November 30, 2014

"The fact that under the influence of psilocybin the brain temporarily behaves in a new way may be medically significant in treating psychological disorders like depression."

"'When suffering depression, people get stuck in a spiral of negative thoughts and cannot get out of it,' Dr. Expert said. 'One can imagine that breaking any pattern that prevents a "proper" functioning of the brain can be helpful.' Think of it as tripping a breaker or rebooting your computer."

"Dr. Expert." I love that. The doctor really is Dr. Expert — Dr. Paul Expert. I have no idea how fascinating that would seem if I were high on psilocybin — or should I say breaking a cerebral circuit or rebooting my brain with psilocybin? But I do find that amusing. Dr. Paul Expert! How to trip/medicate like Paul Expert....

Must we be depressed to deserve the brain benefits of psilocybin?
Anecdotally, psychoactive mushrooms may positively affect even nonsufferers. They did for me. 
"Me" = Eugenia Bone, author of "Mycophilia: Revelations From the Weird World of Mushrooms." These names! I feel like I'm reading a work of fiction... a work of fiction possibly titled Dr. Expert and Ms. Eugenia Bone.
I ate the mushroom as part of research for a book. The experience lasted about four hours, much of which I spent outdoors, but seemed to last much longer. I think because everything I was seeing was so new: the way the air was disturbed behind the flight of a bee, the way the trees seemed to respire, how the clouds and breeze and rocks and grass all existed in a kind of churning symbiosis.

I experienced a number of small epiphanies — self-realizations actually — but one in particular remained with me. As the drug wore off, I went indoors to take a hot bath. For a moment I thought that might not be a good idea, as bath time is when women in middle age can be very self-critical and unforgiving, and I didn’t want the sight of my waistline to veer me into a bad trip. But while in the tub I envisioned my body as a ship that was taking me through life, and that made it beautiful.
Makes me think of the old George Harrison lyric: "I got born into the material world/Getting worn out in the material world/Use my body like a car/Taking me both near and far..."



I hope you watched that, because it was very trippy, and it might have rebooted your brain in a way that could enhance your experience as as we bring this post in for a landing and get close to Ms. Bone:
I stopped feeling guilty about growing older and regretful about losing my looks. Instead, I felt overwhelming gratitude. It was a tremendous relief that I still feel.
Ah, now, I hope the looming access to psilocybin is not limited to those who can name the right psychological ailment, so that women with body dysmorphia get access, slipping in through the door along with the depressed. That would be depressing. But look how fast the middle-aged woman who feels bad about her naked body jumps from wanting access for herself to the urge to control the young and the festive:
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting 16-year-olds take magic mushrooms. I’m not suggesting they be used to party at all. What I am advocating for is a mind open to the possibilities of their use to help people in need. Because illiberality doesn’t cure disease; curiosity does.
If you want relief from government control, you have to embody the persona of the victim. You must belong to the ranks of the "people in need." Your desire to tweak and tamper with your brain medicinally must be a matter of disease. You must portray yourself as down and trying to get to normal, not normal and seeking a higher ground.

From the Spiritual Sky/Such sweet memories have I....

43 comments:

libertariansafetyguy said...

Do the mushrooms come with an emotional support pig?

m stone said...

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting 16-year-olds take magic mushrooms.

Cue the rush of teens (and others) to secretly buy Bone's book and head to the forest to hunt for fungi.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

This reminds me of the 2012 NYT piece on giving 'shrooms to old dying people.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Which Althouse noted.

Fernandinande said...

Must we be depressed to deserve the brain benefits of psilocybin?

Of course not...unless by "deserve" you mean bureaucratic approval. Studies of psilocybin, etc., and mental problems have been going on - on and off - since the 50s, mostly in Switzerland. The Puritans keep it from going any further.

the clouds and breeze and rocks and grass all existed in a kind of churning symbiosis.

Heh. Yeah.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting 16-year-olds take magic mushrooms.

..said the Puritan.

Because illiberality doesn’t cure disease; curiosity does.

No, it doesn't.

Michael K said...

Depression and anxiety disorders are probably due to a parasite infection.

Toxoplasmosis and schizophrenia: epidemiological studies point to a role for toxoplasmosis in schizophrenia's etiology, probably during pregnancy and early life, this association being congruent with studies in animal models indicating that animal exposures of the developing brain to infectious agents or immune modulating agents can be associated with behavioral changes that do not appear until the animal reaches full maturity. Psychiatric patients have increased rates of toxoplasmic antibodies, the differences between cases and controls being greatest in individuals who are assayed near the time of the onset of their symptoms. The increase of dopamine in the brain of infected subjects can represent the missing link between toxoplasmosis and schizophrenia.

The role opt parasites and virus DNA attaching to the human genome will be huge research topics the next 25 years. There is even evidence that using sweetener instead of coffee can change your intestinal flora and that can affect your behavior.

In the future two major avenues for research seem essential. On one hand, prospective studies and research efforts must still be carried out to understand the mechanisms by which the parasite induces these psychiatric disorders. On the other hand, it has not yet been demonstrated that patients with positive toxoplasmic serology may better respond to haloperidol's or valproic acid's antiparasitic activity. These results may appear as a major issue in the drug's prescribing choices and explain variability in response to the treatment of patients with schizophrenia that is not explained by the genetic polymorphism.

We will spend years trying to understand how parasites, including bowel bacteria, affect our behavior and health.

Michael K said...

That's a sweetener instead of sugar in coffee....

JAORE said...

Hey, guys can feel pudgy too. Pass me the 'srooms.

donald said...

The pasture at the south end of Atlanta Motor Speedway is lousy with em.

Just sayin.

Opinh Bombay said...

It's probably an ages old family rule that you can't name a kid "Iam N."...

Just say'n

Guildofcannonballs said...

A guy once told me he used to work in the oil industry, and every now and then he would walk a hundred yards from the job site, pick a garbage bag full of shrooms off the ground, then sell them to his coworkers who didn't know where he got them. He would negotiate the price with his peers while looking at all the free shrooms anyone could ever eat in the background.

JSD said...

Took the stuff in the 70’s college daze. Spent the night consuming enormous amounts of Budweiser and weed, which had no effect on the psilocybin; listened to “Dark Star”; and obtained momentary enlightenment at sunrise. Unfortunately, by Monday morning I was back to being a stupid university undergrad. Now, I achieve wisdom with bourbon and fall asleep at 10:30.

Sydney said...

Everything old is new again.

paminwi said...

Taking off on the Dr. Expert part of the story, in Madison there is a Dr. Docter, Dr. Bonebrake (too bad he is not an orthopedist) but there is a Dr. Waters (who is a urologist) and then for good news you might want to see Dr. Glad!

I have no comment on anything else!

William said...

If she wishes to be one and Donne with the universe, the next time she takes a bath, instead of her pudginess, she should contemplate the way her pubic hair tries to float to the surface and pull away from the heaviness of her body. There's a ring of bright hair about the Bone.

buwaya said...

One new years eve long ago on a beach by the China sea my dissipated friends and I rented machine guns from the constabulary and fired a few hundred rounds of tracers to celebrate the new year, while on mushroom tea and bad rum.
Some things just have to be done once I think.

Howard said...

Michael K

We cannot agree about politics, but IMO, you are 100% correct about the little critters that live inside of us. IMO, the next tech wave will be microbiological. My own personal theory is our physiology evolved with internal biota that was fed primarily by inulin found in root vegetables. The switch in carbo sources to grains starves out the *good bugs*.

I have experimented with this by making and drinking fermenting inulin. It has helped significantly reduce my asthma symptoms. I'm pretty sensitive to changes in asthma as I swim 5+ miles per week and practice breath holding.

It's effects apparently are related to the change in the types of carboxylic acids that are created in the gut by the bacteria that feed on inulin.

Goju said...

Shades of Huxley's Doors of Perception. His conclusion was that any change in perception was illusory. So, are these results real or self-delusion?

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Ann Althouse said...If you want relief from government control, you have to embody the persona of the victim.

This understanding extends to most things today.

Laslo Spatula said...

I refuse to use hallucinogens to alter my out-of-body experiences.

I am Laslo.

Unknown said...

The circuit breaker effect is also how they used to describe the use of electro-shock therapy.

jr565 said...

"Makes me think of the old George Harrison lyric: "I got born into the material world/Getting worn out in the material world/Use my body like a car/Taking me both near and far..."


That got ME thinking about another song.
"Cause we are living in a material world
and I am a material girl"

m stone said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ron said...

Step 1: Althouse and Meade go to Colorado.

Step 2: They buy the best weed they can find, and find some safe to smoke it all at some specific time, announced ahead to spike traffic for the live blogging of Alt-ered States of Lawprofness. Amazon hits ensue.

Step 3: Profit!

Howard said...

Another reference of driving your body like a car from Alan Watts who advised:
"Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen..."
South Park Meets Alan Watts

richard mcenroe said...

Great. A Miraculouse Spiritual Enhancer... and I'm allergic to it.

Richard Lawrence Cohen said...

It was all too much for Ms. Bone.

"Show me that I'm everywhere/ And get me home for tea"-- George, 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3-tVnmP35E

Quaestor said...

Well, that vid was a waste of time -- much like George Harrison and rest of the Beatles. Harrison did only one worthwhile thing in his life, and that was to create and finance Handmade Films, the production company that gave us Monty Python and the Holy Grail among others.

It's truly sad that so many members of the Sixties generation can't leave that sordid past behind. In not so many years hence they will be rotting in nursing homes, and there they will spend their dwindling thoughts on the same old shit. Whoever coined the phrase "tragically hip," didn't know how right he was.

Alex said...

What about the possibility of peeling off your face while on 'shrooms? Scary shit, psychedelic drugs.

Alex said...

Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast(1970).

Robert Cook said...

"What about the possibility of peeling off your face while on 'shrooms? Scary shit, psychedelic drugs."

That would never happen.

Michael K said...

"Michael K

We cannot agree about politics,""
Who cares ? There are much more important things than politics, which we probably can't do much about anyway.

I would rather talk about almost anything than politics. Airplanes, Alaska, dogs, model building, Seymour Cray, Richard Feynmann. You name it.

Unknown said...

Tragically hip was coined by Elvis Costello.

Chef Mojo said...

Having an incurable cancer, I've found that shrooms deliver wonderful comfort on occasion. Being separated from my failing body for a time as I trip is a very good thing. The feeling of relaxation and of being cleansed afterwards helps give me the wherewithal to take those next steps down the road. The breakup of the bad and sad thoughts associated with dying is invaluable.

richard mcenroe said...

You can get anything you want.
At Althouse's Restaurant...

Bob Ellison said...

Chef Mojo, hang on.

Robert Cook said...

Chef Mojo, I'm so sorry to hear of your cancer.

Ann Althouse said...

I'm sorry to hear that Chef Mojo. Take care.

Alex said...

Sorry Chief Mojo.

virgil xenophon said...

Very late here, but best wishes to my Barbancourt-drinking friend Chef Mojo...hang tight..

richard mcenroe said...

Chef Mojo...sorry, man.

Sigivald said...

I’m not suggesting they be used to party at all.

I am.

End this puritanism.

Kirk Parker said...

paminwi,

That's nothing! In the city were I live, a certain Dr. Dye plied his trade from the moment he became an MD to the day he retired.

No, no, I have no idea why he had even a single patient.