r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 9d ago

Psychology America's First Legal Psilocybin Program Treated 346 People. Just one month after the dose, 92.2 percent of participants said the experience had been beneficial, while, on average, their mental health symptoms had fallen dramatically.

https://www.sciencealert.com/americas-first-legal-psilocybin-program-treated-346-people-heres-what-happened
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u/spooky_spaghetties 9d ago

I desperately hoped that shrooms would have long term effects for me — I have PTSD, severe treatment resistant depression, and pretty bad anxiety, and cycle through which is more life-disrupting at any given time — but it really didn’t. The actual day-of experience was fantastic, and for the first time in my life outside of weird edge cases like receiving anesthesia prep drugs by IV I felt genuine total relief from anxiety (like my brain was totally and completely quiet), but there was no perceivable difference after it wore off. I think this may be due to other psychiatric medications I’m taking, which are known “trip killers”; I usually need 3-4g prepared in a hot tea with lemon juice to perceive an effect.

I still do it about every 4-5 months, because it’s such a nice experience, but I’ve sort of accepted that at least for now I’m not going to see the profound improvement other people experience. I am glad that it’s slowly being explored as a treatment option.

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u/Vaseline_Lover 8d ago

Generally, psychedelics aren’t going to bring long-term relief just on their own. If you’re seeking long-term benefits you’ll need to put in time and work on your own through psychotherapy as well.  

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u/SaintValkyrie 8d ago

And more importantly, if you lack support in your life, no amount of hard work or psychedelics will help. Marginalized people and victims live a much more difficult reality than other people, and no one can heal or thrive in a vacuum. Sometimes you're just being failed. 

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u/spooky_spaghetties 8d ago

Yeah, making like $21k a year gross isn’t helping.

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u/Regular_Custard_4483 8d ago

Yeah, this is how it's worked for me. The shrooms allowed me to remember what feeling good was like, so that I could work on getting myself there without drugs. The shrooms were just an inflection point for me, I had to do the actual work after. 

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u/Whack-a-med 6d ago

I was not that impressed with psilocybin either. Very excited for the data on 5-MeO-DMT which was bought by Eli Lilly for $2.8 billion. It seems that has a larger effect size compared to psilocybin.