Depression’s Magic Mushroom Bullet Blocked
Leading British drugs expert Professor David Nutt has criticised regulations preventing him from starting a £500,000 trial to test the effectiveness of magic mushrooms in treating depression, despite a growing body of evidence proving their worth.
‘We live in a world of insanity in terms of regulating drugs at present,” the president of the British Neuroscience Association told reporters.
“We are between a rock and a hard place, and that’s very unfortunate because if this is an effective treatment, as it may well be for some people, then they are obviously being denied that possibility”. (Metro )
Previous research by America’s Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in Baltimore published in 2011 revealed that a single dose of psilocybin (the active ingredient) could alleviate depression for over a year, with over half the 51 users in a study having a ‘mystical experience’ which increased their ‘openness’; ‘one of the five major traits used in psychology to describe human personality.’
“Openness is associated with imagination, artistic appreciation, feelings, abstract ideas and general broad-mindedness. None of the other four traits – extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness – was altered,” the report noted. (Independent)
Mushrooms were classified as Class A drugs (as dangerous as heroin and crack cocaine) by British authorities in 2005, just before another landmark US study sponsored by the US government similarly provoked profound experiences amongst most of the 36 people tested.
“A third of the participants said the experience with psilocybin was the single most significant experience of their lives,” the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, “And an additional 38% rated it among their top five such experiences — akin to, say, the birth of a first child or the death of a parent.”
Speaking about the results study chief Charles Grob told KPFK radio presenter Terrence McNally that he agreed with the views of Brave New World author Aldous Huxley who believed that humans have always used hallucinogens.
“Until his death in 1963, Huxley held the vision that if these compounds were introduced wisely, quietly and discreetly to the leaders of our culture, there would be a ripple-down effect with enormous positive changes,” the renowned US scientist added.
“He believed it might be a mechanism through which the very likelihood of world survival would be enhanced.”
http://bit.ly/9WDiw0 (Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World- complete text; ‘A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY . . .’)
http://bit.ly/eKZENM (Aldous Huxley’s Doors Of Perception; full text)
(‘The Ultimate Revolution- by Aldous Huxley, speaking in 1962)
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