
Psilocybin found safe for consumption in largest ever controlled study - pmoriarty
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/magic-mushroom-depression-psilocybin-trials-kcl-mental-health-addiction-a9251451.html
======
coffeemug
Counter-anecdote: I've experimented with this stuff extensively in various
settings and have known many other people who did, and in my experience it's
unequivocally bullshit.

Here's what happens.

First, any given trip alleviates depression for about a month or two. That
makes sense to me in a sense that the word "trip" isn't a coincidence-- a
really fun intense vacation in a foreign country also alleviates depression
for a month or two. You swear that when you come back things will be
different, but then you have to answer slack messages at 9pm, and your project
is slipping at work, and your wife is flirting with strangers every time you
go to a bar, and well... in a month or two you're back to feeling exactly the
same way you did before (until you take the next vacation).

Second, people who discover psychedelics go on a multiyear quest for
enlightenment. They keep taking various drugs, keep feeling like they
understand things better and better, get sucked into the psychedelic social
vortex of other truth-seekers, and generally believe that their life is full
of meaning and is going to turn around at any moment. Except by any objective
measure they're still nervous wrecks-- they have every physiological symptom
of stress and depression, and aside from temporary alleviation of their
symptoms (see part one), they always regress to the mean.

Third, after a few years of this people eventually reach a fork. Most people
realize that their psychonautic journey is at best leading them in circles,
and at worst is causing their life to spiral down the drain. So they give it
up, get a job without 9pm slack messages (or find a better way to adjust to
stress), marry someone who isn't constantly on the verge of cheating, start
doing regular exercise, and generally find a way to settle into a reasonably
balanced life.

A small minority of people double down, grow out their (usually grey by then)
hair down to their shoulders, go to festivals and workshops, talk of energy
and chi and chakras, stare into the eyes of strangers, and touch each other's
faces.

Generally speaking, I haven't run into anyone yet who found a third path. So,
while I'd be the first to admit I'm wrong and celebrate if this proves to
actually work, if I were a betting man I'd bet against at any reasonable odds
and sleep secure in the knowledge that my money is safe.

~~~
malux85
No, your conclusion is bullshit.

> First, any given trip alleviates depression for about a month or two. That
> makes sense to me in a sense that the word "trip" isn't a coincidence-- a
> really fun intense vacation in a foreign country also alleviates depression
> for a month or two. You swear that when you come back things will be
> different, but then you have to answer slack messages at 9pm, and your
> project is slipping at work, and your wife is flirting with strangers every
> time you go to a bar, and well... in a month or two you're back to feeling
> exactly the same way you did before (until you take the next vacation

Your problems are situational, and when you remove yourself from that
situation (using mushrooms or not) your life gets better and when you come
back it's worse. It's not the mushrooms fault your life is a mess. Why are you
answering slack messages at 9PM? Quit your job or just don't do it. Get rid of
your wife if she's making you unhappy.

Do you think that maybe you should be giving your wife your attention at 9PM,
rather than slack? How is this not painfully obvious?!

Some people just love misery, it's like - you have identified all your
problems but rather than solve them you'll just sit around and point fingers
and complain.

What did you expect? You'd take a mushroom and your wife disappears? Or
transforms into a princess? You take a mushroom and your slack messages start
answering themselves at 9PM?

What did you actually expect from the mushrooms?

~~~
lowdose
Brutal honesty at its best. If everyone had the guts to talk this tone to
their boss the world would look a lot better.

~~~
mda
Well there is a saying "It is easy for a single man to divorce a wife". I am
not sure his suggestion is practical also tone is terrible. I hope they can
cope with other people who are being "brutally honest" with them being a jerk
in real life.

~~~
lowdose
I read love your wife more in the morning because her soliciting other guys in
front of you is the most obvious sign she will give before filing for a
divorce herself.

If no one tells you this , you can't solve problem number one. Problem number
one always results in no sex followed by a system break down hence the
princess comment. In the western society women initiate 2/3 of the divorces.

GP is nuanced giving a helicopter view on the personal projection at hand so
it doesn't dilute the actual news brought here to light . If this tone sounds
offensive we could ask HN to introduce emojis.

Someone once said something about a hammer the same applies for the mushroom.

Edit: your original comment included in Turkey we have a saying.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
> In the western society women initiate 2/3 of the divorces.

Interesting. Source?

~~~
outime
I found this by quickly googling
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150822154900.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150822154900.htm)
but there are more sources as well. From my anecdotal non-scientific
observational experience it seems completely doable.

------
wolfspider
Yes no doubt they’ve found it safe when allowing for the effects to fully wear
off and at a certain dosage. Chemicals of this class are similar in structure
to serotonin itself and do the opposite of SSRIs. This would mean the therapy
is meant to go straight through problems regarding depression not simply make
one happier. Generally speaking psylocibin is more prone to culminate in a
really bad trip than delysid if the participant doesn’t have their mind
settled! This is also dependent on how it’s isolated and from what. Oregon
azurescens raised in wood chips is much more mellow and yet stronger than
other varieties for example. Migraines are an extremely good use case but
factors of depression can vary so wildly I’m not really convinced it would be
a silver bullet. If nothing else works then maybe it would do the trick. Don’t
play with magic unless you want to be tricked.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" Generally speaking psylocibin is more prone to culminate in a really bad
trip than delysid if the participant doesn’t have their mind settled"_

One of the most interesting interviews about psychedelics that I've heard is
one with Stanislav Grof, who personally supervised over 4,500 LSD sessions
throughout his life (many of them during his research in to its effects, back
when LSD was legal) and at about 1 hour and 56 minutes in to the interview he
said:

 _" If somebody has a bad trip that means they are dealing with a difficult
aspect of their unconscious and when it's coming up, it's coming up for
healing... people can benefit from bad trips. I saw many of those situations
where people experience what they would be hospitalized for in the psychedelic
sessions, and if we stayed with it, it would actually be a major healing, a
major transformation."_[1]

I also found in my own experience that my bad trips were the ones that I
learned the most from and the ones that I found the most beneficial, because
they would force me to face my demons and other major issues that I would
avoid facing in my sober state of consciousness.

Interestingly, the study this HN post links to seems to refer to something
like this:

 _" Recent work has sought to develop and validate a measure that is sensitive
to difficult or challenging psychedelic experiences (Barrett et al., 2016;
Carbonaro et al., 2016) and there is some evidence that the intensity of such
experiences is predictive of positive long-term outcomes, whereas the duration
of struggle is predictive of negative outcomes (Carbonaro et al., 2016). This
is presumably because the successful resolution of conflict brings with it,
insight and relief, whereas the failure to breakthrough perpetuates
suffering."_

My impression from listening to and reading many interviews with veteran
psychedelic researchers (who did studies with pretty massive doses of
psychedelics back in the 60's) is that they seem to believe that an inability
to "break through" was due to having too low a dose, and I wonder if that's
the case in the unresolved difficult experiences this study refers to. On the
other hand, too high a dose of psychedelics can result in post-trip amnesia
(and current psychedlic researchers seem to be erring on the side of caution
and give moderate doses). So there's probably some good middle ground.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mdYUmvTeig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mdYUmvTeig)

~~~
bordercases
My bad trips made me learn to stop tripping. But my good trips made me learn a
whole lot more about what might have been possible for myself and my social
anxiety after I stopped. I'm still learning lessons related to those insights
but compared to the confidence I had on a trip versus the confidence I have
now I say I'm 70-80% at that level.

~~~
o-__-o
Just want to point out you are taking the chemical at recreational doses and
not therapeutic doses. This is why a professional administrating the drug is
key. Look at it this way, Zoloft may give you a bad experience but not the
same bad experience at 5mg vs 100mg. You can recognize the bad experience and
work towards something else at 5mg vs 100mg (or replace with your favorite
drug/dose) where you may end up in an outpatient hospital.

~~~
bordercases
The point I'm trying to make is that for all the risks I was taking none of
the outcomes were psychologically unrecoverable or fatal. Using the word "bad"
was just pointing to the class of experiences that people on the psych might
consider, "not pleasant", but "not pleasant" doesn't mean "not valuable".
Quite the opposite, I learned from basically every experience both through its
intrinsic and extrinsic qualities.

Giving psychedelics the psychiatric treatment and connoting that there are
hard distinctions between "recreational" and "therapeutic" doses for some of
these drugs fundamentally misunderstands them. I had therapeutic effects from
"recreational" doses.

~~~
o-__-o
You can say the exact same thing for Zoloft. If you took a single 100mg dose
you will notice the effects. But the line that crosses therapeutic to
recreational (yes SSRIs are abused recreationally but are very short lived) is
somewhere between 0 and 100mg and differs based on your biological makeup.
Clinical trials and reports from prescribing psychiatrists helps find that
hard distinction..

~~~
bordercases
They can track and establish the base rate of such effects conditioned on a
random population to blur the role of one's "biological makeup", and then
apply value judgements as to what doses are useful for their purposes, yes.

In that sense if you're allowing whether or not a drug is recreational to
depend on a person's makeup, how could you have known I was taking a
recreational dose? Could bad trips not also occur at lower doses considered
sub-recreational if a person is particularly sensitive? Likewise what happens
if the drug only ends up benefiting a person past the point where they also
have hallucinations as a "knock-on"?

~~~
o-__-o
>In that sense if you're allowing whether or not a drug is recreational to
depend on a person's makeup, how could you have known I was taking a
recreational dose?

that is literally the point of a psychiatrist. there is only the law
preventing psychiatrists from administering psychedelics like LSD in the same
fashion. there are natural practitioners who do this for e.g. marijuana today.

if someone has an adverse reaction (bad trip) then the doctor usually alters
the administration of the medicine in some manner (Lower dosage, increase
dosage, change medication all together etc). but to say that there are only
recreational doses for illicit drugs and there is no method to validate
potency in human consumption is disingenuous.

a drug is a chemical. our body is nothing but a chain of chemical reactions.
modern medicine and science has come up with a pretty good method of
determining dosage

------
kasperni
Now that mainstream club drugs such as MDMA, Ketamine, and LSD/Magic Mushrooms
are finding their way into therapeutic usage. I'm wondering if and how
governments will change the current narrative about "all drugs are bad for
you".

Edit: I'm not advocating recreational drug usage. Just saying, that if mum is
on magic mushrooms and studies like these have established safety dosage and
clear therapeutic benefits. You can't really tell your teenager that they are
going to go crazy if they try some.

~~~
vmchale
I don't think Psilocybin mushrooms or LSD are used as a club drug.

~~~
scarejunba
They're a party drug for sure. LSD is great for festivals, and though I've
never done shrooms, I know my friends have gone to shows on them.

In fact, I'd say LSD is used more as a party drug than it is used for anything
else.

~~~
tnecniv
I don't know about that. All my psychonaut friends would rather lay out in a
field in the sun than hit the club on a trip. Festivals are different though.

~~~
KennyCason
It also certainly depends on dose. I know after my first experiences my
initial thought was that there was no why in hell I’d try that at a festival,
but then I saw so many people/friends doing it and decided to give it a try.
Was definitely mind blowing.

------
sawyerjhood
I'm personally excited to see what sorts of new treatments will come out of
using psychedelics medically. I've always been on the skeptical side of
medical marijuana usage in all but the most extreme cases, but I have a
feeling that LSD and psilocybin can really provide mental turning points and
help people break out of depression.

~~~
ergothus
> I've always been on the skeptical side of medical marijuana usage in all but
> the most extreme cases,

Really? I've always found the milder claims fairly believable (fighting nausea
or chronic low level pain relief). As an anecdote, I can attest to dealing
with kidney stone pain well (rather than stopping the pain it reduced how much
I noticed it) and it ended up more effective and felt less dangerous than the
opiods I had used in the past.

Some of the more "miracle" claims, however, seem pretty suspect to me and I'd
want some reliable reseach.

What makes you skeptical of so many claims?

~~~
derefr
Personally, I'm a skeptic that 1. CBD+THC offers any additional medical†
benefits over CBD used alone; 2. that it makes any medical sense to prescribe
a (non-dose-controllable) plant over a pill, or at the very least an extract
with tested dosage. I'm not skeptical of the medical benefits of (some of) the
compounds _in_ marijuana; I'm just a skeptic of prescribing _marijuana itself_
as a way of delivering those compounds. It's like prescribing willow bark for
a headache when aspirin exists.

† For what it's being prescribed for, I mean—pain, nausea, anxiety, etc. THC,
in its function as a psychedelic, _may_ function as a treatment for certain
psychiatric disorders (i.e. for much the same purpose LSD/MDMA/etc. are being
investigated for.) But nobody's prescribing medical marijuana for this use-
case right now; they're prescribing it for things where the presence of THC
seems pretty irrelevant to the goal.

~~~
oarabbus_
Hydroponic cannabis is grown in highly controlled environments and the dosage
levels are tested to be within an acceptable range. There are also dozens
(hundreds) of other cannabinoids found in marijuana which (may) have
additional medical benefits.

>It's like prescribing willow bark for a headache when aspirin exists.

Willow bark contains salicin, not aspirin, while marijuana contains both THC
and CBD. Willow bark also doesn't have the same blood-thinning effects of
aspirin, which makes both viable pain relief choices for different
populations.

This really just sounds like "plants bad; pills good!"

~~~
derefr
My point was more, "measurement good; eating psychoactive things off the
ground bad."

The "key advancement of chemistry"—the thing that makes chemistry _chemistry_
, rather than alchemy (and as it happens, the thing that differentiates baking
from cooking) is being able to measure the reactants we put into a beaker, and
clean the product of the reaction of any side-products, such that we can then
crystallize/distill/etc. out the product alone, weigh it, and thereby
determine the exact potency of product. Once we know that, we can then do all
sorts of things: dilute it to a controlled strength; create delivery vehicles
that deliver it at particular speeds; put it straight into the body in ways
that would just kill you if you put into the body all the _other_ stuff that
you isolated the product out of; etc.

Anyone can do this. People make THC tinctures and essential-oils all the time,
in their kitchens. It doesn't matter to me whether you do it or someone else
does it for you; but it seems irresponsible to me to tell someone to go eat
the non-processed version for medical effect.

> Hydroponic cannabis is grown in highly controlled environments and the
> dosage levels are tested to be within an acceptable range.

Sure, you can control everything about the production of the marijuana itself.
But the key to medical treatment is the last mile, and _specifically_ the
ability to relate a patient's response over time to a dosing
schedule/pharmacodynamic profile for the drug. If you prescribe someone
"medical marijuana", without fixing down _how_ they're going to take it, they
could very well do anything from eating the whole batch at once, to vaping it
every three minutes, to just doing hits off a bong whenever they feel pain.
These _are not the same thing_ , and medically they should be _different
prescriptions_ if the doctor has any hope of knowing whether the treatment is
_working_.

Pills (or, really, anything more specific than "here's a plant, go to town")
let a doctor say something more specific like "take one of these every two
hours", and then from there know _exactly_ how much of the active ingredient
should be in the patient's bloodstream at any given time of the day, and so be
able to measure effects (and side-effects!) against those that are normal, or
abnormal, for that level of dose being in the patient's body for that period
of time.

~~~
pstuart
Pills let a doctor _reasonably guess_ that that the prescription will have
expected results. When you get to psychiatric medicine it is a well-funded and
socially approved game of wheel of fortune, e.g.,
[https://www.verywellmind.com/antipsychotic-medications-
black...](https://www.verywellmind.com/antipsychotic-medications-black-box-
warning-379657)

------
goldcd
This is sub-anecdotal, I know - but I recently after many years of "don't mess
with my head" took mirtazapine for mild-depression/over-awareness-of-the-
actual-state-of-the-world-around-me.

I feel better. Only noticeable effects were that I fell asleep much faster and
woke up (refreshed) remembering all manner of weird clear dreams. Previously
was one of those people who for the last decade couldn't recall a single dream
(and had trouble nodding off). My random guess is that dreaming/tripping just
loosens the mind up.. maybe like a deep tissue massage for the mind.. allowing
things to mentally move about a bit and drop back into place (or mentally
gives your mind a chance to beat the previous day into manageable lumps)

~~~
pmoriarty
_" I fell asleep much faster and woke up (refreshed) remembering all manner of
weird clear dreams. Previously was one of those people who for the last decade
couldn't recall a single dream (and had trouble nodding off)."_

Just another anecdote, but I've found many techniques that have worked for me
to greatly enhance my dream recall that don't require any drugs.

The first technique is just to get interested in dreams, read up about them,
study techniques of dream recall, dream analysis, the science of sleep/dreams,
etc.

The second is to have an intention to remember your dreams when you wake up,
and consciously focus on that intention before you go to sleep.

Third, when going to sleep try to remember your day in reverse, from the
moment you laid down in bed back through your day to when you got up that
morning. The theory is that you're kind of priming your mind to think back to
your dream when you wake.

Next, as soon as you wake up write even the smallest little thing that you
remember about your dreams down on paper. Alternatively, you can record your
dream in a voice recorder, which is what I do as I find it much faster and
more convenient than writing.

Something else that I've noticed is that if I move my body when I wake, it can
adversely affect dream recall, so I try to stay as still and as much as
possible maintain the exact body position that I woke up in while I record the
dream.

Also, when I have a really long dream to record, I found that I would often
forget the end of dream while writing it down, as writing all the details down
would take too long and by the time I got half-way through I'd forget. So I
suggest writing down some key words and images first, and then go back and
fill in the details afterwards. The words and images you've written down will
help you remember.

Then, what's helped me is to go over my dreams and try to make sense of them,
look for patterns in them, and try to see the connection between them and my
waking life. I've found they have a lot of meaning and aren't just "random
neuronal noise" that some people make them out to be.

Using these techniques and others, and just taking dreams seriously and being
interested in them led me to go from remembering maybe one dream every three
months to remembering three long dreams every night, and filled up hundreds of
pages in my dream journal with records of dreams and dream analysis.

The downside is that doing this takes a lot of time, so I stopped after a
while, and lost interest in dreams, and went back to very rarely remembering
my dreams.

~~~
KennyCason
This sounds very identical to my process as well. I obsess about recalling as
many of my dreams as I can when I wake up. I have a similar experience all the
way down to trying to not move my body or so anything that can disrupt my
dream recall, including avoiding actively thinking about my dream (similar to
a meditative state).

The only difference is that I don’t record anything after. I find that just
thinking about it a few times after I wake up is enough for my satisfaction.
Dreams are very powerful tools for thought that I think society could benefit
more from.

------
arkades
This is NOT a trial that was designed to assess the safety of psilocybin. This
was a trial meant to show that a particular dosage of psilocybin is /safe
enough/ to pursue further research in that dose range.

This was a /phase one/ clinical trial.

Phase One: administer small doses under very close supervision in a tiny
number of people to determine whether it's immediately dangerous, or safe
enough /for further study/. They used 89 - initial randomization of 30 each to
placebo, 10mg, and 25mg. That's a good number for a phase one trial. But when
we look at the sort of things that start hurting people when released to
market, they're the sort of adverse effects that go undetected in trials with
thousands of participants, and would need an infeasible large trial (>10k
patients) to detect.

This trial does not prove safety. This trial is meant to establish a dosing
range that is /safe enough/ to participants to allow for further study. They
found no "serious" adverse effects, in healthy volunteers - that is, not
depressed patients. Can drugs like this have different effects in people w and
without depression? Yes they most certainly can, in particular if those people
are on concurrent medications (which they will be, since this is being
developed for treatment-resistant depression).

“We wanted to look at the safety and tolerability profile of our psilocybin,
and to look at the feasibility of a model where up to six one-to-one sessions
are held at the same time." No they didn't /want/ to - they /had/ to. This is
article is just a press release.

Phase 2 is generally a range of doses, within the range established in phase
one, wherein we attempt to determine, to a rough level of accuracy, which
doses show toxicity, which show therapeutic benefit, and at roughly what
proportions. This phase is meant to determine what dose will be used in a
phase 3 trial, if any dose exists with an appropriate proportion of
therapeutic benefit to side effect.

Phase 3 - a dose (or couple of doses) of a drug in a regimen meant to reflect
real-world proposed usage is distributed and compared against either a
currently used drug or a placebo. Depending on how big an effect is expected,
how common the disease, etc. we'd look at trials of hundreds to thousands of
patients. This is the trial where we get a real sense of safety, side effect
profiles, efficacy, etc. This is the make-or-break line for getting your drug
to market.

Phase 4 "trial" \- aftermarket surveillance. Goes on for years after a drug
hits market, because there's no trial that comes to close to capturing the
rare side effects that may be visible when applied to the general population.

This was, also, presented to a neuropsychopharm conference, not published
data. Which is to say, they're ready to brag about it, but they're not ready
to submit themselves to close scrutiny.

~~~
dmurray
Are controlled experiments necessary for proving safety? Intuitively, there
shouldn't be a placebo effect, and you could get twice as powerful a study by
giving twice as many people the drug and using statistics for the general
population as the control group.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Why shouldn't there be a placebo effect? It's well documented for basically
any drug, even for alcohol. Serve people non-alcoholic drinks but tell them
otherwise, and they get drunk.

~~~
dmurray
Because the trial wasn't about finding the expected effect (drunkenness) but
the secondary effects. People don't get heart disease or cirrhosis from non-
alcoholic drinks, or at least, I'd be interested in reading the study where
they do.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
No, but they can get short-term secondary effects such as nausea, headaches
the next day, etc. Probably this category of things is what they want to
control for.

------
maxkwallace
Related: How To Change Your Mind is worth reading. It covers the history of
psilocybin & LSD research including the early parts of this recent resurgence
in interest.

------
every
I was performing my own informal tests on various psychoactive agents in the
late 60's and early 70's and can attest to the efficacy of psilocybin, as best
as I can remember...

------
internet_user
Some charts and data:

[https://compasspathways.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/12/poste...](https://compasspathways.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/12/poster.pdf)

"Psilocybin administration to healthy participants: safety and feasibility in
a placebo-controlled study"

"Poster presented at the 58th Annual Meeting of The American College of
Neuropsychopharmacology, Orlando, FL, USA, 8–11 December 2019"

------
ngokevin
Could become legalized?
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomangell/2019/12/16/andrew-
yan...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomangell/2019/12/16/andrew-yang-wants-
to-make-psychedelic-mushrooms-more-freely-available/)

------
mothsonasloth
I'm gonna sound really cliched but I have become really fascinated with
Psychedelics thanks to the Joe Rogan podcast.

I wouldn't say I am depressed but as someone who doesn't drink, smoke, drugs
or take caffeine. I really want to try them.

The fact that mushrooms have been used by shamans all around the world since
neolithic times, is truly fascinating.

I hope to try them at some point although at the moment I have been trying
Sensory Deprivation Tanks and it really has reset my mind and emotions.

~~~
ianai
I’d steer you toward kava kava as a legal and otc way to change your mind and
emotions for the better or more open. Also St. John’s wort.

~~~
mothsonasloth
After googling, it appears that kava causes liver damage, thanks but no thanks

~~~
LinuxBender
Yes you probably would not want to take it for an extended period of time [1]
There is not a direct causation link to liver damage as of yet. It may be that
people have a preexisting issue that is exacerbated by kava.

[1] -
[https://examine.com/supplements/kava/](https://examine.com/supplements/kava/)

~~~
ianai
There was something of a hit campaign against it at one point. I forget the
specifics, but it’s safe if you do your homework and buy from proven sources.

~~~
LinuxBender
That's happened to several food compounds. Scientists don't spend time on a
compound unless there is a compelling medical need to do the research. There
just isn't much money in supplements / foods as compared to prescription drugs
and the risk of litigation is really high, according to a few of my favorite
scientists that I follow.

------
proc0
Recently tried shrooms for the first time and was a bit underwhelmed, but not
sure if I'm micro-dosing or what. Tried the regular variety and some other
allegedly Thai shrooms, which definitely had a stronger effect. I tried a few
stems at first, and then ramped up the dosage with slightly more 'visuals',
but it's like I have to eat a whole handful or just let my body learn to
process it or something.

~~~
curryst
From what I've heard (no real scientific data to back this) the stems contain
very little psylocibin.

And the dosage for mushrooms is surprisingly high. For run of the mill
strains, I believe 3.5 grams is considered a standard dose. Which is still not
a blast you off the planet amount, but enough to experience visual distortions
and euphoria.

~~~
orasis
On some strains 3.5 grams is a serious therapeutic dose requiring a sitter.

My last trip was about this much with another 1.5 set aside but I was blasted
out of time and space and opted not to re-up.

It all depends on the strain.

------
stefek99
Majority of my mental energy in relation to drugs, some consideration:

\- having a mortgage and life insurance attached to it

\- parents prevented contact with their children due to government
intervention

\- people in jail for possession of drugs

\- safe driving limits

\- undoing 50+ years of propaganda and social conditioning

------
cityzen
Awesome! Can't wait until 2030 when it is legal in a handful of states in the
US.

~~~
Starkus
Denver is actually full of those little chocolates wrapped in tin foil , easy
to find easy to get and also cannot get arrested for as long as no $ exchanged
per the new law that was voted by the people

------
newnewpdro
One day we'll be able to buy Psilocybin supplements on the shelves of stores
like CBD, 5-HTP, and St. Johns Wort today.

In small doses it's super useful and seems to be relatively benign.

------
uyuioi
Always safe. Only it can’t be patented is why you never got it!

------
MobileVet
This could dramatically improve my family’s life.

Been following and supporting the research at Johns Hopkins since Tim Ferris
brought attention to it.

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mistermann
I'm curious what the sample size is in this study?

~~~
mikelyons
6th paragraph

> _... 89 healthy volunteers._

~~~
mistermann
Sorry, I was tongue-in-cheekly referring to @coffeemug's study.

~~~
mikelyons
You're fine, I just wanted to be helpful :)

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mgarfias
How the hell do I get into one of these trials?

~~~
zimbu668
I got in to one of those trials when someone posted the sign up link on
HackerNews and I applied. If you're near Baltimore you could see if you are a
match for any of their current studies:
[https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/](https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/)

Other in process research studies: [https://maps.org/other-psychedelic-
research/211-psilocybin-r...](https://maps.org/other-psychedelic-
research/211-psilocybin-research/psilocybin-studies-in-
progress/research/psilo/passiepsilocybin1.html%7D)

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aargh_aargh
The study seems to be this one:

[https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2017.00974](https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2017.00974)

Would it kill the PopSci article to include the DOI to the actual study?

~~~
dang
OK, we've changed to that from
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/magic-mushroom-
dep...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/magic-mushroom-depression-
psilocybin-trials-kcl-mental-health-addiction-a9251451.html). Thanks!

~~~
driverdan
That's the wrong study.

~~~
dang
Urgh. Thanks. We'll switch back to the original URL.

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say_it_as_it_is
Don't rush out and take mushrooms. If you're not taking it in a clinical
setting, you're doing it wrong.

~~~
jonfw
> If you're not taking it in a clinical setting, you're doing it wrong.

I'd be interested to see some support for this statement.

