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Ayahuasca use associated with greatly improved anxiety and depression symptoms in large international study

Despite their illegality and a tendency among the media and politicians to demonize their use, psychedelics have been shown to have transformative effects on individuals suffering from mental health problems, including depression and anxiety. At the same time, drug use more generally is a powerful predictor of mental health issues and the line between recreational and medicinal use is often thin.

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive Amazonian brew which holds a central place in healing rituals and popular syncretic religions, especially in South America. Despite its widespread use in these contexts and growing interest globally, however, large-scale studies were lacking until very recently.

The Global Ayahuasca Project was conducted from 2017 to 2020 and is the largest cross-sectional study on Ayahuasca use to date, taking the form of an online self-reported questionnaire. A portion of its results are published in the Journal of Affective Disorders Reports, and tell the story of a significant connection between Ayahuasca use and improvements in affective disorders.

The study included more than 11,000 respondents, 7,785 of whom reported suffering from symptoms of depression or anxiety at the time of consumption. The authors made use of a variety of measures to assess mental health outcomes among Ayahuasca users, as well as their subjective experience both during and following consumption.

The results of the study show an impressive amelioration in depression and anxiety symptoms nearly across the board. 94% of respondents experienced some (“a bit”), great (“very much”) or complete resolution of depression symptoms; the same was true in 90% of cases for anxiety symptoms.

The large sample size allowed for the authors to draw a number of significant conclusions about the kinds of Ayahuasca experiences that correlated most strongly with important improvements. Those who reported more profound mystical experiences, for example, tended to experience the greatest improvements. A greater number of insights into one’s personal relationships also correlated strongly with improvements, suggesting one cognitive pathway by which the drug may reduce anxiety and depression symptoms.

Not all respondents were so lucky, however. A small minority of individuals reported worsened depression symptoms (2.7%) and worsened anxiety symptoms (4.4%). Of course, depression and anxiety symptoms evolve over time and it may be that the Ayahuasca use was unrelated to these changes, but there is at least some evidence of its implication. For example, feeling disconnected or alone; nervous, anxious or on edge; or depressed or hopeless in the weeks immediately following consumption were all predictors of worsened symptoms.

One major limitation of the study is its cross-sectional nature, meaning that we can’t reliably confirm a causal relationship. It’s also worth mentioning that self-reporting, and especially historical, affective self-reporting can be unreliable. Finally, delivery of the questionnaire via Ayahuasca groups and forums, where individuals with positive reactions are more likely to be active, may have translated to some significant selection bias.

Overall, the study suggests an important relation between Ayahuasca use and improved affect among individuals suffering from depression or anxiety, and very little evidence of negative mental health effects. Understanding the cognitive, emotional and even social pathways by which Ayahuasca and other psychedelics work is an important next step.

The study, “Ayahuasca use and reported effects on depression and anxiety symptoms: An international cross-sectional study of 11,912 consumers,” was published in April 2021.

DMT, active component in ayahuasca, aids in the growth of new neurons

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?

Psychedelic drug DMT to be trialled in UK to treat depression

UK regulators have given the go-ahead for the first clinical trial of the use of the psychedelic drug dimethyltriptamine (DMT) to treat depression.

The trial will initially give the drug – known as the “spirit molecule” for the powerful hallucinogenic trips it induces – to healthy individuals, but it is expected to be followed by a second trial in patients with depression, where DMT will be given alongside psychotherapy.

Taking the drug before therapy is akin to shaking up a snow globe and letting the flakes settle, said Carol Routledge, chief scientific and medical officer at Small Pharma, the company running the trial in collaboration with Imperial College London.

“The psychedelic drug breaks up all of the ruminative thought processes in your brain – it literally undoes what has been done by either the stress you’ve been through or the depressive thoughts you have – and hugely increases the making of new connections.

“Then the [psychotherapy] session afterwards is the letting-things-settle piece of things – it helps you to make sense of those thoughts and puts you back on the right track. We think this could be a treatment for a number of depressive disorders besides major depression, including PTSD, treatment-resistant depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and possibly some types of substance abuse.”

DMT is found in several plants and is one of the active ingredients in ayahuasca, a bitter drink consumed during shamanistic rituals in South America and elsewhere. DMT is also available as a street drug in the UK, where it classified as a class A substance, carrying a maximum penalty of seven years in jail for possession and life imprisonment for supply.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approved the trial on Monday, and Small Pharma is currently involved in discussions with the Home Office, which must also give permission because DMT is a controlled substance.

The hope is that the initial trial, which aims to establish the lowest dose of DMT that elicits a psychedelic experience, could begin in January. It will involve 32 healthy volunteers, who have never previously taken a psychedelic drug, including ecstasy or ketamine. This will be followed by trial in 36 patients with clinical depression.

The treatment will be modelled on studies of psilocybin – the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms – in depression. Here patients are brought into a clinic, where they undergo a “setting” session, during which the clinician primes them to open their mind to the drug, and ensures that they are comfortable and relaxed. Next, they are administered the drug, and once the psychedelic experience ends, the patient immediately undergo a session of psychotherapy.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/dec/09/psychedelic-drug-dmt-to-be-trialled-in-uk-to-treat-depression

Reports of positive encounters with autonomous entities after taking DMT suggest drug may have therapeutic potential

A new study analyzed over 2,500 reported encounters with autonomous entities after taking “breakthrough” doses of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). The findings were published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

DMT is a Schedule 1 psychedelic drug known to produce lucidity, hallucinations, time distortions, and spiritual experiences.

“Among the most vivid, intriguing, memorable, and sometimes disconcerting experiences that people report after taking a high dose of inhaled or intravenous DMT are those of encountering seemingly autonomous entities or beings,” study authors Alan K. Davis and his team say. These reports range from encounters with God to contact with alien species.

Davis and his colleagues conducted a study to uncover common aspects of these reports and to better understand how these experiences come to be interpreted as encounters with self-governing entities.

Researchers surveyed 2,561 adults who reported having previously encountered an autonomous entity after inhaling a very strong dose of DMT. No subjects had been previously diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. The subjects were an average of 31 years old and 77% were male. Questionnaires asked participants for a brief written account of their most memorable encounter with an entity and then asked them a series of questions addressing details of the experience and their interpretation of the event.

Researchers coded the responses via content analysis to come up with recurrent themes.

The analysis revealed that subjects assigned various labels to the entity. As the authors describe, “The most commonly endorsed were “being,” (60%) “guide,” (43%) “spirit,” (39%) “alien,” (39%), or “helper” (34%).” Most subjects reported having experienced positive emotions during the experience, such as joy (65%), trust (63%), love (59%), and kindness (56%). Other common feelings were surprise (61%), friendship (48%), and fear (41%), while less common feelings were sadness (13%), distrust (10%), and anger (3%).

The vast majority of participants reported positive changes following the encounter, including improvements in well-being and life satisfaction (89%), attitudes about life (88%), life’s purpose (82%), and social relationships (70%).

Furthermore, the experiences appeared to have had a profound influence on respondents, extending beyond the initial encounter. A total of 72% felt that the entity continued to exist beyond their meeting and 80% reported that the encounter had changed their “fundamental conception of reality”. Only 9% believed that the entity existed entirely within themselves, while 96% upheld the belief that the entity was “conscious” and “intelligent” and 54% believed that it had “agency in the world.”

Most (69%) respondents reported that a “message, task, mission, purpose or insight” was communicated to them through the experience. As the authors reason, the numerous reports of psychological insights may suggest the therapeutic potential of DMT. “Given that some of these reports involved positively valenced messages or insights about love and safety/reassurance, it is also plausible that these experiences affected the ratings of enduring positive effects of the DMT experience (e.g. desirable changes in mood, behavior, attitudes, and beliefs),” the authors say.

Still, the researchers caution that their findings may underestimate the harmful effects of DMT, since people with negative experiences with the drug may have been less likely to participate in the survey.

The study, “Survey of entity encounter experiences occasioned by inhaled N,N-dimethyltryptamine: Phenomenology, interpretation, and enduring effects”, was authored by Alan K. Davis, John M. Clifton, Eric G. Weaver, Ethan S. Hurwitz, Matthew W. Johnson, and Roland R. Griffiths.

Latest DMT study addresses eerie prevalence of hallucinations of 'interdimensional entities'

Latest DMT study addresses eerie prevalence of hallucinations of 'interdimensional entities' -- Science of the Spirit

Last month researchers released a new study on the hallucinogen DMT (or dimethyltryptamine) that provided fresh survey data on the phenomenon of DMT users experiencing and encountering sentient 'entities' while tripping. Scientists believe the findings could help to better understand near-death experiences and alien-abduction experiences, as well as develop treatments for mood and behavioral disorders.

The study involved surveying over 2,000 DMT users, the majority of whom claimed to have had positive encounters and even emotional exchanges with beings they felt were advanced and benevolent. Most of the users, upon coming down from the drug, felt the beings were real and not manufactured solely by a hallucination.

The survey produced the following additional data: 99% had an emotional response and of those, 58% believed the entity they encountered also had an emotional response and the feeling was overwhelmingly positive, though some reported instances of fear; 81% of respondents felt the 'entities' were real; and two-thirds believed they had received "a message, task, mission, purpose, or insight from the entity encounter experience."

Altered States of Entrapment: The Plant Medicine Manipulation - The Dark Side of Aya

Medicine plants are not a magic pill that miraculously heal all wounding and trauma, even though they can be of assistance in revealing what needs to be healed and processed (and can also be beneficial when dealing with intense addiction issues).

The deception – or rather, the misperception – my friend and I (and many others) have realized in respect to ‘plant therapy’ is similar to that which arises when one “intellectually” knows (or even “feels”) their issues, but has failed to work through them on an embodied level.

My friend had an interesting insight about this point: looking back, she felt that, during her ayahuasca ceremonies, the wounds opened up and “projected” all of her “stuff” and shadow aspects into her awareness. That experience – combined with the euphoria/bliss/ecstasy of getting “high” (based on the medicine/drug induced DMT rush) – can transmit the idea that a deep healing has occurred…a perception that can last for weeks or even months. Hence, many people keep going back to work with medicine plants when they feel “stuff” resurfacing, in order to have that “peak” experience again and again.

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The pineal gland doesn't produce enough DMT for psychedelic experiences, says researcher

The pineal gland doesn't produce enough DMT for psychedelic experiences, says researcher -- Science of the Spirit -- Sott.net:

Psychedelic researcher David E. Nichols is pushing back against the belief that the pineal gland in the brain produces mystical experiences because it creates a powerful psychoactive substance called N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT).

The pineal gland is a small structure inside the brain that influences the sleep cycle by secreting the hormone melatonin. But claims have spread that the pineal gland also can produce DMT, a claim that has been used as a biological explanation for dreams, UFO abductions, and other out of body experiences.

Trace amounts of DMT have been detected in the pineal gland and other parts of the human body. But Nichols, an adjunct professor of chemical biology and medicinal chemistry at the University of North Carolina, said in an article published the scientific journal Psychopharmacology that there is no good evidence to support the link between the pineal gland, DMT, and mystical experiences.