ABC News reports on the Johns Hopkins psilocybin experiment:
The controversial study, conducted by Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, looked at whether a pill containing psilocybin, derived from the psilocybe mushroom, would induce mystical experiences among 36 healthy adult study participants. All had religious backgrounds, and all were also given the active drug ingredient in the attention-deficit disorder drug, Ritalin, at a separate time as a comparison.
The results were clear: Sixty percent of the psilocybin group elicited behaviors consistent with a "full mystical experience" as measured by psychological scales. Two months later, about 79 percent of the group reported "moderately to greatly increased" well-being or life satisfaction.
...According to Johns Hopkins, psilocybin is one of a class of serotonin receptors compounds (similar to the chemical used in many antidepressants) whose effects include changes in perception and cognition. Some call them "hallucinogenic," while other researchers are more inclined to call them "spirit-facilitating," the hospital's press release said.
Because it is illegal to possess psilocybin in all states but Florida and New Mexico, the study is attracting the attention of many ethicists and doctors and even the scientists at the federal National Institute on Drug Abuse, one of the funding entities for the study.
Yesterday, NIDA Director Dr. Nora Volkow released this statement critical of the study.
"Although there is no evidence that psilocybin is addictive, its adverse effects are well known. Similar to the more commonly known hallucinogen LSD (acid), psilocybin acts on serotonin receptors in the brain to profoundly distort a person's perceptions of reality," the statement said. "Psilocybin can trigger psychosis in susceptible individuals and cause other deleterious psychological effects, such as paranoia and extreme anxiety.
However, Griffiths, the study author, said extremely rigorous ethical standards were maintained throughout the research process, and that the value of learning the potential medical and psychological benefits of hallucinogens should not be ignored.
"[The study] shows that, under carefully controlled conditions, psilocybin can be administered safely and that it can occasion a mystical-type experience, which scientific measures say are very similar to spontaneously occurring mystical experiences" Griffiths said in an e-mail to ABC News. "The results suggest that such events may have lastingly beneficial consequences."
Which interests me.
The same researcher, R.R. Griffiths, co-authored the entertainingly named Self-injection of d,1-3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in the baboon, which seems to have been a study of the relative addictiveness of E.
There's slightly better-sounding coverage of the experiment over here:
As with other hallucinogens, psilocybin mimics the effect that serotonin has on brain receptors, but exactly which parts of the brain they affect, or how it affects them, remains a mystery. "A vast gap exists between what we know of these drugs - mostly from descriptive anthropology - and what we believe we can understand using modern clinical pharmacology techniques," says study leader Roland Griffiths, a professor with Hopkins' departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry and Behavioral Biology. "That gap is large because, as a reaction to the excesses of the 1960s, human research with hallucinogens has been basically frozen in time these last forty years."
The study, published Psychopharmacology, has attracted much interest from health professionals and academics alike, with no less than Charles Schuster, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), providing positive feedback.
I'm wondering if this might mark, if not a turning point in psychedelic studies, then at least a slight opening of the doors of the academy.
I'm especially interested in the way Ritalin was used as a control (that seems a little... well, like a "framing" stunt, but I dunno), and the way serotonin receptors are getting mentioned in the coverage. Since, in the post-Prozac world, most people know something about serotonin and mood. What I'm trying to say is, it seems like this work is being framed in terms of mood-alteration, rather than sensory perception (the dominant mode back in the 50s and 60s when the Good Friday experiment was done).
Anybody know of similar work going on? Or, more pertinently, of any (current) harsh institutional critiques of this stuff? |
