We’ve talked about serotonin receptors like they’re all mostly the same and broadly, that’s true (they’re all looking for serotonin, after all). But that doesn’t make them identical, and scientists have found enough differences to classify serotonin receptors into seven types, which are then broken down into 17 subtypes with a wide variety of functions.…
Although psilocybin has long been regarded with suspicion by law enforcement [in some regions], it has been coming clean on the biosynthetic front. Details of psilocybin’s enzymatic synthesis have been uncovered by scientists based at the University of Jena and the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology. Starting with 4-hydroxy-L-tryptophan and using…
*BOTH Ayahuasca alkaloids, harmine and THH (Tetrahydroharmine), created increases in young neurons. THH increases pictured here. Researchers placed the most prevalent alkaloids in ayahuasca, harmine and tetrahydroharmine, in a petri dish with hippocampal stem cells and saw that this greatly increased the rate at which these cells were able to develop into fully mature neurons.…
One of the most surprising findings is the simplicity of the process, says David Sherman, a medicinal chemist at the University of Michigan who wasn’t involved in the paper. In only five steps, the mushroom’s enzymes convert tryptophan, a widely occurring amino acid (a building block of protein) into psilocybin. In a study published in…
Janis Fricke, Felix Blei, and Dirk Hoffmeister of Friedrich Schiller University Jena have identified and characterized to the greatest extent so far the four enzymes that the mushrooms use to make psilocybin. The team then developed the first enzymatic synthesis of the compound, setting the stage for its possible commercial production (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.…
Feilding’s study, to be run through the Beckley/Imperial Research Programme, is designed to have 20 participants take a dose of LSD at 10, 20, and 50 micrograms (a typical recreational dose is 100 micrograms) and also a placebo. Microdosing is the phenomenon of taking small, controlled doses of psychedelic drugs — usually just 1/20 to…
The ‘goal’ of pharmaceutical anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications is to inhibit brain activity that leads to negativity and fear. Unfortunately, these medications really only serve as a band-aid and sadly, can even amplify the problem if someone is to become dependent and then abstain. Researchers at the Psychiatric University Hospital of Zurich have looked into…
“Using drugs can be a rational choice, a bad choice, or in cases of addiction, a very constrained choice. It is never a crime. Therefore, no criminal sanctions for drug possession and use.” -David Nutt of Drug Science But it can’t just be a free-for-all. Just because you’re not throwing drug users in prison doesn’t…
“This study can conclude that medical cannabis patients report successfully using cannabis along with or as a substitute for opioid-based pain medication,” the team reported in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research. Out of the 2,810 participants who were currently using cannabis, 828 had used opioids in the last six months to manage their pain.…
…it may be time to time to reconsider our current classification of controlled substances. Clearly we must continue to be vigilant about whether drugs pose physical harm to patients. But we could assess drugs using additional measurements, including the potential for dependence; social costs through damaged family and social life; and financial costs through health…
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