a minimum threshold. Results… published by the American Medical Association “suggest efficacy and safety” of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for treatment of bipolar…

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