Monday, June 10, 2019

Magic mushrooms could replace antidepressants within five years, says new psychedelic research centre

Exclusive: ‘People on antidepressants long-term say they feel blunted, with psychedelic therapy it’s the opposite, they talk about an emotional release, a reconnection’

Alex Matthews-King Health Correspondent

Hallucination-inducing drugs like magic mushrooms could be about to break big pharma’s stranglehold on the hugely lucrative market for antidepressants, according to the head of the world’s first centre for psychedelic research.

Antidepressant prescriptions have doubled in England in a decade with around seven million adults taking the drugs, and the global market is predicted to be worth $15.9bn (£12.5bn) by 2023.

At Imperial College London, Dr Robin Carhart-Harris is leading one of the first trials to test how therapy using psilocybin mushrooms, which are currently banned in the UK, compares to leading antidepressants.

While he won’t prejudge the results of the study, he says participants describe a cathartic emotional “release” with psilocybin therapy – the polar opposite of antidepressants, which patients complain leave their emotions, whether positive or negative, “blunted”.
It is the first of many studies planned under the banner of the new Centre for Psychedelic Research at London’s Imperial College.

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The medicinal wonders of psychedelics are finally being recognised

A large empty floor of the university’s Hammersmith campus will house a bank of treatment rooms that make it the UK’s first psychedelic therapy research clinic, and a “prototype and inspiration” for licensed psychedelic medicine clinics of the future.


Trials of psilocybin in treating eating disorders, and a study of the effects of powerful hallucinogenic DMT on the brain, are already planned following Imperial’s commitment to the centre.



The future home of the Psychedelic Research Centre treatment rooms which could become the model for future clinics (The Independent)

But it is the work on depression where research is most advanced, and most promising.

On the current trial, around 60 participants with moderate to severe depression will receive psilocybin treatment accompanied by a therapy session with a clinical psychologist.

The participants will also be randomly allocated to receive either a placebo or the drug escitalopram, with neither researchers or patients knowing who is in each group.


Magic mushrooms could be bought in the UK until 2005 (Getty)

Escitalopram is a type of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the drugs which account for the largest chunk of the antidepressant market.

“If you ask people who are taking SSRIs chronically, they often say ‘I feel blunted’,” Dr Carhart-Harris told The Independent, meaning both negative and positive emotions are suppressed.

“With psilocybin therapy they say the opposite, they talk about an emotional release, a reconnection, and this key emotional centre being more responsive.”




Patients will have MRI scans to test changes in their brains after

psilocybin therapy (Centre for Psychedelic Research)

The team use MRI scans to study psychedelics’ effects on the brain and the drug appears to reduce activity in the coordinating regions, releasing their grip and allowing the more primitive emotional centres to the fore.

Other early indications are that the list of side-effects is “twice as long” for escitalopram as it is for psilocybin therapy, and it is much faster acting than antidepressants – which can take months to work.



Treatment rooms are a soothing environment where participants are 

supported through their psychedelic experience (Centre for Psychedelic Research)

However, the treatment may not be suitable for everyone.

During the therapy sessions, patients are encouraged to follow the stream of the psychedelic experience which can be extremely vivid and may require them to confront past traumas or experiences.

“We don’t call it a ‘bad trip’,” Dr Carhart-Harris says. “We call it a ‘challenging psychological experience’ and we’re honest with people that it can be hellish.

“It can be nightmarish, but we’re prepared for this and this treatment model requires you literally face your demons.”

Psychedelic therapy is unlikely to be suitable for people with psychosis and regulators will need evidence of its effectiveness and safety from clinical trials.

But there is little evidence that they pose a risk of overdose or addiction and that could speed their route to approval.

Fresh magic mushrooms could be picked or bought in shops legally in the UK until 2005, when a change in law closed the loop hole and made them Class A drugs alongside crack cocaine.

“I would imagine if you had some bookmakers doing the odds, there would be strong odds on that [psychedelic therapy] will be licensed sometime in the next five to 10 years – maybe sooner,” Dr Carhart-Harris says.

That could put it on a collision course with powerful interests of the pharmaceutical industry, particularly if trials show psilocybin therapy to be superior to SSRIs




Psilocybin therapy may allow depressed people’s brains to rewire in 

a positive way, rather than suppressing good and bad emotion (Centre for Psychedelic Research)

“The implications of that are actually frightening to me, thinking of the power and influence of big pharma,” Carhart-Harris says. “What are they going to do with that if there’s this big public demand for the ‘mushroom therapy’, and not the Prozac?”

While there is a growing trend for “microdosing” psilocybin or LSD, the evidence to date suggests it is the combination of therapy and psychedelic experience that offers the best option of a lasting alternative to chronic antidepressants.




Psychedelics research has had to rely on philanthropic funding for years, 
but latest wave of trials show the field is set on not repeating the mistakes 
of the past (The Independent)

“If you strip the drug away from therapy you start seeing the adverse events that were being reported in the 1960s, when psychedelics left the clinic and became popularised,” Dr Carhart-Harris adds.

“None of us want those mistakes to be made again.”


Dr James Rucker is another of those researching the potential benefits of psychedelics, over at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London.


The King’s team are launching two trials, one looking at whether psilocybin therapy can help people whose depression is resistant to treatment with conventional antidepressants.

He says it was “possible” the drug could be licensed in five years. “But only if everything goes to plan, and you know what they say about best-laid plans.”

In Dr Rucker’s mind the process is similar to the approval of ketamine, where the first trials in depression took place in the 1990s and the first ketamine-based medicines are only now being licensed.

Psilocybin has much lower potential for abuse and overdose, but watchdogs will still need stage three trials which haven’t even begun.

“Like all treatments, they will suit some people but not others,” he told The Independent. “The trick, as ever, is trying to work that out before administration. But that trick has proven to be remarkably difficult to pull off, particularly in psychiatry.

Psychedelics research has had to rely on philanthropic funding for years, but latest wave of trials show the field is set on not repeating the mistakes of the past (The Independent)

“If you strip the drug away from therapy you start seeing the adverse events that were being reported in the 1960s, when psychedelics left the clinic and became popularised,” Dr Carhart-Harris adds.

“None of us want those mistakes to be made again.”

Dr James Rucker is another of those researching the potential benefits of psychedelics, over at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London.

The King’s team are launching two trials, one looking at whether psilocybin therapy can help people whose depression is resistant to treatment with conventional antidepressants.

He says it was “possible” the drug could be licensed in five years. “But only if everything goes to plan, and you know what they say about best-laid plans.”

In Dr Rucker’s mind the process is similar to the approval of ketamine, where the first trials in depression took place in the 1990s and the first ketamine-based medicines are only now being licensed.

Psilocybin has much lower potential for abuse and overdose, but watchdogs will still need stage three trials which haven’t even begun.

“Like all treatments, they will suit some people but not others,” he told The Independent. “The trick, as ever, is trying to work that out before administration. But that trick has proven to be remarkably difficult to pull off, particularly in psychiatry.”

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Lock of Beethoven's hair up for auction at Sotheby's

Composer cut off the lock of hair himself and gave it to pianist Anton Halm the year before his death

Roisin O'Connor @Roisin_OConnor


Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) ( )


A lock of Ludwig van Beethoven’s hair given to a pianist in 1826 will be sold at auction this week.

According to Sotheby’s auction house, which is selling the object on Tuesday 11 June, the lock of hair was cut off by the composer and given personally to Anton Halm the year before Beethoven’s death.

The “substantial” lock of his grey and brown hair is contained in an oval frame and has a pre-auction estimate of $15,000 to $19,000. It is the second time Beethoven’s hair has been sold at auction: in 1994 a lock cut from his head upon his death in March 1827, aged 56, was purchased by two enthusiasts who wanted to determine why he suffered from poor health.

“Halm told Beethoven’s great biographer AW Thayer that, while at work on the Grosse Fuge in 1826, he had asked Beethoven’s factotum Carl Holz to secure a lock of Beethoven’s hair for his wife Maria.  The hairs arrived a few days later, supposedly Beethoven’s, but in fact cut from a goat,” Sotheby’s said.

“When he had finished his arrangement of the fugue, Halm brought it and the hair to Beethoven. The composer was furious that his friend had been deceived, and promptly snipped off some hair and gave it to him, declaring it to be genuine.”


LONG READ WORTH IT 

A president for change – how Zelensky’s election in Ukraine is a blow against antisemitism

Like much of central Europe, Ukraine has a dark and murky history in terms of its attitude to Jews. But things are beginning to change, argues Kim Sengupta

Ukraine may have made significant and welcome moves away from antisemitism but, as it seeks to take faltering steps away from a devastating conflict, a divided nation and a fractured economy, Volodymyr Zelensky, the new-style Jewish president, is likely to find he has a hard struggle ahead to deal with old style problems of vested interests, greed and graft – all of which have plagued his country for a very long time.



Tony Awards 2019: Bryan Cranston makes veiled attack at Trump during acceptance speech

Cranston plays newsman in Network
Upon taking the stage, Cranston jokingly shouted: “Finally, a straight, old, white man gets a break!” 
Bryan Cranston took a thinly veiled jab at Donald Trump in his Tony Award acceptance speech on Sunday night.
The actor picked up the award for best performance by an actor in a leading role in a play for his performance as newsman Howard Beale in a stage adaptation of Network.
He dedicated his award to “all the real journalists around the world” saying they are “in the line of fire”.
“The media is not the enemy of the people,” Cranston said, contradicting one of the president’s frequent claims.
“Demagoguery is the enemy of the people.”

Actors in award-winning LGBT+ play 'pelted with stones in hate crime' after kissing in street

'The attack happened because we were embracing,' says Lucy Jane Parkinson

Two actors starring in an award-winning LGBT+ play were pelted with stones in a “cowardly, homophobic hate crime” after kissing in the street.
Lucy Jane Parkinson said she and Rebecca Banatvala were targeted as they travelled to a performance of Rotterdam at the Nuffield Southampton Theatres(NST) in Southampton.
They were verbally abused and Ms Parkinson suffered minor injuries after being hit in the face with a missile thrown from a passing car.
The attack led to the cancellation of Saturday’s performance of the Olivier Award-winning play by Jon Brittain.
Ms Parkinson, who describes herself as a drag king, said: “The attack happened because we were embracing. There’s no mistake that this was a homophobic hate crime.
“It was a cowardly attack as it was a moving car. Our community shouldn’t have to tolerate this. This is why we have Pride.

“We should take all steps we can in the education system to help to eradicate this aggressive ignorance from strangers to other strangers.”
Ms Parkinson told the BBC she was struck and knocked to the ground as she kissed her partner. She said they heard “young boys laughing” as the car drove off. 
Poster for the Oliver Award-winning play Rotterdam, by Jon Brittain (Hartshorn-Hook)
The attack happened just days after it was reported that a lesbian couple were beaten by a group of youths on board a night bus in London.
Melania Geymonat, a 28-year-old Ryanair cabin crew member from Uruguay, and her girlfriend Chris said they were assaulted after “hooligans” demanded the couple kiss for their entertainment.

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Five male youths aged between 15 and 18 have been arrested and released on police bail.
“We are devastated that this kind of behaviour is still so prevalent, a fact which reinforces the importance of this play’s message,” the production company behind Rotterdam said in a statement.
“The production have requested anyone with relevant information should contact the local police and assist with the inquiry.”
Hampshire Police confirmed it has received a report of homophobic abuse and that the matter was now under investigation.
“We have received a report from a third party relating to an incident which happened on Hill Lane, Southampton,” a police spokesperson said.
“It has been reported that homophobic abuse was shouted at two women, and stones thrown at them, by the occupants of a passing car.” 
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The two actors initially said they did not want to make a formal complaint before confirming on Sunday afternoon that they wanted the police to investigate.
Sam Hodges, the director and CEO of NST, said: “I am extremely sad that this sort of appalling behaviour is still happening anywhere, let alone in a city where we have worked so hard to promote a culture of tolerance, inclusivity and civic pride.
“Our thoughts are with the two actors in question and with the whole company. This only makes us more determined to tell these important stories on our stages.”

Where are the congressional hearings on Puerto Rico?
Puerto Rico did not receive the amount of money needed to recover from the destruction of the storm Maria, due to Trump not providing the money needed for recovery! Almost 3,000 people died due to a lack of electricity and medical care!






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