Posted on 07/11/2006 4:36:41 PM PDT by wagglebee
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "Magic mushrooms," used by Native Americans and hippies to alter consciousness, appear to have similar mystical effects on many people, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
At least one team of doctors is already testing whether using them can help terminal cancer patients come to terms with their fates.
More than 60 percent of volunteers given capsules of psilocybin derived from mushrooms said they had a "full mystical experience."
"Many of the volunteers in our study reported, in one way or another, a direct, personal experience of the 'beyond,'" said Roland Griffiths, a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry and behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who led the study.
A third said the experience was the single most spiritually significant of their lifetimes. Many likened it to the birth of their first child or the death of a parent.
And the effects lingered.
Two months after getting the drug, 79 percent of the volunteers said they felt a moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction, according to the report published in the journal Psychopharmacology.
Griffiths said the drug might be used to treat addiction as well as severe pain or depression.
Griffiths and colleagues tested 36 healthy, educated volunteers who all reported they had active spiritual lives, the idea being that spiritual people would be less troubled by the drug's effects.
He said he did not want to be accused of working like Timothy Leary, a former Harvard University psychologist known for 1960s experiments with LSD, another mind-altering drug.
NOT TURNING ON AND DROPPING OUT
"We are conducting rigorous, systematic research with psilocybin under carefully monitored conditions, a route which Dr. Leary abandoned in the early 1960s," Griffiths said.
"Even in this study, where we greatly controlled conditions to minimize adverse effects, about a third of subjects reported significant fear, with some also reporting transient feelings of paranoia," he added.
"Under unmonitored conditions, it's not hard to imagine those emotions escalating to panic and dangerous behavior."
Psilocybin, which is nontoxic and not addictive, acts like a message-carrying chemical called serotonin on brain cells. Serotonin is linked with mood.
It is produced by several species of mushrooms native to the Americas. Under U.S. law it is a Schedule I hallucinogenic substance, on a par with drugs such as heroin.
But its use in medical experiments is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and one team led by Dr. Charles Grob at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California is testing the drug on patients with end-stage cancer.
Grob said in a telephone interview his team has tested the drug on seven terminal cancer patients to see if it could work to reduce pain, calm them down and provide them some sense of well-being.
Dr. Solomon Snyder, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins who says he has experimented with LSD himself, said the experiment might lead to a way to find the "locus of religion" and the biological basis of consciousness in the brain.
But Griffiths said such study would be purely scientific.
"We're not entering into 'Does God exist or not exist.' This work can't and won't go there," he said.
Then the other 40% either lied about it or got a bad dose.
When I was a youngster the shrooms never gave me a "mystical experience" but boy was I trippin.
LOL!
Once I got past the thought of eating something that grew in cow sh!t it was great.
Sounds like something in the areas you've studied.
I drove 4 miles home from a party and it seemed like it was taking hours. It felt like I was going 200MPH but the speedometer only said I was going about 40MPH.
I got home and turned on the TV. There was some miniseries about virtual reality (Wild Palms) on and I really didn't need to watch that.
At least one team of doctors is already testing whether using them can help terminal cancer patients come to terms with their fates.
I have used them to come to terms with my fate for thirty years.
Drink the Kykeon, become Epoptes.
Know the difference between seeing and hearing.
Eleusis lives today as it has for the last 4000 years.
Sort of a synthetic mystical experience for patients.
If that helped you, then I'm glad.
My post wasn't a response to your's. "Mystical" is a personal experience, which can't be guaranteed for everyone by a drug.
I'm just glad that lizard finally quit talkin' to me. He never did make any sense.
I always enjoyed talking to fish tanks.
I always wondered how I could hear him with his lips sewn
shut like that .....
Ayahuasca bump.
My Oscar fish always wanted to talk but everything he said sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher.
Been watching this. Not all hallucinogenic drugs end up being used in religious practices ~ just some.
I have never had the opportunity to try shrooms. Always wanted to though.
I have tried salvia though. For three minutes you enter a different dimension.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=salvia
salvia
234 up, 9 down
Salvia Divinorum is a soft-leaved green plant, native to Southern Mexico...Became available in the underground psychedelic culture around the world in the early 1990's.
Salvia is unscheduled in the United States meaning it is legal to possess and sell... Salvia Divinorum has been added to a list of controlled plants in Australia as of June, 2002.
Depending on dosage, the Salvia experience can vary from a subtle, just-off-baseline state to a full-blown psychedelic experience. At higher doses users report dramatic time distortion, vivid imagery, encounters with beings, travel to other places, planets or times, living years as the paint on a wall or experiencing the full life of another individual. Needless to say these can be extremely powerful experiences and should only be attempted with a sitter. While most people remain unmoving during the experience, some individuals will attempt to get up and walk around while in a completely dissociated state.
While sub-threshold effects are somewhat innocuous--leading some people to be cavalier in subsequent experiences--once full effects are achieved, many people find S. divinorum to be unpleasantly overwhelming and more scary than fun. As has been found with pharmaceutical kappa-opioid agonists, salvia is aversive for many who try it.
COPYRIGHT OF EROWID.ORG
POSITIVE
short duration (when smoked)
radical perspective shifting
increase in sensual and aesthetic appreciation
creative dreamlike experience
insight into personal issues
NEUTRAL
powerful open and closed eye visuals
general change in consciousness (as with most psychoactives)
altered perceptions
change in body temperature (?)
sensation of physical push, pressure, or wind
sensation of entering or perceiving other dimensions, alternate realities
feeling of 'presence' or entity contact
dissociation at high doses, walking or standing
NEGATIVE
overly-intense experiences
fear, terror and panic
increased perspiration
possible difficulty integrating experiences
I was raised a secular humanist, and never had an interest in things spiritual until I did psilocybin in college. Given the right set, setting and dosage, the stuff does seem to have the power to direct one's attention towards the Divine. In my case, that ended up being Christian mysticism, wherein I learned that you can attain even higher states through prayer, meditation, fasting, liturgical ceremonies, and other non-drug techniques.
I never got to experience the spiritual side of mushrooms. I was too busy laughing.
My guess is that this is probably more a factor of availability than anything else.
One of the things I find interesting in this is that in the Old World there are a half dozen or so hallucinogenic sources yet in the New World there are 238+ (according to many sources).
June 2, 1980. Just after dawn.
Sleeping. A knock on my window. Annoyed, I get out of bed and open the window.
My friend, Parr, grinning from ear to ear: "Dude, get dressed. We just found a HUGE 'shroom field behind the school."
I don't remember much else about that summer.
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