Pubdate: Mon, 17 Jul 2006
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2006 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Gareth Cook, Globe Staff
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hallucinogens.htm (Hallucinogens)

PSYCHEDELIC MUSHROOMS EARN SERIOUS 2D LOOK FROM SCIENCE

Psychedelic mushrooms have been a stubborn part of the nation's drug 
problem for decades, offering their users a potentially dangerous, 
and decidedly illegal, way to warp their consciousness. Now 
government-funded scientists have found that the active ingredient in 
the mushrooms could be a powerful tool for scientific research, and 
they say it should be explored as a potential treatment for 
depression, anxiety, and other disorders.

In a paper published last week, scientists at Johns Hopkins 
University say that a single dose of psilocybin routinely brings 
about positive psychological changes that can last for months. This 
lasting effect is surprising and mysterious, the scientists said, but 
seems to be the result of what they call powerful drug-induced 
"mystical experiences" that include a feeling of the sacredness and 
oneness of the universe. More than two-thirds of the volunteers 
described their session with the drug -- several hours in a 
laboratory, under close monitoring -- as one of the most meaningful 
and spiritually significant events in their life, on a par with the 
birth of a child or the death of a parent.

"That just blew me away," said Roland Griffiths , a Johns Hopkins 
scientist who led the study and is considered one of the world's top 
investigators into the psychological effects of drugs.

Griffiths and other scientists said that the results suggest the time 
has come to study the scientific and medical potential of psilocybin, 
some four decades after the drug abuse of the 1960s shut down 
research into psychedelic drugs.

Neuroscientists could study people under the influence of the drug to 
answer basic questions about human perception and consciousness. But 
the research also shows that scientists can safely and reliably 
provoke a mystical experience in a laboratory, meaning they now have 
an unprecedented chance to study the nature of the mystical 
experience itself, using brain scanning and other techniques to probe 
the biological basis of a puzzling human phenomenon that has 
powerfully shaped the world's religions.

"This represents a landmark study, because it is applying modern 
techniques to an area of human experience that goes back as long as 
humankind has been here," said Charles R. Schuster , a former 
director of the government's National Institute on Drug Abuse and 
currently a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at 
Wayne State University School of Medicine .

The Hopkins team is planning follow-up work to look at the drug's 
medical potential, but other groups have already begun similar 
research. Preliminary results from a study underway at a California 
hospital show that a single session with psilocybin helps patients 
overcome the anxiety and depression that come with a diagnosis of 
incurable cancer. A scientist at McLean Hospital in Belmont is 
studying the use of ecstasy, another illegal psychedelic, for the 
same purpose. A researcher at the University of Arizona, meanwhile, 
is testing whether psilocybin can treat obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The scientists caution that the research is preliminary, though, and 
they worry that their results might inspire someone to abuse the 
drug. Even in the Hopkins experiment, about one-third of the 
participants experienced fear -- sometimes intense -- and paranoia 
while on the drug, and these emotions could easily escalate to panic 
and destructive behavior outside a controlled setting, Griffiths 
said. The participants were given hours of training before 
participating, and they were screened for mental illness. The drug is 
also thought to have the potential to bring on some mental illnesses 
in people prone to them.

"People shouldn't be using this drug," said David Shurtleff , 
director of the Division of Basic Neuroscience and Behavioral 
Research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which helped fund 
the work. The research was also funded by the Council on Spiritual 
Practices , a San Francisco organization. Griffiths said that work 
for the study, published in the journal Psychopharmacology , began in 
1999. The team had to clear numerous regulatory barriers, including 
approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement 
Administration, and a board at Hopkins that must approve all research 
using human subjects.

The volunteers were tested one at a time. They were each teamed with 
trained monitors who sat with them throughout the session. The 
testing was set up so that neither they nor the monitor knew whether 
they would receive psilocybin or a stimulant that is not a 
hallucinogen but causes some of the same physical effects.

After being given the drug, the volunteers sat in a comfortable room 
for about eight hours, most of it spent with an eye mask on, 
listening to music. If they became frightened, a monitor would 
reassure them, Griffiths said.

The volunteers filled out extensive questionnaires after the test and 
again two months later.

Twenty-two of 36 participants described the psilocybin experience in 
terms that meet the criteria of a "full mystical experience," 
according to a standard psychological scale. This includes a sense of 
the unity and interconnectedness of the universe, a feeling of being 
in the presence of overwhelming love or grace, a sense that space and 
time have collapsed, and an inability to describe the experience in words.

Afterward, many participants also said they still felt that their 
drug-induced perceptions were "more real" than ordinary reality, 
another refrain of mystics throughout the ages.

Two months later, 19 of 24 volunteers said that they were more 
satisfied with their life, and interviews with friends, coworkers and 
relatives supported the idea that the participants had changed for 
the better. (Not all volunteers filled out the long-term follow-up 
questionnaire.) Griffiths said he also hopes to test the drug as a 
treatment for anxiety and fear in patients diagnosed with terminal cancer.

In the California study, Dr. Charles Grob , a professor of psychiatry 
at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, recalled one session with a woman 
whose fear of dying had so overwhelmed her that it was cutting her 
off from the people who loved her.

He said he watched as she cried and cried while under the influence 
of the drug. Grob said he thought that she was anguished by her 
mortality. Later, he asked her why she had been crying. She said that 
she was crying in empathy with her husband -- that she felt the 
loneliness he felt at losing his connection to her.

It was a revelation, she said, that has strengthened her marriage.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman