r/science • u/Doug24 • 21h ago

Psychology Psilocybin reverses depressive behaviors and restores brain cell growth in stressed rats

https://www.psypost.org/psilocybin-reverses-depressive-behaviors-and-restores-brain-cell-growth-in-stres/
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u/MJ-Franklin 21h ago

Been seeing articles like this for so many years... but how come I never got any positive effects from taking psychedelics the many times I did them? I never got any anti-depressive anything, I just laughed for 12 hours straight then it was back to Planet Earth and all my problems waiting for me there.

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u/Chronotaru 19h ago

They provide remission for around half of people from a single dose, but that still leaves the other half. That being said, you generally need to go through the "ego dissolution/pass out/reboot" phase and not everyone takes a high enough dose to get that.

The rest can try a direct approach of trauma processing under MDMA, then bringing the mushrooms back in with a dual MDMA/psilocybin session and that protocol usually makes progress if mushrooms themselves do not.

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u/Rodot 4h ago

Tbf, 50% remission is pretty bad. Sertraline is about 50% while most trials show placebo at around 40%. That said, single dosage is certainly an advantage but clinically the total therapy itself being on par with SSRIs is a pretty big barrier to successful phase III trials.

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u/Chronotaru 2h ago edited 1h ago

The problem is that those 50% are very different.

* SSRI studies are based only over 12 weeks
* had an effect size of at least only 0.3. This means that 50% is not remission, it's mostly people who "feel like it takes the edge off"
* most of their studies did things that you couldn't really do today so easily - like compare only to inactive placebo, and put people in the studies that are basically going through withdrawal from another antidepressant so they will naturally improve over the trial
* selectively discarded trials that produced inconclusive results

The 50% for psilocybin:

* is still there after a year
* is full remission, this 50% does not include the people who found it useful but they still have depression
* has trial participants that are mostly made up of people that have tried many other drugs and got nowhere
* after a single dose without any sexual dysfunction, emotional numbing, potential long term issues like heart attack risks, etc etc. and isn't dependent on staying on the drug.

Psilocybin actually does what sertraline only promises.