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November 30, 2011 Leave a comment
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November 30, 2011 Leave a comment
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September 30, 2011 2 Comments
Elizabeth Lopatto, ©2011 Bloomberg News
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) — Psilocybin, or “magic mushrooms,” can make people more open in their feelings and aesthetic sensibilities, conferring on them a lasting personality change, according to a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.
People who had mystic experiences while taking the mushrooms were more likely to show increases in a personality trait dubbed “openness,” which is related to creativity, artistic appreciation and curiosity, according to the study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. The change was still in place a year later, suggesting a long-term effect.
“The remarkable piece is that psilocybin can facilitate experiences that change how people perceive themselves and their environment,” said Roland Griffiths, a study author and professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in Baltimore. “That’s unprecedented.”
Magic mushrooms, also known as “shrooms,” are hallucinogens native to tropical and subtropical regions of South America, Mexico and the U.S. The fungi were favored by former Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary, who founded the Harvard Psilocybin Project, and explored by ’60s writer and anthropologist Carlos Castaneda. They are typically eaten but can also be dried and smoked or made into a tea.
Openness is one of five major personality factors known to be constant throughout multiple cultures, heritable in families and largely unvarying throughout a person’s lifetime. The other four factors, extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness, were unchanged by being dosed with the hallucinogenic mushrooms, the study found. This is the first finding of a short-term intervention providing a long-term personality change, researchers said.
Mystical Experiences
The 51 participants, who had an average age of 46, completed two to five eight-hour drug sessions at least three weeks apart. They were asked to lie down on a couch, use an eye mask and listen to music on headphones while focusing on an inner experience. Their personalities were screened initially, one to two months after each drug session and about a year after the last trip.
In the test, 30 people Read more of this post
June 26, 2011 1 Comment
If a growing phalanx of scientists get their way, those prescriptions could be yours within 10 years. Research into the medical benefits of psychedelic drugs is booming. An April conference on the subject at Great Britain’s University of Kent featured lectures on such topics as “Ketamine Psychotherapy” and “Ayahuasca in the Contemporary World.”
Leading this wave is the Boston-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), whose executive director Rick Doblin spoke at that conference. MAPS researchers have spent 15 years conducting international clinical trials whose results indicate that LSD and psilocybin counteract depression and anxiety and are effective pain-management tools while MDMA (ecstasy) conquers fear. Just this month, the Israeli Ministry of Health approved a new MAPS study using MDMA to treat PTSD.
“Time is on our side,” Doblin says. “The world is full of aging baby boomers who are looking forward to psychedelic retirement and psychedelic hospice. Read more of this post
May 24, 2011 4 Comments
Disney-Marvel (Ep. 2) Iron Man – Extremis