Researchers believe the drug might help loosen the brain's fixed pathways, which can then be "reset" with talking therapy afterwards.

A powerful hallucinogenic drug known for its part in shamanic rituals is being trialled as a potential cure for depression for the first time.

Participants will be given the drug DMT, followed by talking therapy.

It is hoped this could offer an alternative for the significant number of people who don't respond to conventional pills for depression.

Psychedelic-assisted therapy might offer longer-term relief from symptoms, some researchers believe.

A growing body of evidence indicates other psychedelic drugs, particularly alongside talking therapy, are safe and can be effective for treating a range of mental illnesses.

This will be the first time DMT is given to people with moderate to severe depression in a clinical trial.

Dr Carol Routledge, the chief scientific officer of Small Pharma, the company running the trial said: "We believe the impact will be almost immediate, and longer lasting than conventional antidepressants."

'Spirit molecule'

The drug is known as the "spirit molecule" because of the way it alters the human consciousness and produces hallucinations that have been likened to a near-death experience.

It is also the active ingredient in ayahuasca, a traditional Amazonian plant medicine used to bring spiritual enlightenment.

Researchers believe the drug might help loosen the brain's fixed pathways, which can then be "reset" with talking therapy afterwards.

Dr Routledge likened the drug to "shaking a snow globe" - throwing entrenched negative thought patterns up in the air which the therapy allows to be resettled into a more functional form.

But this hypothesis still needs to be proven.

The team is consulting Imperial College London, which runs the pioneering Centre for Psychedelic Research.

As part of the study, they hope to investigate whether the drug can be administered as a one-off or as part of a course.

Subjects will be followed up for at least six months to see how long the effects of the treatment last.

Ketamine clinic

Meanwhile, a ketamine-assisted therapy clinic is set to open in Bristol next week.

First ketamine-assisted psychotherapy clinic opens

While the drug is already used for depression in clinics like the ketamine treatment service in Oxford, it is not accompanied by psychotherapy.

Rather, it is used to provide temporary relief from symptoms for people who have very serious, treatment-resistant depression.

So-far unpublished researched presented at a conference by professor of psychopharmacology at the University of Exeter, Celia Morgan, suggests ketamine accompanied by therapy has much longer-lasting effects.

Prof Morgan said there was mounting evidence that drugs, including psilocybin, LSD, ketamine and MDMA (Ecstasy), were safe and could play a role in the treatment of mental health disorders.

And there was some early evidence they could have longer-term effects than the medicines conventionally prescribed as antidepressants, known as SSRIs, but more research was needed.

They also worked using a completely different mechanism, Prof Morgan explained.

'Long-lasting change'

While conventional drugs may numb negative feelings, "these drugs seem to allow you to approach difficult experiences in your life, sit with that distress and process them," she said.

"It might be getting at something more fundamental" that was the root cause of the problem, Prof Morgan said.

"Through that we think you can get much more long-lasting change."

Prof Michael Bloomfield, a consultant psychiatrist at University College London, said although it was a "really exciting" area of research, caution was needed in overpromising the drugs' potential.

It was also a field of therapy that could be open to abuse and misuse, he said.

Prof Morgan also stressed the importance the drugs being used within the context of therapy as there were concerns that "people might think they can give it a go with some recreational drugs".

"But it's really not how it works" she said.

‘The ketamine blew my mind’: can psychedelics cure addiction and depression?

Psilocybin might produce rapid and lasting antidepressant effects

Scientists in Denmark believe the psychedelic substance psilocybin might produce rapid and lasting antidepressant effects in part because it enhances neuroplasticity in the brain. Their new research, published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, has found evidence that psilocybin increases the number of neuronal connections in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus of pig brains.

Psilocybin — the active component in so-called “magic” mushrooms — has been shown to have profound and long-lasting effects on personality and mood. But the mechanisms behind these effects remain unclear. Researchers at Copenhagen University were interested in whether changes in neuroplasticity in brain regions associated with emotional processing could help explain psilocybin’s antidepressant effects.

“Both post-mortem human brain and in vivo studies in depressed individuals have shown a loss of synapses through the down-regulation of synaptic proteins and genes,” the authors of the study wrote. “Hence, upregulation of presynaptic proteins and an increase in synaptic density may be associated with the potential antidepressive effects of psychedelics.”

The researchers had previously conducted tests to establish the proper dose of psilocybin needed to produce psychoactive effects in pigs, who were examined because their brains are anatomically similar to the brains of humans.

A group of 12 pigs received a psychoactive dose of psilocybin, while a separate group of 12 pigs received inert saline injections. Half of the pigs were euthanized one day after the administration of psilocybin, while the rest were euthanized one week later.

An examination of brain tissue from the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex revealed increases in the protein SV2A in pigs who had received psilocybin. SV2A, or synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A, is commonly used as a marker of the density of synaptic nerve endings in the brain. SV2A is typically reduced in patients with major depressive disorder.

“We find that a single dose of psilocybin increases the presynaptic marker SV2A already after one day and that it remains higher seven days after,” the researchers said, adding that the “increased levels of SV2A after intervention with a psychedelic drug adds to the scientific evidence that psychedelics enhance neuroplasticity, which may explain the mechanism of action of its antidepressant properties.”

The study, “A Single Dose of Psilocybin Increases Synaptic Density and Decreases 5-HT2A Receptor Density in the Pig Brain“, was authored by by Nakul Ravi Raval, Annette Johansen, Lene Lundgaard Donovan, Nídia Fernandez Ros, Brice Ozenne, Hanne Demant Hansen, and Gitte Moos Knudse.

https://www.psypost.org/2021/03/new-research-provides-evidence-that-a-single-dose-of-psilocybin-can-boost-brain-connections-60095

What about the mushrooms we don’t notice? And how many of them are endangered?

Fungi are key to our survival. Are we doing enough to protect them?

For almost a decade, one lone mushroom was classified as an endangered species, and scientists say more could be in trouble.

When Italian botanist Giuseppe Inzenga first tasted the white ferula mushroom in 1863, he described it as one of the tastiest he had ever had.

Found primarily in Sicily’s Madonie mountain range growing in limestone and at elevations of over 1,000 feet, the prized mushroom is sold for around 50 euros for two pounds.

“This mushroom is really delicious. You can eat it raw and also cooked,” says Giuseppe Venturella, a mycologist at the University of Palermo in Sicily. He compares it to a porcini, notes that it’s rich in B vitamins, and says the best way to experience the taste is eating it raw, with a little olive oil and parmesan cheese.

Fast forward 100 years from Inzenga’s enthusing, and the same mushroom species, still prized for its taste, is now listed as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, an organization that tracks population numbers for many of the world’s species.

Picking the mushroom is off limits in protected areas inside the Madonie National Park region, but foragers can pluck mature mushrooms, indicated by a cap with sides growing longer than three centimeters, in surrounding regions. Unlike most mushroom species, the white ferula fruits in spring, with its season lasting from April to late May.

The white ferula was the first mushroom to be recognized for the impact humans were having on its survival, and from 2006 to 2015 it was the only one of its kind to be globally recognized as endangered.

“It was so beloved by people in [Sicily] that when the numbers began to decline, it was part of popular conversation,” says Nicholas Money, a mycologist at Miami University in Ohio.

But what about the mushrooms we don’t notice? And how many of them are endangered?

“We think the true biodiversity of fungi is somewhere between one million and six million species,” says Anne Pringle, a University of Wisconsin-Madison mycologist—as fungus experts are called—and a National Geographic explorer. Yet despite their global prevalence, fungi have historically been left out of conservation initiatives.

“Because people eat it,” says Pringle of the white ferula, “they notice and care. There might be more than a thousand stories like that of fungi in trouble that we just don’t know about.”

So how do we conserve organisms we can’t see and don’t understand? And why should we try?

“Life on the planet wouldn’t exist without fungi as we know it,” says Greg Mueller, a mushroom conservation expert and the chief scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Conserving them, Money says, “is an urgent concern because of their relationship with forests and trees. You can’t have the trees without the fungi…. We cannot survive without them. In terms of the health of the planet, they’re incredibly important.”

Full Article: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/fungi-are-key-to-survival-are-we-doing-enough-to-protect-them

Om Namah Shivaya (We Plants Are Happy Plants Remix)

Neurologist: Masks Are a Crime Against Humanity

Dr. Margarite Griesz-Brisson MD, PhD is a Consultant Neurologist and Neurophysiologist with a PhD in Pharmacology, with special interest in neurotoxicology, environmental medicine, neuroregeneration and neuroplasticity. This is what she has to say about masks and their effects on our brains:

“The rebreathing of our exhaled air will without a doubt create oxygen deficiency and a flooding of carbon dioxide. We know that the human brain is very sensitive to oxygen depravation. There are nerve cells for example in the hippocampus, that can’t be longer than 3 minutes without oxygen – they cannot survive. The acute warning symptoms are headaches, drowsiness, dizziness, issues in concentration, slowing down of the reaction time – reactions of the cognitive system.

However, when you have chronic oxygen depravation, all of those symptoms disappear, because you get used to it. But your efficiency will remain impaired and the undersupply of oxygen in your brain continues to progress.

We know that neurodegenerative diseases take years to decades to develop. If today you forget your phone number, the breakdown in your brain would have already started 20 or 30 years ago.

While you’re thinking, that you have gotten used to wearing your mask and rebreathing your own exhaled air, the degenerative processes in your brain are getting amplified as your oxygen deprivation continues.

The second problem is that the nerve cells in your brain are unable to divide themselves normally. So in case our governments will generously allow as to get rid of the masks and go back to breathing oxygen freely again in a few months, the lost nerve cells will no longer be regenerated. What is gone is gone.

[..]I do not wear a mask, I need my brain to think. I want to have a clear head when I deal with my patients, and not be in a carbon dioxide induced anaesthesia.

[..]There is no unfounded medical exemption from face masks because oxygen deprivation is dangerous for every single brain. It must be the free decision of every human being whether they want to wear a mask that is absolutely ineffective to protect themselves from a virus.

For children and adolescents, masks are an absolute no-no. Children and adolescents have an extremely active and adaptive immune system and they need a constant interaction with the microbiome of the Earth. Their brain is also incredibly active, as it is has so much to learn. The child’s brain, or the youth’s brain is thirsting for oxygen. The more metabolically active the organ is, the more oxygen it requires. In children and adolescents every organ is metabolically active.

To deprive a child’s or an adolescent’s brain from oxygen, or to restrict it in any way, is not only dangerous to their health, it is absolutely criminal. Oxygen deficiency inhibits the development of the brain, and the damage that has taken place as a result CANNOT be reversed.

The child needs the brain to learn, and the brain needs oxygen to function. We don’t need a clinical study for that. This is simple, indisputable physiology. Conscious and purposely induced oxygen deficiency is an absolutely deliberate health hazard, and an absolute medical contraindication.

An absolute medical contraindication in medicine means that this drug, this therapy, this method or measure should not be used – is not allowed to be used. To coerce an entire population to use an absolute medical contraindication by force, there must be definite and serious reasons for this, and the reasons must be presented to competent interdisciplinary and independent bodies to be verified and authorised.

When in ten years, dementia is going to increase exponentially, and the younger generations couldn’t reach their god-given potential, it won’t help to say “we didn’t need the masks”.

[..]How can a veterinarian, a software distributer, a business man, an electrical car manufacturer and a physicist decided on matters regarding the health of the entire population? Please dear colleagues, we all have to wake up.

I know how damaging oxygen depravation is for the brain, cardiologist knows it for the heart, the pulmonologist knows it for the lungs. Oxygen deprivation damages every single organ.

Where are our health departments, our health insurance, our medical associations? It would have been their duty to be vehemently against the lockdown and to stop it and stop it from the very beginning.

Why do the medical boards give punishments to doctors who give people exemptions? Does the person or the doctor seriously have to prove that oxygen depravation harms people? What kind of medicine are our doctors and medical associations representing?

Who is responsible for this crime? The ones who want to enforce it? The ones who let it happen and play along, or the ones who don’t prevent it?[..]It’s not about masks, it’s not about viruses, it’s certainly not about your health. It is about much much more. I am not participating. I am not afraid.

[..]You can notice, they are already taking our air to breathe.

The imperative of the hour is personal responsibility.

We are responsible for what we think, not the media. We are responsible for what we do, not our superiors. We are responsible for our health, not the World Health Organisation. And we are responsible for what happens in our country, not the government.”

https://www.ageofautism.com/2020/10/masks-and-oxygen-deprivation-dr-margarite-griesz-brisson.html

Interview with Stefan Verstappen - Navigating Dystopia

On the psychology of the conspiracy denier

Tim Foyle
Reporting For Beauty
Sat, 06 Mar 2021 08:17 UTC

Why is it that otherwise perfectly intelligent, thoughtful and rationally minded people baulk at the suggestion that sociopaths are conspiring to manipulate and deceive them? And why will they defend this ill-founded position with such vehemence?

History catalogues the machinations of liars, thieves, bullies and narcissists and their devastating effects. In modern times too, evidence of corruption and extraordinary deceptions abound.

We know, without question, that politicians lie and hide their connections and that corporations routinely display utter contempt for moral norms - that corruption surrounds us.

We know that revolving doors between the corporate and political spheres, the lobbying system, corrupt regulators, the media and judiciary mean that wrongdoing is practically never brought to any semblance of genuine justice.

We know that the press makes noise about these matters occasionally but never pursues them with true vigour.

We know that in the intelligence services and law enforcement wrongdoing on a breathtaking scale is commonplace and that, again, justice is never forthcoming.

We know that governments repeatedly ignore or trample on the rights of the people, and actively abuse and mistreat the people. None of this is controversial.

So exactly what is it that conspiracy deniers refuse to acknowledge with such fervour, righteousness and condescension? Why, against all the evidence, do they sneeringly and contemptuously defend the crumbling illusion that 'the great and good' are up there somewhere, have everything in hand, have only our best interests at heart, and are scrupulous, wise and sincere? That the press serves the people and truth rather than the crooks? That injustice after injustice result from mistakes and oversights, and never from that dread word: conspiracy?

What reasonable person would continue to inhabit such a fantasy world?

The point of disagreement here is only on the matter of scale. Someone who is genuinely curious about the plans of powerful sociopaths won't limit the scope of their curiosity to, for example, one corporation, or one nation. Why would they? Such a person assumes that the same patterns on display locally are likely to be found all the way up the power food chain. But the conspiracy denier insists this is preposterous.

Why?

It is painfully obvious that the pyramidical societal and legal structures that humanity has allowed to develop are exactly the kind of dominance hierarchies that undoubtedly favour the sociopath. A humane being operating with a normal and healthy cooperative mindset has little inclination to take part in the combat necessary to climb a corporate or political ladder.

So what do conspiracy deniers imagine the 70 million or more sociopaths in the world do all day, born into a 'game', in which all the wealth and power are at the top of the pyramid, while the most effective attributes for 'winning' are ruthlessness and amorality? Have they never played Monopoly?

Sociopaths do not choose their worldview consciously, and are simply unable to comprehend why normal people would put themselves at such an incredible disadvantage by limiting themselves with conscientiousness and empathy, which are as beyond the understanding of the sociopath as a world without them are to the humane being.

All the sociopath need do to win in the game is lie publicly whilst conspiring privately. What could be simpler? In 2021, to continue to imagine that the world we inhabit is not largely driven by this dynamic amounts to reckless naiveté bordering on insanity. Where does such an inadvertently destructive impulse originate?

The infant child places an innate trust in those it finds itself with - a trust which is, for the most part, essentially justified. The infant could not survive otherwise.

In a sane and healthy society, this deep instinct would evolve as the psyche developed. As self-awareness, the cognitive and reasoning abilities and scepticism evolved in the individual, this innate trust impulse would continue to be understood as a central need of the psyche. Shared belief systems would exist to consciously evolve and develop this childish impulse in order to place this faith somewhere consciously - in values and beliefs of lasting meaning and worth to the society, the individual, or, ideally, both.

Reverence and respect for tradition, natural forces, ancestors, for reason, truth, beauty, liberty, the innate value of life, or the initiating spirit of all things, might all be considered valid resting places in which to consciously place our trust and faith - as well as those derived from more formalised belief systems.

Regardless of the path taken to evolve and develop a personal faith, it is the bringing of one's own consciousness and cognition to this innate impulse that is relevant here. I believe this is a profound responsibility - to develop and cultivate a mature faith - which many are, understandably, unaware of.

What occurs when there is a childish need within us which has never evolved beyond its original survival function of trusting those in our environment who are, simply, the most powerful; the most present and active? When we have never truly explored our own psyches, and deeply interrogated what we truly believe and why? When our motivation for trusting anything or anyone goes unchallenged? When philosophy is left to the philosophers?

I suggest the answer is simple, and that the evidence of this phenomenon and the havoc it is wreaking is all around us: the innate impulse to trust the mother never evolves, never encounters and engages with its counterbalance of reason (or mature faith), and remains forever on its 'default' infant setting.

While the immature psyche no longer depends on parents for its well-being, the powerful and motivating core tenet I have described remains intact: unchallenged, unconsidered and undeveloped. And, in a world in which stability and security are distant memories, these survival instincts, rather than being well-honed, considered, relevant, discerning and up to date, remain, quite literally, those of a baby. Trust is placed in the biggest, loudest, most present and undeniable force around, because instinct decrees that survival depends on it.

And, in this great 'world nursery', the most omnipresent force is the network of institutions which consistently project an unearned image of power, calm, expertise, concern and stability.

In my view, this is how conspiracy deniers are able to cling to and aggressively defend the utterly illogical fantasy that somehow - above a certain undefined level of the societal hierarchy - corruption, deceit, malevolence and narcissism mysteriously evaporate. That, contrary to the maxim, the more power a person has, the more integrity they will inevitably exhibit. These poor deluded souls essentially believe that where personal experience and prior knowledge cannot fill in the gaps in their worldview - in short, where there is a barred door - mummy and daddy are behind it, working out how best to ensure that their little precious will be comfortable, happy and safe forever.

This is the core, comforting illusion at the root of the conspiracy denier's mindset, the decrepit foundation upon which they build a towering castle of justification from which to pompously jeer at and mock those who see otherwise.

This explains why it is that the conspiracy denier will attack any suggestion that the caregiving archetype is no longer present - that sociopaths are behind the barred door, who hold us all in utter contempt or disregard us completely. The conspiracy denier will attack any such suggestion as viciously as if their survival depended on it - which, in a way, within the makeup of their unconscious and precarious psyche, it does.

Their sense of well-being, of security, of comfort, even of a future at all, is completely (and completely unconsciously) invested in this fantasy. The infant has never matured, and, because they are not conscious of this, other than as a deep attachment to their personal security, they will fiercely attack any threat to this unconscious and central aspect of their worldview.

The tediously common refrain from the conspiracy denier is, 'there couldn't be a conspiracy that big'.

The simple retort to such a self-professed expert on conspiracies is obvious: how big?

The biggest 'medical' corporations in the world can go for decades treating the settling of court cases as mere business expenses, for crimes ranging from the suppressing of adverse test events to multiple murders resulting from undeclared testing to colossal environmental crimes.

Governments perform the vilest and most unthinkable 'experiments' (crimes) on their own people without consequence.

Politicians habitually lie to our faces, without consequence.

And on and on. At what point, exactly, does a conspiracy become so big that 'they' just couldn't get away with it, and why? I suggest it's at the point where the cognitive ability of the conspiracy denier falters, and their unconscious survival instinct kicks in. The point at which the intellect becomes overwhelmed with the scope of events and the instinct is to settle back into the familiar comforting faith known and cultivated since the first moment one's lips found the nipple. The faith that someone else is dealing with it - that where the world becomes unknown to us, a powerful and benevolent human authority exists in which we have only to place our faith unconditionally in order to guarantee eternal emotional security.

This dangerous delusion may be the central factor placing humanity's physical security and future in the hands of sociopaths.

To anyone in the habit of dismissing people who are questioning, investigative and sceptical as tin foil hat wearing, paranoid, science-denying Trump supporters, the question is: what do you believe in? Where have you placed your faith and why? How is it that while no one trusts governments, you appear to trust nascent global governance organisations without question? How is this rational?

If you are placing faith in such organisations, consider that in the modern global age, these organisations, as extraordinarily well presented as they are, are simply grander manifestations of the local versions we know we can't trust. They are not our parents and demonstrate no loyalty to humane values. There is no reason to place any faith whatsoever in any of them.

If you haven't consciously developed a faith or questioned why you believe as you do to some depth, such a position might seem misanthropic, but in truth, it is the opposite. These organisations have not earned your trust with anything other than PR money and glossy lies. True power remains, as ever, with the people.

There is a reason why Buddhists strongly advise the placing of one's faith in the Dharma, or the natural law of life, rather than in persons, and that similar refrains are common in other belief systems.

Power corrupts. And, in the world today, misplaced and unfounded trust could well be one of the greatest sources of power there is.

Massive criminal conspiracies exist. The evidence is overwhelming. The scope of those currently underway is unknown, but there is no reason to imagine, in the new global age, that the sociopathic quest for power or the possession of the resources required to move towards it is diminishing. Certainly not while dissent is mocked and censored into silence by gatekeepers, 'useful idiots', and conspiracy deniers, who are, in fact, directly colluding with the sociopathic agenda through their unrelenting attack on those who would shine a light on wrongdoing.

It is every humane being's urgent responsibility to expose sociopathic agendas wherever they exist - never to attack those who seek to do so.

Now, more than ever, it is time to put away childish things, and childish impulses, and to stand up as adults to protect the future of the actual children who have no choice but to trust us with their lives.

This essay has focussed on what I consider to be the deepest psychological driver of conspiracy denial.

There are certainly others, such as the desire to be accepted; the avoidance of knowledge of, and engagement with, the internal and external shadow; the preservation of a positive and righteous self-image: a generalised version of the 'flying monkey' phenomenon, in which a self-interested and vicious class protect themselves by coalescing around the bully; the subtle unconscious adoption of the sociopathic worldview (e.g. 'humanity is the virus'); outrage addiction/superiority complex/status games; a stunted or unambitious intellect that finds validation through maintaining the status quo; the dissociative protective mechanism of imagining that crimes and horrors committed repeatedly within our lifetime are somehow not happening now, not 'here'; and plain old fashioned laziness and cowardice.

My suggestion is that, to some degree, all of these build on the foundation of the primary cause I've outlined here.

On-the-psychology-of-the-conspiracy-denier

Wonder at your ability to draw in and generate all experiences, whether you label them as positive or negative.

The freedoms you want to experience for yourself, extend that vision to all life in the Universe.

All life is free to explore whatever frequency is chosen, even if it's a negative.

The totality of light and dark combined create the universal structure.

- The 9D Pleiadian Collective

How they all tended, without our knowing it, towards the growth of our being and consciousness

The true sense of the (Divine)  guidance becomes clearer when we can go deep within and see from there more intimately the play of the forces and receive intimations of the Will behind them. The surface mind can get only an imperfect glimpse.

When we are in contact with the Divine or in contact with inner knowledge or vision, we begin to see all the circumstances of our life in the new light and observe how they all tended, without our knowing it, towards the growth of our being and consciousness, towards the work we had to do to be made,- not only what seemed good, fortunate or successful but also the struggles, failures, difficulties, upheavals.

But with each person the guidance works differently according to his nature, the conditions of his life, his cast of consciousness, his stage of development, his need for further experience. We are not automata but conscious beings and our mentality, our will and its decisions, our attitude to life and demand on it, our motives and movements help to determine our course: they may lead to much suffering and evil, but through it all, the guidance makes use of them for our growth in experience and consequently the development of our being and consciousness. 

All advance, by however devious ways, even in spite of what seems a going backwards or going astray, gathering whatever experience, is necessary for the soul's destiny. When we are in close contact with the Divine, a protection can come which helps or directly guides or moves us; it does not throw aside all difficulties, sufferings or dangers, but it carries us through them and out of them - except where for a special purpose there is need of the opposite.

- Sri Aurobindo

A Day On Solid Ground - to listen