There is good evidence that psilocybin can reduce depressive symptoms in many people for about 3 months. There are no studies with longer follow-ups, and no studies where patients get more than one dose.
Nobody ever mentions these things. Same with cannabis, it's unusual to mention that it could do that to you (or at least cause you to have a bad time due to "the greens").
OTOH, side-effects are inevitable with any drug. Some anti-psychotics might give you suicidal tendencies, yet these are approved to be sold in drugstores anyway; they work more frequently than what it takes for them to give you those issues.
I’m confused. Are you saying that the studies being done and showing positive results should just be ignored? Why are these studies viewed as wishful thinking?
1. The article doesn't say the sample are diagnosed with depression, that rings an alarm, that should be an important parameter.
2. The article says SEVERAL times that the results should be taken with caution and a grain of salt, for several reasons explained.
3. psilo, AS IS, doesn't have good pharmacodynamics, meaning it doesn't stay very long in the bloodstream, which doesn't make it suitable as a REAL TREATMENT like prescribed AD, that mean you would have a spike of an effect and a fast come-down. That's bad. Of course it works in a controlled environment, but it's not an everyday treatment, that leads to point 5.
4. So as always, this shows a road for synthetic "copies" of that substance that would imitate the active effect, but psilo cannot compete with classic AD. This is still good, but to me, it's not worthy news about AD, I would still hold my breath.
5. I am bothered because those headlines can be read by people with depression who might seek psilo as a medicine if AD aren't enough. People with depression are already quite vulnerable, and there are many stories of people having permanent side effects.
Relative to the amount of money and research that has gone into antidepressants over the last four decades, they have performed very very poorly with respect to their intended goal. They are not highly effective for most people, and even when they do help people, there are a large number of unpleasant side effects, including sexual problems, weight gain, and fatigue, just to name a few (also, feeling fat, tired, and impotent is a great way to continue being depressed). Many commonly-used antidepressants also cause mild to severe withdrawal systems when people go to stop or change medications.
So the reason we have people exploring psychedelics is not wishful thinking, but a reflection of the fact that we don't have effective treatments for depression that help most people, which most doctors will freely admit off the record.
If it turns out in 10 or 15 years that psychedelics are in fact a better anti depressant than current drugs, and you were to—hope not—suffer from depression yourself, would you take them?
1. The article doesn't say the sample are diagnosed with depression, that rings an alarm, that should be an important parameter.
2. The article says SEVERAL times that the results should be taken with caution and a grain of salt, for several reasons explained.
3. psilo, AS IS, doesn't have good pharmacodynamics, meaning it doesn't stay very long in the bloodstream, which doesn't make it suitable as a REAL TREATMENT like prescribed AD, that mean you would have a spike of an effect and a fast come-down. That's bad. Of course it works in a controlled environment, but it's not an everyday treatment, that leads to point 5.
4. So as always, this shows a road for synthetic "copies" of that substance that would imitate the active effect, but psilo cannot compete with classic AD. This is still good, but to me, it's not worthy news about AD, I would still hold my breath.
5. I am bothered because those headlines can be read by people with depression who might seek psilo as a medicine if AD aren't enough. People with depression are already quite vulnerable, and there are many stories of people having permanent side effects.
If they are approved by the FDA and prescribed by a doctor, yes. Because it's normal for me that I trust institutions who have their reputation and exist for the good of the public, not because I can just find a few vocal experts who disagree.
Again, like I said: pharmacodynamics. It's unlikely there is going to be a pill of psilo, it would rather be an alternate, similar, synthetic molecule that last longer in the bloodstream. Microdosing would not work, or would require to be taken every 6 hours.
I would gladly have one of those "session" where you take psilo while being supervised, if a doctor (or 3, since one doctor can be biased) can recommend it to me as being relevant.
I am not even legitimate to diagnose what sort of depression I would have, so right away, I trust doctors, because that's how medicine works.
Ok then how do you get to the point where they can be approved by FDA if not by doing this sort of trials?
I don’t see what your issue is with this process. You seem a rational person so it’s confusing to me.
These compounds may or may not work better than traditional AD. The only way to figure out is by doing these trials. If they don’t work then it was worth trying, that’s how you progress. If they do work that’s awesome, we now have a better tool to fight against mental health issues.
I have nothing against trials, but to me the title is a bit editorialized. Summarizing a study that is not a very interesting breakthrough smells like it attempt to promote something, but at least the article talks a lot about caution.
It's okay to talk about studies, it's just that it is a controversial subject, in my view, and the internet is not the most skeptical place, especially when it comes with medicine, which involves the health of people, which matters, unlike the earth being flat or round.
That sort of article will usually be shown by some people as a scientific proof that justifies their consumption of psilo instead of listening to a doctor, which is the real thing that bothers me.
Believe me, I want psilo to be an antidepressant as much as everybody, but I want doctors and institutions like the FDA to validate it. It's the same for everything.
If 1/3 of the scientists in that field would sign a letter that says psilo is a viable antidepressant and a treatment, that might change my mind too.
Doctors are service providers with lots of expertise on the empirical/technical side of the question, and no relevant expertise whatsoever on the normative side of the question.
Doctors are a great resource to consult if you want to understand the expected probability distribution of any particular course of treatment [1], but whether that treatment is worth the costs/risks is a value judgment, subjective to each individual, for which the technical expert's opinion has no special weight.
Doctors -- and regulatory agencies -- are doing their jobs when they do their best to provide enough information for patients to make an informed decision. They are doing something profoundly immoral and unconscionable when they attempt to usurp their patients' decision-making agency by confusing their technical expertise with normative authority.
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[1]: And it's worth noting that expertise consists entirely of having valid knowledge of the relevant science. Properly understood, they are aggregators of scientific data, not sources of validity or authority in their own right. Any attempt to substitute their own opinions or value judgements for valid science is a breach of fiduciary duty.
And if there are valid, replicable studies that are relevant to a patient's decision, but which they are unfamiliar with, then their expertise is incomplete, and their conclusions are insufficient to rely on.
1. The article doesn't say the sample are diagnosed with depression, that rings an alarm, that should be an important parameter.
2. The article says SEVERAL times that the results should be taken with caution and a grain of salt, for several reasons explained.
3. psilo, AS IS, doesn't have good pharmacodynamics, meaning it doesn't stay very long in the bloodstream, which doesn't make it suitable as a REAL TREATMENT like prescribed AD, that mean you would have a spike of an effect and a fast come-down. That's bad. Of course it works in a controlled environment, but it's not an everyday treatment, that leads to point 5.
4. So as always, this shows a road for synthetic "copies" of that substance that would imitate the active effect, but psilo cannot compete with classic AD. This is still good, but to me, it's not worthy news about AD, I would still hold my breath.
5. I am bothered because those headlines can be read by people with depression who might seek psilo as a medicine if AD aren't enough. People with depression are already quite vulnerable, and there are many stories of people having permanent side effects.
The fact that you think people are vulnerable does not give you the right to usurp their decision-making agency from them, nor to argue that valid information should be hidden from them.
If it bothers you that they might misinterpret information or make questionable decisions, feel free to take the initiative on your own to provide them with reliable information and offer guidance in helping them make good decisions, within a context of mutual trust and accountability. If you're not willing to do that, then the best option is to keep out of it entirely.
But arguing for third parties with their own agenda to forcefully usurp their right to make their own decisions and censor information from them, just to satisfy your own feelings of concern -- derived from speculation about the situation of strangers you have no relationship with or accountability to -- is profoundly immoral.
Well, at risk of causing you ire, I won’t regale anecdotally how that one course of mushrooms was somehow better than 15 years of boner weakening, orgasm preventing, suicide ideating, hunger spiking, ever rotating slurry of anti-depressants.
Just can’t put my finger on why they didn’t make me feel better, you know.
This is a scientific study. Whether a particular chemical alleviates the experience of depression symptoms is an empirical question, and if the evidence indicates that it does, then this is relevant and useful information.
I'm not sure this is right audience for promoting the medieval mentality of deference to political/ideological authority as being more important than dissemination of valid scientific data.
24 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 65.9 ms ] threadhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02698811211073759
Patients that have improved symptoms are less incentivized to seek further treatment/studies - obviously this can be controlled for.
OTOH, side-effects are inevitable with any drug. Some anti-psychotics might give you suicidal tendencies, yet these are approved to be sold in drugstores anyway; they work more frequently than what it takes for them to give you those issues.
I want people to listen to their doctors and stop having wishful ideas that ruins people's brains.
2. The article says SEVERAL times that the results should be taken with caution and a grain of salt, for several reasons explained.
3. psilo, AS IS, doesn't have good pharmacodynamics, meaning it doesn't stay very long in the bloodstream, which doesn't make it suitable as a REAL TREATMENT like prescribed AD, that mean you would have a spike of an effect and a fast come-down. That's bad. Of course it works in a controlled environment, but it's not an everyday treatment, that leads to point 5.
4. So as always, this shows a road for synthetic "copies" of that substance that would imitate the active effect, but psilo cannot compete with classic AD. This is still good, but to me, it's not worthy news about AD, I would still hold my breath.
5. I am bothered because those headlines can be read by people with depression who might seek psilo as a medicine if AD aren't enough. People with depression are already quite vulnerable, and there are many stories of people having permanent side effects.
So the reason we have people exploring psychedelics is not wishful thinking, but a reflection of the fact that we don't have effective treatments for depression that help most people, which most doctors will freely admit off the record.
2. The article says SEVERAL times that the results should be taken with caution and a grain of salt, for several reasons explained.
3. psilo, AS IS, doesn't have good pharmacodynamics, meaning it doesn't stay very long in the bloodstream, which doesn't make it suitable as a REAL TREATMENT like prescribed AD, that mean you would have a spike of an effect and a fast come-down. That's bad. Of course it works in a controlled environment, but it's not an everyday treatment, that leads to point 5.
4. So as always, this shows a road for synthetic "copies" of that substance that would imitate the active effect, but psilo cannot compete with classic AD. This is still good, but to me, it's not worthy news about AD, I would still hold my breath.
5. I am bothered because those headlines can be read by people with depression who might seek psilo as a medicine if AD aren't enough. People with depression are already quite vulnerable, and there are many stories of people having permanent side effects.
Again, like I said: pharmacodynamics. It's unlikely there is going to be a pill of psilo, it would rather be an alternate, similar, synthetic molecule that last longer in the bloodstream. Microdosing would not work, or would require to be taken every 6 hours.
I would gladly have one of those "session" where you take psilo while being supervised, if a doctor (or 3, since one doctor can be biased) can recommend it to me as being relevant.
I am not even legitimate to diagnose what sort of depression I would have, so right away, I trust doctors, because that's how medicine works.
I don’t see what your issue is with this process. You seem a rational person so it’s confusing to me.
These compounds may or may not work better than traditional AD. The only way to figure out is by doing these trials. If they don’t work then it was worth trying, that’s how you progress. If they do work that’s awesome, we now have a better tool to fight against mental health issues.
It's okay to talk about studies, it's just that it is a controversial subject, in my view, and the internet is not the most skeptical place, especially when it comes with medicine, which involves the health of people, which matters, unlike the earth being flat or round.
That sort of article will usually be shown by some people as a scientific proof that justifies their consumption of psilo instead of listening to a doctor, which is the real thing that bothers me.
Believe me, I want psilo to be an antidepressant as much as everybody, but I want doctors and institutions like the FDA to validate it. It's the same for everything.
If 1/3 of the scientists in that field would sign a letter that says psilo is a viable antidepressant and a treatment, that might change my mind too.
Doctors are a great resource to consult if you want to understand the expected probability distribution of any particular course of treatment [1], but whether that treatment is worth the costs/risks is a value judgment, subjective to each individual, for which the technical expert's opinion has no special weight.
Doctors -- and regulatory agencies -- are doing their jobs when they do their best to provide enough information for patients to make an informed decision. They are doing something profoundly immoral and unconscionable when they attempt to usurp their patients' decision-making agency by confusing their technical expertise with normative authority.
----
[1]: And it's worth noting that expertise consists entirely of having valid knowledge of the relevant science. Properly understood, they are aggregators of scientific data, not sources of validity or authority in their own right. Any attempt to substitute their own opinions or value judgements for valid science is a breach of fiduciary duty.
And if there are valid, replicable studies that are relevant to a patient's decision, but which they are unfamiliar with, then their expertise is incomplete, and their conclusions are insufficient to rely on.
2. The article says SEVERAL times that the results should be taken with caution and a grain of salt, for several reasons explained.
3. psilo, AS IS, doesn't have good pharmacodynamics, meaning it doesn't stay very long in the bloodstream, which doesn't make it suitable as a REAL TREATMENT like prescribed AD, that mean you would have a spike of an effect and a fast come-down. That's bad. Of course it works in a controlled environment, but it's not an everyday treatment, that leads to point 5.
4. So as always, this shows a road for synthetic "copies" of that substance that would imitate the active effect, but psilo cannot compete with classic AD. This is still good, but to me, it's not worthy news about AD, I would still hold my breath.
5. I am bothered because those headlines can be read by people with depression who might seek psilo as a medicine if AD aren't enough. People with depression are already quite vulnerable, and there are many stories of people having permanent side effects.
If it bothers you that they might misinterpret information or make questionable decisions, feel free to take the initiative on your own to provide them with reliable information and offer guidance in helping them make good decisions, within a context of mutual trust and accountability. If you're not willing to do that, then the best option is to keep out of it entirely.
But arguing for third parties with their own agenda to forcefully usurp their right to make their own decisions and censor information from them, just to satisfy your own feelings of concern -- derived from speculation about the situation of strangers you have no relationship with or accountability to -- is profoundly immoral.
Just can’t put my finger on why they didn’t make me feel better, you know.
I'm not sure this is right audience for promoting the medieval mentality of deference to political/ideological authority as being more important than dissemination of valid scientific data.