Psychedelic enthusiasm must be more honest about the reality of the risks.

September 2019 - https://www.goldmansachs.com/citizenship...elease.pdf

Goldman Sachs and Mind today announced a £1.5 million partnership to provide mental health support in
Universities.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-021-01603-4

Psilocin, LSD, mescaline, and DOB all induce broadband desynchronization of EEG and disconnection in rats with robust translational validity

Analyses of the mean power, topographic brain-mapping, and functional connectivity revealed that all of the psychedelics irrespective of the structural family induced overall and time-dependent global decrease/desynchronization of EEG activity and disconnection within 1–40 Hz.

https://insidetime.org/20000-new-prison-...onditions/

Nov 2022 - Prisons Minister Damian Hinds told the House of Commons that out of the 20,000 new prison places being built in England and Wales at a cost of £3.75 billion, just 660 – or 3 per cent – will be at open prisons or in open units of closed prisons.

https://mindmedicineaustralia.org.au/psy...ilitation/

Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy For Criminal Offenders — A New Paradigm For Rehabilitation?

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....77183/full

40 Hz Light Flicker Alters Human Brain Electroencephalography Microstates and Complexity Implicated in Brain Diseases

The current study laid the foundation for the future development of 40 Hz light flicker as therapeutics for brain diseases.

https://www.hppdonline.com/

https://www.reddit.com/r/HPPD/

Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-021-01603-4

Psilocin, LSD, mescaline, and DOB all induce broadband desynchronization of EEG and disconnection in rats with robust translational validity

This maybe true, but to me it rather suggests that the brain isn't creating these experiences.

I mean, what would you expect if a doctor said he needed to desynchronise your brain for a few minutes? I guess you would expect to enter some sort of stupor, or to just simply lose consciousness. That sure isn't what happens if you take one of these drugs (I'm not talking from personal experience).

In the same way, you wouldn't really expect a brain struggling with insufficient oxygen to undergo a fantastic experience such as an NDE.

I suggest you read Jurgen Ziewe's books - e.g. "Vistas of Infinity" to get some idea of what the big picture might look like.

David

This maybe true, but to me it rather suggests that the brain isn't creating these experiences.

I mean, what would you expect if a doctor said he needed to desynchronise your brain for a few minutes? I guess you would expect to enter some sort of stupor, or to just simply lose consciousness. That sure isn't what happens if you take one of these drugs (I'm not talking from personal experience).

In the same way, you wouldn't really expect a brain struggling with insufficient oxygen to undergo a fantastic experience such as an NDE.

I suggest you read Jurgen Ziewe's books - e.g. "Vistas of Infinity" to get some idea of what the big picture might look like.

David

The 'holes' opened up in the brains endogenous EM field, by power changes that we measure as say... Event Related Desynronisation (ERD)... could be just as important to our experiences, as the areas without the 'holes'. I'd expect that to apply to Desynronisation reported in this study. Something similar was seen in the fMRI studies on entheogens IIRC.

I would expect an energy starved brain to increase the probability of the NDE.

Psychedelic Research Raises New Questions for Mental Health

Christopher Timmermann

• New studies provide compelling evidence that psychedelics transform users' worldviews away from a “physicalist” understanding of reality.
  
• Instead, users tend to side more with “panpsychism,” the belief that consciousness pervades everything in the universe.
  
• Belief changes were linked to positive mental health outcomes while also depending on psychological factors such as age and peer conformity.
  

In our recent research, the intake of psychedelics (mostly ayahuasca and magic mushrooms) in retreat settings was associated with a significant shift away from “physicalism,” the belief that the fundamental nature of reality is physical or material. Simultaneously, respondents more strongly endorsed a belief in “dualism,” stating that the essential nature of reality consists of both matter and mind. We corroborated these results in a clinical trial showing that non-physicalist beliefs were more robust in patients receiving psilocybin (the active component in magic mushrooms) rather than escitalopram (an SSRI treatment).1

We also found that following the retreat, respondents more heavily endorsed “panpsychism” (the belief that mind or soul is a fundamental quality of all things in the universe) and “fatalistic determinism” (the idea that mysterious forces determine the future).

The lasting effects of belief changes were noticeable one month and six months after the psychedelic experience, attesting to the impact of these experiences and potentially its broader cultural implications.1Recent studies by researchers at John Hopkins University have replicated these findings, providing further evidence for the causal relationship between psychedelic use and changes in metaphysical beliefs.2,3

These results raise important ethical considerations. While we found better mental health outcomes in participants who rejected physicalism, our findings indicate that changes in beliefs depend on specific social and psychological conditions, such as having a certain degree of suggestibility, low age, and feeling closeness with fellow retreat members.

Considering this, it is plausible that psychedelics could be exploited for “brainwashing” or social manipulation.4Also, in the context of psychedelic therapy, these changes in beliefs may not be expected, consented to, or desired by patients.

One can't help but wonder if they might have thought it was more positive if people started believing in the physicalist faith...

African Psychedelic Plant Inspires Two New Depression Drugs

Molly Campbell

Modeling the pharmacological properties of the African psychedelic plant medicine ibogaine, researchers have developed two novel drug candidates for treating addiction and depression. The research is published in Cell.

Beyond its effects on the brain, ibogaine can adversely impact the cardiovascular system, an effect that has been associated with several fatalities over the last few decades. According to Shoichet, ibogaine is what’s known as a “dirty” drug in pharmacological terms – it interacts with several processes, receptors and transporters in the human body, creating a myriad of side effects. This list of targets includes the serotonin transporter (SERT) – to which it is a non-competitive inhibitor – and the human voltage-sensitive potassium channel hERG, which plays a key role in the cardiac action potential. “Ibogaine binds to hERG, which can cause heart arrhythmias,” says Shoichet.

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) was used to confirm that one of the two molecules, named 8090, indeed fit into SERT at the atomic level as Shoichet and Singh’s computational models had predicted. While 8090 inhibited SERT like ibogaine, it was more selective in its targeting and more potent in its effects. A major advantage is that it also lacked “spill over” effects when tested on a panel comprising hundreds of other transporters and receptors. “With this sort of potency, we hope to have a better therapeutic window without side effects,” Basbaum says. “Dropping the dose almost 200-fold could make a big difference for patients.”

“This is really the way science should be done,” Basbaum concludes. “We took a group with expertise in disparate fields and came up with something that might really make a difference.”