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Post by Admin on Feb 24, 2021 18:00:41 GMT
Great piece from Shayla Love about why psychedelic clinics and research centres need to grapple with issues of meaning-making, metaphysics, aesthetics, theology - in a word, with the humanities - as they build their practices. Psychedelic Therapy Needs to Confront the MysticalMany people have a spiritual experience on psychedelics. How they make meaning of it could be influenced by the metaphysical beliefs of their therapists. www.vice.com/en/article/xgz3wn/psychedelic-therapy-needs-to-confront-the-mysticalKevin's eyes were closed, but rather than the usual darkness at the back of his eyelids, he was peering through a frame and into outer space. The cosmos stretched before him. He began to think about Einstein's theory of relativity. The equation E = mc2 appeared and he intuitively understood what it meant, more so than ever before. The year was 2011, and Kevin was laying on a bed at an ibogaine clinic in Baja California. Kevin, who is using only his first name to protect his privacy, was participating in an observational trial on how the psychedelic drug could help people with addiction. Kevin had previously been to a 12-step program for addiction to opiates, but the religious angling hadn't appealed to him. “I was so turned off at the rehab by this Judeo-Christian Protestant framing of God,” Kevin said. He had a firm conviction that he didn’t want any spiritual elements in future treatment. The ibogaine clinic in Mexico, which VICE visited in 2014, fit the bill. The preparation included only a physical and an EKG, and his room was furnished like a typical hotel room at a beachside resort. A nurse stayed with him through the night to monitor his vitals. This experience with ibogaine set him on the path to recovery; he is now an addiction counselor. Yet that didn't mean he didn't have a spiritual experience in the end. “For me, the power greater than myself that I grappled with was evolutionary processes, the nature of the cosmos, and it was in a purely deterministic, laws of mathematics type of framing—nothing supernatural,” Kevin said. His trip revealed how psychedelic experiences, even ones that are treating a specific issue like addiction, can still have an ineffable, spiritual component to them, but one that is individual to the person having them—like Kevin's encounter with E = mc2. When Kevin looks back on his time at the clinic, “It's hard to convey the significance of that without getting into spiritual territory," he said. Psychedelic therapy is on its way. Legislation is loosening, clinical trials are underway, and patents are being filed. The Oregon Psilocybin Advisory Board will be announced in March, leading to potentially the first national experiment in which therapists could get licenses to practice therapy with psilocybin, the hallucinogenic ingredient from magic mushrooms. If the promising results from research are any indication, psychedelic therapy could be a desperately-needed new option for people with depression, addiction, trauma, eating disorders, and more. But as the field matures, it's continually reckoning with potential issues—one being the question of spirituality, and how it fits into a medical, therapeutic setting. The associate director of the Johns Hopkins Center on Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, Matthew Johnson, recently published an opinion paper which he described on Twitter as his "95 Theses." In the paper, Johnson outlined key areas that he thinks the field of psychedelic therapy should pay attention to, so as not to get in over its head. One section focused specifically on the introduction of religious or spiritual beliefs from investigators or clinicians. “For today’s psychedelic scientists and clinicians, frameworks of concern are likely to resemble a loosely held eclectic collection of various beliefs drawn piecemeal from mystical traditions, Eastern religions, and indigenous cultures, perhaps best described by the term ‘new age,’ although they could come from any religious or spiritual belief system,” Johnson wrote. This topic requires special attention when it comes to psychedelics for a few reasons. Religious or New Age-y positionings could alienate certain populations from trying psychedelic therapy. People are also highly suggestible when taking psychedelics, and so the imposition of a spiritual worldview could unduly influence them in ways that are unethical. This is part of what compromised psychedelic research in the past: People who took psychedelic drugs as well as studied them had incredibly meaningful experiences, felt clued in to the meaning of the universe in new ways, and could then impose those belief systems onto others. To avoid that, Johnson argued that this time around clinicians should operate from a “secular framework.” But others in the community say it's not so easy to just say, "Psychedelics are secular now," and be in the clear. Many people will have mystical experiences when taking psychedelics—and the degree to which they are causal or required for healing is still being explored. These experiences can raise questions that are difficult to answer if a therapist hasn’t spent some time dwelling on them, even though they can leave the safe confines of "secular" behind: What is the nature of any beings you meet? How reliable are any visions you see of yourself or your past? Is there life or consciousness after death? Any surface-level attempt to be "secular" could also risk ignoring that the way psychedelics are currently spiritually experienced in the West is already influenced by the psychedelic movement's forefathers, like Aldous Huxley. Psychedelic therapists will require an unprecedented level of existential self-awareness, and a willingness and ability to inquire their own thoughts about the nature of reality, the mind, the universe—or their metaphysics, to borrow a term from philosophy. “These kinds of theological questions apparently come up during psychedelic experiences and a therapist or clinical retreat center might bounce against these theological issues,” said Jules Evans, a philosopher and research fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London. “It's a challenge to what extent a clinic or a retreat center should impose its own theology onto the participants.” Unlike a visit to the dentist, primary care doctor, or even regular psychotherapist, unexplainable experiences often arise during a psychedelic trip. People have what they describe as personal encounters with God. When people take DMT, they often report meeting entities which Terence McKenna famously described as “self-transforming elf machines.” Not everyone on DMT sees elves, but many encounter "beings," or "guides." In a survey of over 2500 people asked to report their most memorable entity encounter, more than half who identified as atheists before their experience no longer identified as atheist afterwards. Those who are wary of the role of spirituality in psychedelic therapy don't mean that people shouldn't have these mystical or religious experiences. They're advocating instead for a heightened attention from therapists when it comes to how those experiences are interpreted. How a person is helped to integrate and make meaning could be influenced by the metaphysical beliefs of their guide. That doesn’t mean it will always be a nefarious influence—but it could be. “Psychedelic laboratories, clinics, and centers need to think not just about therapeutic methodology, but it's about the theology, about their metaphysics,” Evans said.
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Post by Admin on Mar 1, 2021 20:25:22 GMT
Evidence for Higher State of Consciousness Found in New Research www.resonancescience.org/blog/Evidence-for-Higher-State-of-Consciousness-Found-in-New-ResearchMagnetoencephalographic signal diversity shows brain in higher state of consciousness when under the influence of psychoactive compounds. Empirically, measures of neural signal diversity score higher for wakeful rest that for states with lower conscious level like anesthesia. New research analyzing the magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals from humans during altered states of consciousness induced by psychedelic substances have found higher MEG signal diversity than those found in normal waking states of consciousness. This is the first time such increased levels of neural signal diversity, correlated to higher states of consciousness, have been measured in the psychedelic state. It is interesting to speculate whether the fine-grain increase of signal complexity of the electromagnetic field generated by the brain is enabling the mind to tune into more vivid and expanded states of awareness. The most recent research does reveal selective correlations between changes in signal diversity and phenomenological reports of the intensity of psychedelic experiences. Such research is important in understanding what consciousness is and its relationship to the neuronal activity of the brain. Article: medicalxpress.com/news/2017-04-evidence-higher-state-consciousness.html
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Post by Admin on Mar 2, 2021 0:05:55 GMT
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Post by Admin on Mar 4, 2021 9:08:48 GMT
Entheogens (from the Ancient Greek ἔνθεος entheos [“god”, “divine”] and γενέσθαι genesthai [“generate” – “generating the divine within”]) are a family of psychoactive substances, typically of plant origin, that are used in religious, ritual, or spiritual contexts. Jonathan Ott is credited with coining the term in 1979.[1]
Entheogens have been used in a ritualized context for thousands of years and their religious significance is well established with anthropological and academic literature. Examples of traditional entheogens include psychedelics like peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and iboga; atypical hallucinogens like salvia and Amanita muscaria; quasi-psychedelics like cannabis; and deliriants like datura.
Entheogen-using cultures
The use of entheogens in human cultures is generally ubiquitous throughout recorded history. The number of entheogen-using cultures is therefore very large. Some of the instances better known to Western scholarship are discussed here.
African indigenous
The best-known entheogen-using culture of Africa is the Bwitists, who used a preparation of the root bark of Iboga (Tabernanthe iboga).[4] A famous entheogen of ancient Egypt is the blue lotus (Nymphaea caerulea). There is evidence for the use of entheogenic mushrooms in Côte d’Ivoire (Samorini 1995). Numerous other examples of the use of plants in shamanic ritual in Africa are yet to be investigated by western science.
Asian indigenous
The indigeneous peoples of Siberia (from whom the term shaman was appropriated) have used the fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria) as an entheogen. The ancient inebriant Soma, mentioned often in the Vedas, may have been an entheogen. (In his 1967 book, Wasson argues that Soma was fly agaric. The active ingredient of Soma is now presumed to be ephedrine, an alkaloid with entheogenic properties derived from the soma plant, identified as Ephedra pachyclada.)
_Continue reading:
gnosticserpent.com/knowledge-base/entheogen/
#ethnobotany #shamanism #entheogen #plantmedicine #hallucinogen #psychedelic #psychedelicgnosis #gnosis #healing #shaman #magician #magick #occult #gnosticserpent
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Post by Admin on Mar 6, 2021 23:58:01 GMT
More people are using psychedelics to treat their own mental health, study saysThousands say they are using drugs like LSD and MDMA to deal with emotional and other mental health issues www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/psychedelics-mental-health-drugs-survey-b1813263.htmlMore people are using psychedelics to treat their mental health, according to the 2020 Global Drug Survey, which asked 110,000 people about their drug use. Some 6,500 people, almost six per cent, said they used recreational drugs to deal with mental health issues. Thousands of people are now using drugs like LSD, MDMA, psilocybin and ketamine to deal with emotional issues and other mental health problems. The report includes examples like individuals using very small doses of LSD or magic mushrooms on their own, or instances where psychedelics were used but under the watchful eye of another person yet still in a way that remained unregulated, Vice reported. Supervisors were most often friends or partners of the person using a drug, but other settings included were psychedelic retreats or “traditional healing groups”. Of those who reported having used psychedelics as a method to treat mental health issues, 72 per cent were men, 25 per cent were women, and two per cent said they were non-binary.
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Post by Admin on Mar 9, 2021 18:36:32 GMT
Around the Web, from Salon: “As psychedelic advocates and practitioners with decades of experience, having worked with thousands of people, we believe we need a serious examination of whether the current mental health industry is the place for psychedelic drugs. Looking at the industry historically, there have been repeated claims of breakthrough modalities that would bring psychiatry into the realm of medical science. Yet none of these claims have demonstrated a high benchmark of legitimate authority, and many have even been harmful. While we applaud the efforts that are underway for decriminalization, and are excited by the potential to learn from the wealth of traditional and underground practitioners, much will be lost in the process of medicalization. . . . If psychedelics hold promise, maybe it is because they do not work in linear ways or provide overnight results. Psychedelic experiences can be expansive. They can lead people on paths of self-inquiry and growth that extend through time and space, bringing forward new challenges and insights that become personal reference points, even years later. As Robert Whitaker points out, ‘That doesn’t fit a medical model that gets you FDA approval. You can’t say, “We have these agents for exploring and coming to think differently about the world.”‘ The necessity of reductive research here is to come up with a strict clinical protocol that will lead to replicable changes for anyone with a given diagnosis. This rigidity belies the organic and expansive nature of the psychedelic experience. ‘If they’re going to be agents of exploration,’ asks Whitaker, ‘why do you need a doctor for that? Why do you go to medical school for that?’ There is a need for research into psychedelics as they present an opportunity to recontextualize how we think about and experience suffering. However, drowned in the media hype of psychedelic advocacy organizations and the mental health industry, there is little public discourse about the potential implications of moving psychedelics into a system with such a problematic history.” Why Mental Health Researchers Are Studying Psychedelics All WrongMarch 9, 2021 www.madinamerica.com/2021/03/mental-health-researchers-studying-psychedelics-wrong/www.salon.com/2021/03/06/why-mental-health-researchers-are-studying-psychedelics-all-wrong/
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Post by Admin on Mar 10, 2021 19:20:26 GMT
Scientists studying psychoactive drugs accidentally proved the self is an illusionqz.com/1196408/scientists-studying-psilocybin-accidentally-proved-the-self-is-an-illusion/Philosophers and mystics have long contemplated the disconcerting notion that the fixed self is an illusion. Neuroscientists now think they can prove it or, at least, help us glimpse this truth with some help from psilocybin, the psychoactive property in magic mushrooms. Researchers around the world are exploring the drug’s transformative power to help people quit smoking; lower violent crime; treat depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder; and trigger lasting spiritual epiphanies in psychologically healthy people, especially when coupled with meditation or contemplative training. There are some limitations to psilocybin studies—they tend to be small, and rely on volunteers willing to take drugs and, thus, open to an alternate experience. But the research could have major implications in an age characterized by widespread anxiety. Psilocybin seems to offer some people a route to an alternate view of reality, in which they shed the limitations of their individual consciousness and embrace a sense of interconnectedness and universality. These trips aren’t temporary, but have transformative psychological effects. Even if we don’t all end up on mushrooms, the studies offer insights on how we might minimize suffering and interpersonal strife and gain a sense of peace. Consider a study of 75 subjects, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology last October. The study concluded that psilocybin leads to mystical experiences that can have long-term psychological benefits in conjunction with meditation training. The greater the drug dosage, the more potent the positive psychological effect was six months later. “Participants showed significant positive changes on longitudinal measures of interpersonal closeness, gratitude, life meaning/purpose, forgiveness, death transcendence, daily spiritual experiences, religious faith and coping,” the study concluded. Meanwhile, in July, psychologist Richard Williams of John Hopkins University revealed an experiment involving clergy and psilocybin. Williams is enlisting priests, rabbis, and Zen Buddhist monks to take drugs, meditate, and “collect inner experiences.” (No Muslim or Hindu clerics agreed to participate.) The study will last a year, so no results are out yet. But Williams told The Guardian in July 2017 that so far, the clerics report feeling simultaneously more in touch with their own faith and greater appreciation for alternate paths. “In these transcendental states of consciousness, people … get to levels of consciousness that seem universal. So a good rabbi can encounter the Buddha within him,” Williams said. To understand how mushrooms can change our worldviews, we must first explore how brains shape our sense of self. The shared dream Our awareness of existence—the ability to distinguish between the self and others—is created by the brain, neuroscientist Anil Seth explains in his TED talk, “Your brain hallucinates consciousness.” He says, ”Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience—and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it.” Rest in Link.
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Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2021 17:50:03 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 11, 2021 6:53:37 GMT
‘Can You Pass the Acid Test?’ On Psychedelics and Spiritual Eugenics medium.com/swlh/can-you-pass-the-acid-test-on-psychedelics-and-spiritual-eugenics-a613b3c64c04I want to discuss the difficult question: to what extent can one cleanly distinguish a ‘spiritual emergency’ from other psychotic experiences. ‘Spiritual emergency’ is a term introduced by two transpersonal psychologists — Stanislav and Christina Grof — in 1989, to describe a disturbing spiritual experience which has some aspects of psychosis, but which should not be treated as ordinary mental illness. Instead, insist the Grofs, a ‘spiritual emergency’, if properly handled, can ‘have tremendous evolutionary and healing potential’. As Tehseen Noorani has noted, there are issues with this attempt to draw a clean line between ‘spiritual emergency’ and other forms of psychosis. I want to place this manoeuvre within the history of New Age spirituality and transpersonal psychology, and its troubled relationship with evolutionary theory and eugenics.
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Post by Admin on Apr 12, 2021 18:31:15 GMT
THE MAGIC CHEMICALS OF PSYCHEDELIC WIZARD SASHA SHULGIN The California chemist is known as the ‘Godfather of MDMA,’ but his legacy lies in countless drugs that remain a mystery to scientists and psychonauts alike The godfather of MDMA never lived to see the wondrous little chemical live up to its full potential as a powerful therapeutic drug used in clinical settings. Alexander Shulgin wasn’t the first man to synthesize MDMA. But in 1976, his experiments at his longtime home in Berkeley, California led to an epiphany: Not only did he find a novel way to synthesize it, he loved how it made him feel. “I am afraid to turn around and face the mountains, for fear they will overpower me. But I did look, and I am astounded,” he wrote in his notes. “Everyone must get to experience a profound state like this. I feel totally peaceful. I have lived all my life to get here, and I feel I have come home. I am complete.” Despite Shulgin’s epiphany, it is only now, after four decades, that MDMA is being fast-tracked for scientific study and clinical trials. For much of its life, the compound has been demonized as a deadly club drug — a typical fate alongside other psychedelics like LSD, which became the target of a moral panic thanks to Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert’s abusive Harvard experiments. But the tide of scientific opinion is turning on a number of psychedelics, from psilocybin mushrooms to ketamine; meanwhile, polling suggests that a majority of Americans are ready to accept psychedelic therapy as a mental health tool. The psychedelic renaissance is here, and more than ever, it’s obvious that Shulgin wasn’t merely ahead of his time in the 20th century. He’s still cutting-edge in 2021. Over 40 years, Shulgin brainstormed, synthesized and personally tested some 200 psychedelic compounds, working with his wife Ann to document it all into two legendary 1,000-page tomes, PiHKAL (for “Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved”) and TiHKAL (“Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved”). He discovered substances that warped time, created bizarre hallucinations, changed the pitch of sounds and led to violent outbursts. And in iconic fashion, Shulgin included the precise instructions to create all his compounds in his two books — a principled decision based on a love of sharing psychedelics wisdom, as well as a fear that the government would try to destroy his life’s work. melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-magic-chemicals-of-psychedelic-wizard-sasha-shulgin
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Post by Admin on Apr 25, 2021 15:54:04 GMT
Trial of Psilocybin versus Escitalopram for Depression List of authors. Robin Carhart-Harris, Ph.D., Bruna Giribaldi, B.Sc., Rosalind Watts, D.Clin.Psy., Michelle Baker-Jones, B.A., Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner, M.Sc., Roberta Murphy, M.D., Jonny Martell, M.D., Allan Blemings, M.Sc., David Erritzoe, M.D., and David J. Nutt, M.D. www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994Abstract BACKGROUND Psilocybin may have antidepressant properties, but direct comparisons between psilocybin and established treatments for depression are lacking. METHODS In a phase 2, double-blind, randomized, controlled trial involving patients with long-standing, moderate-to-severe major depressive disorder, we compared psilocybin with escitalopram, a selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitor, over a 6-week period. Patients were assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive two separate doses of 25 mg of psilocybin 3 weeks apart plus 6 weeks of daily placebo (psilocybin group) or two separate doses of 1 mg of psilocybin 3 weeks apart plus 6 weeks of daily oral escitalopram (escitalopram group); all the patients received psychological support. The primary outcome was the change from baseline in the score on the 16-item Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology–Self-Report (QIDS-SR-16; scores range from 0 to 27, with higher scores indicating greater depression) at week 6. There were 16 secondary outcomes, including QIDS-SR-16 response (defined as a reduction in score of >50%) and QIDS-SR-16 remission (defined as a score of ≤5) at week 6. RESULTS A total of 59 patients were enrolled; 30 were assigned to the psilocybin group and 29 to the escitalopram group. The mean scores on the QIDS-SR-16 at baseline were 14.5 in the psilocybin group and 16.4 in the escitalopram group. The mean (±SE) changes in the scores from baseline to week 6 were −8.0±1.0 points in the psilocybin group and −6.0±1.0 in the escitalopram group, for a between-group difference of 2.0 points (95% confidence interval [CI], −5.0 to 0.9) (P=0.17). A QIDS-SR-16 response occurred in 70% of the patients in the psilocybin group and in 48% of those in the escitalopram group, for a between-group difference of 22 percentage points (95% CI, −3 to 48); QIDS-SR-16 remission occurred in 57% and 28%, respectively, for a between-group difference of 28 percentage points (95% CI, 2 to 54). Other secondary outcomes generally favored psilocybin over escitalopram, but the analyses were not corrected for multiple comparisons. The incidence of adverse events was similar in the trial groups. CONCLUSIONS On the basis of the change in depression scores on the QIDS-SR-16 at week 6, this trial did not show a significant difference in antidepressant effects between psilocybin and escitalopram in a selected group of patients. Secondary outcomes generally favored psilocybin over escitalopram, but the analyses of these outcomes lacked correction for multiple comparisons. Larger and longer trials are required to compare psilocybin with established antidepressants. (Funded by the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust and Imperial College London’s Centre for Psychedelic Research; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT03429075. opens in new tab.)
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Post by Admin on Apr 28, 2021 22:43:48 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jul 7, 2021 16:58:21 GMT
"It is no coincidence that caffeine and the minute-hand on clocks arrived at around the same historical moment, the acclaimed food and nature writer Michael Pollan argues in his latest book, This is Your Mind on Plants. Both spread across Europe as labourers began leaving the fields, where work is organised around the sun, for the factories, where shift-workers could no longer adhere to their natural patterns of sleep and wakefulness. Would capitalism even have been possible without caffeine?" The plants that change our consciousness How three plant-derived drugs – caffeine, opium and mescaline – shape society www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2021/06/plants-change-our-consciousness
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Post by Admin on Jul 9, 2021 15:02:02 GMT
MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy and Therapeutic Humility: An Interview with Marcela Ot’aloraBy Richard Sears -July 9, 2021 www.madinamerica.com/2021/07/mdma-assisted-psychotherapy-therapeutic-humility-interview-marcela-otalora/Marcela Ot’alora works with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) as the principal investigator for government research into MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. In addition to her role as principal investigator, she also worked as a co-therapist during earlier phases of MDMA psychotherapy research and currently leads the MDMA therapy training for MAPS. Ms. Ot’alora also works as a therapist using both ketamine and fine arts to treat trauma. Ot’alora approaches her work with a humility learned from years of therapeutic experience: “My clients and the participants in our studies have taught me that their healing looks so different than anything I could have imagined. If I come in leaving that agenda, leaving that bias aside, and being present with whoever is in front of me, they will surprise me every time about how healing works for them.” In this interview, we discuss her research into MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and how the use of MDMA differs from more traditional substances such as antidepressants. We will also discuss ketamine-assisted therapy, the therapeutic use of fine arts, and the over-prescription of psychiatric drugs.
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Post by Admin on Jul 11, 2021 19:44:16 GMT
First-Ever Study Looks At Ayahuasca’s Impact On DNA Expression www.forbes.com/sites/amandasiebert/2021/06/28/first-ever-study-looks-at-ayahuascas-impact-on-dna-expression/?sh=32b7afcd361fA recent, early-stage study in the field of psychedelic research asked a new question: it considered how a psychedelic might impact the expression of human DNA. While the study had its limitations, it shows promising results for a plant medicine that has been used for at least 1,000 years by Indigenous peoples living in the Amazon basin. While in some traditions, ayahuasca was reserved for shamans and curanderos, its popularity among North Americans and Europeans has increased significantly in the last two decades, and with more and more Westerners willing to hand over cash in their quest for healing, ayahuasca tourism has become a multi-million dollar industry. An entheogenic brew typically made using the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and leaves of the Psychotria viridis shrub, ayahuasca contains the active compound N-N-Dimethyltryptamine (more commonly known as DMT) and is known to induce intense visions and mystical experiences. First Epigenetic Study On A Psychedelic Dr. Simon Ruffell of Kings College London led the observational study with fellow researchers Nige Netzband and WaiFung Tsang, with University of Exeter professor of psychopharmacology Celia Morgan as lead author. The team looked at the use of ayahuasca by 63 mostly white participants who attended a traditional Shipibo retreat, and its effects on their mental health. It was conducted at a purpose-built research center operated by the Ayahuasca Foundation in Iquitos, Peru, which works in partnership with the Allpahuayo-Mishana community on a national reserve. The research team collected inventory surveys before and after participants’ retreats, and then again six months later to look primarily at depression, anxiety, and self-compassion, as well as mindfulness, general well-being, the perception of traumatic memories, and other secondary measures. They also collected saliva samples. “We collected saliva samples in order to assess potential changes in gene expression—a field called epigenetics,” says Ruffell. His team assessed three genes related to trauma and neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to make new connections. ‘What Surprised Us? Basically Nothing’ Ruffell says based on the existing body of research on ayahuasca and mental health outcomes, he wasn’t surprised to learn that participants showed decreases in depression and anxiety and improvements in mindfulness, self-compassion, and general well-being. In addition, participants were found to perceive memories in a less negative way. “We also found that, the greater degree their mystical experience, the greater their decrease in depression, which was in line with other psychedelic research,” he added. The results of the six-month follow-up showed that the impact ayahuasca had on participants’ depression was lasting, with some even continuing to experience a decrease in their symptoms long after the retreat had ended. Ayahuasca Foundation director Carlos Tanner, who founded its Riosbo research centre in 2017 and has witnessed thousands of ceremonies, says while he expected there to be improvements in participants’ mental health, he was surprised by the follow-up. “I thought, like anyone who is familiar with pharmaceutical studies might think, that when the treatment stopped, there would be some return of symptoms,” he says. “That was the most jaw-dropping to me, because it suggests that in a singular treatment event—the retreat itself—there was a lasting effect that continued without treatment.” Saliva Samples Show a Change In Gene Expression, But Sample Size Is Small “This was the first-ever study to look at any psychedelic and epigenetics, and that in itself is exciting,” says Ruffell, though he’s quick to caveat that statement with a note about the study’s small sample size. While he says there was a “statistically significant change” in the expression of the gene SIGMAR1, which is thought to be involved in how traumatic memories are stored, it’s too early to generalize the results. “We can’t draw any conclusions, but what it does suggest is that ayahuasca may well be having some kind of effect on the genetic level,” he says, noting the group is awaiting additional funding to continue the study and increase the sample size. Ruffell, a psychiatric doctor who has worked in both clinical settings and ceremonial ones, admits that one of the problems with this research is that there is a clear self-selection bias. “It takes a certain kind of person to go into the jungle and drink ayahuasca,” he says. “Many would feel more reassured in a hospital setting or in a clinical trial.”
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