Depression Treatment with Psychedelic Drugs

What is depression? Want to admit it or not, the depressive mood has various effects on our body and affects just as much us, as the ones around us. There is no need to deny it, as the more you deny it the harder will it be for you to get treated. You have to accept the fact that not everything is as you want it to be in your life and you have to deal with the situation and face reality. It may be a harsh reality to face but it is yours.

You recognize depression in a person by his sad, anxious, helpless, worthless, irritable, restless, empty feelings that she may be going through. They lose any reason to live and they just think about bad things and have a pessimistic view of life. If you do not treat yourself, it may lead to suicide attempts etc.

Being unable to treat this disease by yourself will better lead you to consult a specialist that will know what to prescribe you and that will keep you under his surveillance all the way through the treatment. Sakuda, a woman of 57 years old, who has gone through a very hard period in her life, being under chemo for late-stage colon cancer, became depressed and anxious, and being unable to get out of this stage, she asked a doctor’s advice.

Her doctor prescribed some antidepressants at first, but she saw and felt that they had no results whatsoever. Then she looked for some other methods to get rid of this stage in her life. Hearing about some experimental depression drug in UCLA she offered volunteer. In 2005 she took psilocybin pill. This is a hallucinogen that is well known as the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”.

Usually these drugs are used for people that want to get high, but medicines have thought that they can actually be useful in right dosage and they started to look into the utility of these illegal drugs.

“It can be like psychotherapy sped up,” says psychiatrist Stephen Ross, MD, an addiction expert at New York University who is leading a study on psilocybin treatment in cancer patients with severe anxiety. “Their defenses are lowered, and they have enormous access to unconscious material.” According to their belief one or two doses of these medicines can help the depressed patient let go of his worries, fears, troubles, and break out. After she took that pill she was instantly revitalized and the doctors called in her husband just after the effect of the drug weared off so that he will not be so shocked.

The effects of hallucinogens and of MDMA

have been started to be studying ever since the early 1920’s but no such concrete results were reached. Anyhow, this is because, due to the cultural awareness of these studies, they were put a stop to, as the FDA did not agree with their researches. As they started without the FDA’s approval and they therefore, when were caught were banned to do such investigations. A second trial began in the early 1990s when as well, the FDA sanctioned some of the preliminary studies on psilocybin and MDMA.

A small amount of time the FDA approved and was implicated in these studies and every study and drug was going through the process of FDA clinical trials. But soon, they retracted their implication and the scientists had to find some private funds to allow them to continue with the studies. Some of these private funding was provided by Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), in Santa Cruz, Calif., and the Heffter Research Institute, in Santa Fe, N.M.

At this moment they are conducting a research of a new-generation. It is a nine month study, during which period; patients are given either a psilocybin pill or a placebo

. Then the patient is put in a room lied down and asked to have a meditative state of mind. He is helped by the things that exist in the room, such as sculptures of Buddha, bookshelf, sound music. The drug was proved to induce another kind of peacefulness and self – awareness that makes the individual get to a higher degree of understanding and perceiving things and as well it makes the patient be more responsive to therapy. While in some patients that deal with a threatening death life situation, like tin the case of this woman, they may react as being more aware of their scared thoughts and realizing that they are over exaggerating with the scared thought of death or with the unwilling to accept life as it is and move on from the depression state.

Anyhow, you must know that it does not at all times go as smoothly as this; some patients may have some negative reactions at first, such as fear, anxiety, paranoia, which is why doctors must at all times be there to control their reactions. In some cases they can even feel pain and the six hours or so, in which they are left there, may seem to them like the longest hours from their lives.

A more reason for which, you should not try this at home under any circumstance, as you never know what reaction the person in question may have and you will not know how to handle the situation.

The results that were published in July showed that a number of ten patients, out of the total twelve, who were treated with this drug, lost their post-traumatic stress two months later. As the researchers will continue with their studies as they want to have more plausible proofs and even to make certain treatments from them, they hope that if they make their point in this, the government will agree to offer then funds, for larger trials.

Anyhow, there is a decade more to go before the FDA will actually approve such medicine, which if it ever approves it or even takes this into consideration. While some people admit the positive effects that hallucinogens may have on some, they admit that they are not at all ready to be used such strong medicines, and the Medical Health Organization is far from ever accepting hallucinogens as a treatment for terminally ill patients.

Despite of the fact that in some cases, such as this of Sakuda, the depression was finally lifted away and she succeeded in living a normal and happy life, till the day she died from the disease she was struggling with. But she at least, got the chance to enjoy what life was left for her.