tagged w/ Magic Mushrooms
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The brains of people tripping on magic mushrooms have given the best picture yet of how psychedelic drugs work and British scientists say the findings suggest such drugs could be used to treat depression.
Two separate studies into the effects of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, showed that contrary to scientists' expectations, it does not increase but rather suppresses activity in areas of the brain that are also dampened with other anti-depressant treatments.
"Psychedelics are thought of as 'mind-expanding' drugs so it has commonly been assumed that they work by increasing brain activity," said David Nutt of Imperial College London, who gave a briefing about the studies on Monday. "But, surprisingly, we found that psilocybin actually caused activity to decrease in areas that have the densest connections with other areas." These so-called "hub" regions of the brain are known to play a role in constraining our experience of the world and keeping it orderly, he said. "We now know that deactivating these regions leads to a state in which the world is experienced as strange." In the first study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal, 30 volunteers had psilocybin infused into their blood while they were inside magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, which measure changes in brain activity. It found activity decreased in "hub" regions and many volunteers described a feeling of the cogs being loosened and their sense of self being altered.
The second study, due to be published in the British Journal of Psychiatry on Thursday, involved 10 volunteers and found that psilocybin enhanced their recollections of personal memories. Robin Carhart Harris from Imperial's department of medicine, who worked on both studies, said the results suggest psilocybin could be useful as an adjunct to psychotherapy. Nutt cautioned that the new research was very preliminary and involved only small numbers of people.
"We're not saying go out there and eat magic mushrooms," he said. "But...this drug has such a fundamental impact on the brain that it's got to be meaningful -- it's got to be telling us something about how the brain works. So we should be studying it and optimizing it if there's a therapeutic benefit."
The key areas of the brain identified -- one called the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and another called the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) -- are the subject of debate among neuroscientists, but the PCC is thought by many to have a role in consciousness and self-identity.
The mPFC is known to be hyperactive in depression, and the researchers pointed out that other key treatments for depression including medicines like Prozac, as well as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and deep brain stimulation, also appear to suppress mPFC activity. Psilocybin's dampening action on this area may make it a useful and potentially long-acting antidepressant, Carhart-Harris said. The studies also showed that psilocybin reduced blood flow in the hypothalamus - a part of the brain where people who suffer from a condition known as cluster headaches often have increased blood flow. This could explain why some cluster headache sufferers have said their symptoms improved after taking the psychedelic drug, the researcher said.
The studies, which are among only a handful conducted into psychedelic substances since the 1960s and 1970s, revive a promising field of study into mind-altering drugs which some experts say can offer powerful and sustained mood improvement and relief from anxiety. Other experts echoed Nott's caution: "These findings are very interesting from the research viewpoint, but a great deal more work would be needed before most psychiatrists would think that psilocybin was a safe, effective and acceptable adjunct to psychotherapy," said Nick Craddock, a psychiatry professor from Cardiff University.
Kevin Healy, chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' faculty of medical psychotherapy said it was interesting research "but we are clearly nowhere near seeing psilocybin used regularly and widely in psychotherapy practice."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46105129/ns/health-mental_health/t/magic-mushrooms-point-new-depression-drugs/#.Tx7UYG9SQsc
http://i744.photobucket.com/albums/xx90/RobMarley420/DSCF0033.jpgThe brains of people tripping on magic mushrooms have given the best picture yet of... more
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A recent study found that most people treated with a single high dose of psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychoactive mushrooms, showed a long-lasting change in personality—namely, an increase in opennessA recent study found that most people treated with a single high dose of psilocybin,... more
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Check out the Other Side, at http://assetebooks.com/drugs.phpFree Ebooks about Drugs, Drug Use, Drug Experimentation and Drug Experiences,... more
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This bear is slightly more mellow than your average forrest growler.
This bear is slightly more mellow than your average forrest growler.... more
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the Lord created medicines out of the earth and a wise man will not abhor them ~Ecclesiastes
Street drugs are revolutionizing the way science looks at disease. As we speak studies are underway across the globe to understand the amazing powers of these drugs hold. And while mainstream society terms them drugs, I believe the correct terms are medicinal herbs or healing plants. These are medicines that come from the divine. They grow under the ground on which we walk. For example, marijuana come from the Cannabis plant. LSD is created from the LSD-60 compound found in the morning glory flower. Magic mushrooms grow naturally in nature. Ibogaine is derived from Iboga, a rainforest shrub.These medicines are sacred and help us heal.
Army Veterans are taking Ecstasy to treat their PTSD
In a study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology the drug MDMA commonly known as Ecstasy has shown that the drug when combined with Psychotherapy can cure, can CURE post-traumatic stress disorder in army veterans returning from war. An excerpt from Medicinenet.com is as follows:
“PTSD treatment involves revisiting the trauma in a therapeutic setting, but many patients become overwhelmed by anxiety or numb themselves emotionally, and so they can’t really successfully engage,” said study lead researcher Dr. Michael Mithoefer, a psychiatrist in private practice in Charleston, S.C. “But what we found is that the MDMA seemed to temporarily decrease fear without blunting emotions, and so it helped patients better process their grief.”
Psychedelic Drugs are Back
Doctors at top hospitals and universities in Canada, the U.S. and abroad are experimenting with LSD, MDMA (“ecstasy”) and psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound in “magic mushrooms,” as treatments for, variously, tobacco addiction, cluster headaches, obsessive-compulsive disorder and suicidal thoughts — as well as anxiety and depression in people with end-stage cancer.
Other research is being conducted with the prescription sedative ketamine, known on the street as “Special K.”
Doctors are testing these drugs because effective treatments either don’t exist or simply don’t work for some patients. “It’s basically an unmet need in medicine,” says Dr. Pierre Blier, Canada Research Chair in Psychopharmacology at the University of Ottawa.
He’s been conducting pilot studies with ketamine which have so far proven successful with the severely depressed who might otherwise be subjected to electroconvulsive — or shock — treatments.
LSD and Ecstasy fight cancer anxiety and PTSD
Hallucinogenic drugs including LSD and Ecstasy are being used by doctors in tests to treat conditions including cancer anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Scientists are once again striving to prove that psychedelic drugs can be of medical benefit more than four decades after authorities clamped down on their use for both recreational and research purposes.
There are a handful of studies currently taking place across the U.S. with drugs like LSD, MDMA (Ecstasy) and psilocybin, the main ingredient of ‘magic mushrooms’.
While the research is still preliminary, early results from a New York University study suggest that participants are less fearful of death and have less general anxiety. They are also said to have greater acceptance of the dying process with no major side effect.
Magic Mushrooms ease Cancer Anxiety
A study from the Archives of General Psychiatry found benefits from the use of psilocybin in treating anxiety and depression common with stage 4 cancer.
Late-stage cancer patients given a moderate single dose of psilocybin were less anxious and significantly less depressed six months later, compared with patients given a placebo.
Ibogaine ends Addiction
I wrote previously how Ibogaine can cure addiction in individuals. This psychedelic plant has brought upon the creation of clinics in Canada, Europe, Mexico, and Latin America. It works however it is illegal in the United States. Charles Shaw, the author of Exile Nation, expounds on one of many gems from his book during his investigation into the healing powers of Ibogaine:
here’s how the miracle works. The conventional approach to treating opiate addiction is to employ a substitution therapy like methadone or suboxone, maintenance drugs that keep the addict addicted to a less potent, more manageable opiate analog. This means that the only available treatment does not actually stop the addiction. So what’s the point?
Ibogaine works, it is believed, by filling in the receptor sites that the opiate molecules once sought, ending the craving for the drug, while at the same time metabolizing in the liver into noribogaine, which is thought to have powerful detoxifying and anti-depressant properties. The million dollar jackpot is that ibogaine can eliminate the exceedingly painful and dangerous opiate withdrawal process, sometimes in a single dose. In effect, it has the power to hit the reset button on the brain’s neurotransmitter mechanism.
visit mattovermatter.com for morethe Lord created medicines out of the earth and a wise man will not abhor them... more
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Was Alice in Wonderland and Victorian fairy art and lore in general inspired by actual experiences with mind-altering fungi?
The first well-documented hallucinogenic mushroom experience in Britain took place in London’s Green Park on 3 October 1799. Like many such experiences before and since, it was accidental. A man subsequently identified only as ‘J.S.’ was in the habit of gathering small field mushrooms from the park on autumn mornings, and cooking them up into a breakfast broth for his wife and young family. But this particular morning, an hour after they had finished eating, the world began to turn very strange. J.S. found black spots and odd flashes of colour bursting across his vision; he became disorientated, and had difficulty in standing and moving around. His family were complaining of stomach cramps and cold, numb extremities. The notion of poisonous toadstools leapt to his mind, and he staggered out into the streets to seek help. but within a hundred yards he had forgotten where he was going, or why, and was found wandering about in a confused state.
© Mike Jay
By chance, a doctor named Everard Brande happened to be passing through this insalubrious part of town, and he was summoned to treat J.S. and his family. The scene that he discovered was so bizarre and unfamiliar that he would write it up at length and publish it in The Medical and Physical Journal later that year. The family’s symptoms were rising and falling in giddy waves, their pupils dilated, their pulses and breathing becoming fluttering and laboured, then returning to normal before accelerating into another crisis. They were all fixated on the fear that they were dying, except for the youngest, the eight-year-old Edward S., whose symptoms were the strangest of all. He had eaten a large portion of the mushrooms and was ‘attacked with fits of immoderate laughter’ which his parents’ threats could not subdue. He seemed to have been transported into another world, from which he would only return under duress to speak nonsense: ‘when roused and interrogated as to it, he answered indifferently, yes or no, as he did to every other question, evidently without any relation to what was asked’.
Dr.Everard Brande would diagnose the family’s condition as the ‘deleterious effects of a very common species of agaric [mushroom], not hitherto suspected to be poisonous’. Today, we can be more specific: this was clearly intoxication by Liberty Caps (Psilocybe semilanceata), the ‘magic mushrooms’ which grow plentifully across the hills, moors, commons, golf courses and playing fields of Britain every autumn. But though Dr.Brande’s account of the J.S. family’s trip would not be forgotten, and would continue to be cited in Victorian drug literature for decades, the nineteenth century would come and go without any conclusive identification of the Liberty Cap as the species in question. In fact, it would not be until Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD, turned his attention to hallucinogenic mushrooms in the 1950s that the botanical identity of these and other mushrooms containing psilocybin, LSD’s chemical cousin, would be confirmed.
Read the full article at http://www.brainwaving.com/2010/03/01/mushrooms-in-wonderland/Was Alice in Wonderland and Victorian fairy art and lore in general inspired by actual... more
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Clifton Ingram faces felony possession of psilocybin in Asheville NC. His defense will be to appeal to his jury of peers that there is a higher law than the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The higher law is that “God’s gifts should be celebrated, not used as a cause to arrest folks“.
(click on the link etc.)Clifton Ingram faces felony possession of psilocybin in Asheville NC. His defense will... more
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Second part to the first episode (butlins staff party plantation quay 2006)
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19 year old Jeffery Moore was arrested last Friday in a cow pasture in Florida where he and three friends were allegedly collecting psychedelic mushrooms.
Weirdly when Moore was spotted he was lying face down in the field in an attempt to avoid the cops' helicopter searchlight. Oh, and he was armed with a crossbow and slingshot.
He reportedly told deputies that the crossbow and slingshot were for his own protection in case he spooked the cows and they charged him.
He hadn't banked on the police charging him though eh? :)19 year old Jeffery Moore was arrested last Friday in a cow pasture in Florida where... more
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Mind-altering psychedelics, or hallucinogens, are back in the research labs, where their therapeutic applications -- rather than the illegal use -- are being explored. Studies are looking at psychedelics to treat a number of otherwise intractable psychiatric disorders, including chronic depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and drug or alcohol dependency.
The past 15 years have seen a quiet resurgence of psychedelic drug research as scientists have come to recognize the long-underappreciated potential of these drugs. In the past few years, a growing number of studies using human volunteers have begun to explore the possible therapeutic benefits of drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, ibogaine and ketamine......
more at link
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I for one have experienced the healing and awaking of a good experiment into the brain via the helping hand of a psychedelic. Our society has been putting great tools on the back burner and keeping us from the truly healing potions that have been used for thousands of years.
Have you had a healing experince?
Why are some substances "drugs" while others are "medications?"Mind-altering psychedelics, or hallucinogens, are back in the research labs, where... more
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"Magic mushrooms" will be banned in the Netherlands from next week after a court ruling Friday, in the latest sign of a hardening stance on recreational drug use by the traditionally liberal Dutch.
The ban will be in place from Monday after the district court in The Hague rejected a petition by a body representing vendors of the hallucinogenic fungi to halt a health ministry ban on their cultivation and sale.
The ruling comes days after authorities ordered dozens of Amsterdam's famous cannabis-selling coffee shops to close and two other municipalities announced they would close down all their cannabis cafes from February.
"This is bad news for us," Paul van Oyen, a spokesman for the vendors' association VLOS told AFP after the verdict. "We are highly disappointed."
The district court dismissed the VLOS's petition for an urgent interdict against the ban as groundless and unfair.
The ban, introduced by Health Minister Ab Klink and already passed by lawmakers, will now come into force on December 1.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Dutch_magic_mushroom_vendors_lose_court_1128.html"Magic mushrooms" will be banned in the Netherlands from next week after a... more
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A national ban on the sale of fresh hallucinogenic magic mushrooms will take effect in the Netherlands on December 1, 2008. In dried form those mushrooms already were banned under Dutch Opiate Laws.
The ban was first proposed in October 2007, after as series of high-profile deaths and injuries linked to magic mushroom trips.
Smart shop owners say they are flabbergasted. According to them a better system of checks and balances would have taken care of the problem. In fact, when the ban was first proposed Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen called for a three day wait period in which customers would order and pay for their mushrooms in advance, at which time they would receive information outlining the proper use and effects of the plant before being able to pick up the purchase later.
http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/542-hallucinogenic-magic-mushrooms-netherlands-amsterdamA national ban on the sale of fresh hallucinogenic magic mushrooms will take effect in... more
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This is a picture of a poster advertising the "Fantasy Piccadilly Line" which prominently features some very large psilocybin mushrooms in the bottom left corner.
Very cool, but why? This is a picture of a poster advertising the "Fantasy Piccadilly Line"... more
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Police closed down a Berlin sweet shop after discovering the owner was selling chocolates and lollipops laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms and marijuana.
The 23-year old owner of the shop in the trendy east Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg, an area known for its vibrant night life, was taken into custody on suspicion of drug-dealing.
"In the shop we found 120 pieces of magic mushroom chocolate and countless cannabis lollipops," said police, who confiscated around 70 sachets containing various drugs, about 20 marijuana joints, a range of pills and some jars of drug-laced honey.
Police said one customer, who appeared intoxicated, was arrested after trying to buy a bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms from an officer in the shop.Police closed down a Berlin sweet shop after discovering the owner was selling... more
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Heffter Research Institute's board member Charles S. Grob was surprised when the producers of the Fox Television Network's "The Morning Show With Mike and Juliet" asked him to talk live about his psilocybin research with cancer patients. Grob sent them to Norbert Litzinger, volunteer Director of Development and husband of Pam Sakuda, a patient in the study who passed away a year and a half ago. The live interviews with Grob, Litzinger and another of Grob's subjects -- is heartening to watch.
For more information - www.heffter.orgHeffter Research Institute's board member Charles S. Grob was surprised when the... more
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I posted a couple of these stories.
There have been hundreds of these stories recently so I felt the need to post a few. Chock one up for the local police departments for taking advantage of unjust laws and ruining the lives of countless free and law abiding Americans for the political purpose of making a headline. These do good police departments take photos of the loot they've pillaged from young and old alike. They pose smiling next to the Ziploc baggies of "contraband." We as a public at large praise them for their deeds, not thinking of the many years those people the police have just robbed will spend in jail, or the ruined lives they'll lead once they get out of jail, forever tattooed as a felon. We cheer when the local DA goes on the evening news to show us how they've just arrested someone's grand parents in a supposed marijuana ring. When it's time to allocate funds we pay millions upon millions of dollars to help organized criminals like the DEA and the local and state authorities to investigate, rob, and then put in jail our family, friends, neighbors, doctors, lawyers, priests, mailmen, professors and so on. These people they arrest are people like you and I. They are users and entrepreneurs alike. All fallen victim to the American Drug War and Narcotics Prohibition at large.
BIXBY, Okla. (AP) - Felony complaints have been filed against six people accused of possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Bixby Police Officer Erik Smoot says the psilocybin mushrooms, nicknamed "shrooms," are hallucinogens that create the same effect as LSD but on a lesser scale.
Officials say 19-year-old Ryan Patrick Jackson of Broken Arrow and 22-year-old Christopher Kyle Brown of Bixby were arrested on July 16. Police reportedly found the two bagging up about 8 pounds of the illegal mushrooms behind a business.
Eighteen-year-old Jimmy Grammer of Bixby and three juveniles were taken into custody on Friday in rural Bixby with a small amount of the mushrooms and a small amount of marijuana.
The six were booked with possession of a controlled dangerous substance. No charges have been filed.I posted a couple of these stories.
There have been hundreds of these stories... more
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This article is provided for informational purposes only. Please use your own judgment in deciding what to do with it. Be aware that magic mushrooms are illegal to possess in many countriesThis article is provided for informational purposes only. Please use your own judgment... more
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In this clip, Mycologist Paul Stamets speaks about 6 ways mycellium fungi could save earth.
In this clip, Mycologist Paul Stamets speaks about 6 ways mycellium fungi could save... more
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In 2006, Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore gave psilocybin (the active chemical found in 'magic' mushrooms) to 36 volunteers and asked them how it felt. Most reported having a "mystical" or "spiritual" experience and rated it positively.
However, more interestingly the feelings of general well-being or life satisfaction arising from this "spiritual" experience were reported to continue over a year after the original event.
"This is a truly remarkable finding," Griffiths said. "Rarely in psychological research do we see such persistently positive reports from a single event in the laboratory."In 2006, Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore gave psilocybin... more
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New study by Johns Hopkins shows that the use of psychedelic mushrooms creates long-lasting positive effects in the user.
Who would've thought? =PNew study by Johns Hopkins shows that the use of psychedelic mushrooms creates... more
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