New study finds shrooms to be effective against depression

A recent study has suggested that magic mushrooms may be a promising treatment option for depression in patients who have not otherwise responded to conventional medicine. Researchers from Imperial College London gave psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in mushrooms, to 12 clinically depressed people. After one week, all of them showed "a marked improvement in their symptoms."

From Scientific American:

"That is pretty remarkable in the context of currently available treatments," says Robin Carhart-Harris, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London and first author of the latest study, which is published in The Lancet Psychiatry.

The equivalent remission rate for SSRIs is around 20%.

The study's authors are not suggesting that psilocybin should be a treatment of last resort for depressed patients. "Our conclusion is more sober than that—we are simply saying that this is doable," says Carhart-Harris. "We can give psilocybin to depressed patients, they can tolerate it, and it is safe. This gives us an initial impression of the effectiveness of the treatment."

Comments

Weirdly Charming

If you’re a fan of art that makes you do a double-take, you need to check out Richard Brener . Based in the UK, Richard is an internationally collected artist who works primarily with ink, fineliners, and gouache. When you first see his pieces, they actually look pretty playful. Then you realize the entire canvas is packed with thousands of tiny, ghost-like shapes he calls "champs." They’re all squeezed together like commuters on a rush-hour train, and the level of detail is honestly mind-blowing. Richard spends hundreds of hours drawing these little guys over and over. It’s obsessive, very intentional, and a little bit wild. The cool part is that the longer you stare, the more the vibe shifts. Check out more photos below:

Where Bad Space and Good Music Collided

My first apartment was in Malate, and calling it “small” would be generous. I lived there with two girls and one guy, and to this day, I genuinely don’t know how we all fit. It felt like a magic trick. Or a health hazard. We were a musical mess. One roommate lived and breathed ’70s classics. Another was permanently blasting Korn and Slipknot. One survived solely on cheesy love songs. And me? I was floating somewhere between new wave and folk rock, pretending that made sense. Somehow, despite the noise and the chaos, we all lived together in this weird, mismatched harmony. No murders. No lawsuits. A win, honestly. My music taste now is nothing like it was in my twenties. Not even close. But I’ll always be grateful to Jacqueline for introducing me to this song in particular. It was playing when I woke up from a very memorable sleep in 2002. I was 21, half-awake, probably confused about life, and that song stuck. It still hasn’t let go.

'Star Wars' cutaway illustrations by Hans Jenssen and Richard Chasemore

These illustrations by Hans Jenssen and Richard Chasemore explore the inner workings of some of the most famous Star Wars vehicles, from the AT-AT walker to the Millennium Falcon. The interesting part about these images is that they're completely hand drawn, with no help from a computer whatsoever. Prepare to marvel at these wonderful examples of sci-fi art! [h/t: Galactic Academy ]

finding cain

Search This Blog