To the best of my ability I write about my experience of the Universe Past, Present and Future
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Cancer Patients Are Finding Anxiety Relief
This actually makes a lot of sense because often people speak of reaching "universal states" through things like this. The problem becomes more when healthy people do things like this that they become unmoored from any reality at all. But, I can see how people dying from Cancer could psychologically have more peace about dying through something like this. If they are going to die anyway why not let them have peace about their deaths and what comes after?
There are many shamanic cultures around the world where these things are normal but they are not in any technological context as societies. I think when you try to mix technology into all this as cultures you start to have problems on multiple levels.
One of the problems we deal with in America is just how materialistic we are. LIke when I traveled to India in 1985 most of the culture was not about technology or things being on time. Rather it was more a magical reality that the common people lived in. And in that context of life being "Magical" is more where cultures with Mushrooms exist. IT is not in any technological reality that I have ever seen where it can work for people.
When you try to bring "Time" and schedules and technology these ways of thinking begin to hit walls and just cause more confusion than anything else.
IN 1985 and 1986 for example, I loved riding on the steam trains of India then. However, my first experience was buying tickets for my family only to realize I could only hang onto the outside of the train while it traveled with tickets like I bought. So, until I learned to buy a whole compartment through scalpers did I find a way to travel the trains safely with my family. But, you usually could not buy these tickets (except) from scalpers and if you didn't know where the scalpers were you were shit out of luck and only could travel on buses or planes.
So, there all these different levels of reality to consider in regard to all these things. However, if you are just trying to make people dying of cancer feel better before they die then I can see the wisdom of doing this.
Though I have met many people who have done psychedelic mushrooms and listened to them talk about their experiences this never interested me in doing the same. Mostly because I have another friend who did this so much he had to have a liver transplant (because these mushrooms over time destroy your liver much quicker than alcohol will) and then he died of a brain tumor in England. So, you can see why I wasn't interested in any of this. But, if you are already dying and are trying to find peace in your death then I see the wisdom of this.
New research from NYU-Langone Medical Center and Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine shows that the psilocybin in
hallucinogenic mushrooms can help cancer patients cope with having a
terminal disease.
Dinah Bazer, a 69-year-old
mother and retired information systems worker living in
Brooklyn, credits psychedelics with saving her life.
After undergoing chemotherapy for late-stage ovarian cancer in 2010,
Bazer was consumed with anxiety and constant feelings of dread and
hopelessness. So when her nurse told her about a clinical trial testing a
new drug for cancer-related anxiety and depression ― high-dose
psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms ― she
signed up without hesitating.
Not long after ingesting the psilocybin during her session, Bazer
found herself engulfed in utter terror. She visualized her fear as a
black mass under her rib cage and yelled for it to “get the fuck
out!” Almost immediately, the fear left her completely. She shifted into
a spiritual experience she described as bathing in God’s unconditional
love for several hours.
Four years later, the experience is still with her and the fear is
still gone. Bazer says she became calmer, let go of her aggressive
driving habits and her phobia of flying, and reconnected with friends
and loved ones. Most importantly, she was able to let go of her fear of
death and truly embrace life. Her cancer is now in remission.
“I want to enjoy life,” she told The Huffington Post. “I’m enjoying my life now, and I wasn’t before.”
A New Paradigm For Treating Cancer Anxiety
The results of the NYU-Langone Medical Center study Bazer
participated in were published Thursday in the Journal of
Psychopharmacology, along with those of a similarly designed Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine study. The two randomized controlled trials, largely funded by the Heffter Research Institute, are part of an ongoing investigation into
the use of psilocybin for mood and anxiety disorders in late-stage
cancer patients. So far, the work has yielded stunningly promising
results.
Up to 40 percent of cancer patients
experience anxiety and depression ― a percentage that’s roughly four
times more than that of the general population. Anxious and depressed
patients face worse outcomes, including increased pain, reduced quality
of life and reduced chances of survival. Anti-depressants and behavioral
therapy aren’t always effective at treating cancer-related psychiatric
disorders and can take much longer to have any impact.
“This is very different [from a pharmaceutical approach] because it’s
a therapeutic approach that’s imposed over a single session
experience,” Dr. Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral biology who
was lead author for the Johns Hopkins study, told HuffPost. “That
really is an entirely different model than chronic drug treatment. It’s
also different from a classic psychotherapeutic approach, which can take
weeks and months.”
“Psilocybin under these curated conditions can
produce remarkable transformative experiences ... They’re
reorganizational in the sense that people find them deeply personally
and spiritually meaningful, and they attribute marked changes in
attitude, moods and behavior to them.”Roland Griffiths, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
A single session of
psilocybin (in conjunction with psychotherapy) had immediate and
long-term antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects for 83 percent of
patients, said Dr. Stephen Ross, a professor of psychiatry and lead
author for the NYU study, which included 29 patients.
“We have shown that one dose works quickly for anxiety and
depression, that it lasts at least for five to seven weeks, and maybe
longer than that,” Ross said. “We’re not claiming that one dose works
forever, but it’s surprising that it works for so long.”
It’s not just surprising. Results this strong are the kind that often
get studies thrown out the window, seen as too good to be true. But
there’s good reason to believe they’re legit.
At Johns Hopkins, researchers conducted a similar study on 51 patients, most of whom suffered from breast,
upper digestive, gastrointestinal, genitourinary or blood cancer. Each
participant had also been diagnosed with an anxiety or depressive
disorder. During the sessions, participants
experienced classic “psychedelic” effects, including changes in
perception, emotions and thinking, as well as moments of psychological
insight and experiences of unity and interconnectedness that they often
described as being deeply profound. In other words, they had the kind of
experiences that have been known to change people’s lives for
millennia.
It’s important to note that the drug wasn’t administered under just
any conditions. The dose was given by trained clinicians in a highly
controlled and calming environment. Patients wore eye masks and could
optionally listen to calming music on headphones while they were
directed to focus on their “inner experience.” In the event of anxiety
or confusion arising, therapists were there to help and reassure the
patients. Beyond this type of setting, it’s hard to know if the drug
would have the same positive effects. Researchers don’t recommend taking
it outside of a clinical context. Story continues below photos.
Paul Taggart/Bloomberg via Getty Images
At the Bluestone Center for Clinical Research at NYU, patients
experience the psilocybin session in a peaceful, relaxing environments.
Paul Taggart/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Participants can listen to soothing music on headphones during the session.
Paul Taggart/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Dr. Stephen Ross, clinical director of the NYU Langone Center of Excellence on Addiction, led the research project.
Paul Taggart/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A bottle of synthetic psilocybin used in the NYU study.
“We spent a lot of time
carefully preparing the participants for the sessions,” Ross told
HuffPost. “Then on the dosing day, in a nod to how these drugs are used
indigenously, we’d have the participants stand up with their two
therapists and join hands and state their intentions for the day, which
was usually something like ‘I want help with my cancer distress.’”
The results were nothing short of astonishing. Griffiths and his
colleagues found that a single dose of psilocybin reduced depressed
mood, anxiety and death anxiety, while increasing quality of life,
life-meaning and optimism. Five weeks after the session, 92 percent of
the participants showed significant decreases in depression and
anxiety. After six months, roughly 80 percent of the participants
continued to show clinically significant improvements ― and 60 percent
showed a complete remission of their psychiatric symptoms.
In both the NYU and Johns Hopkins studies, patients experienced
improvements in their attitudes toward death and deeply meaningful
spiritual experiences. At Johns Hopkins, 83 percent reported increases
in well-being or life satisfaction, while two-thirds of the patients
said it was one of the top five most meaningful experiences of their
lives.
“Psilocybin under these curated conditions can produce remarkable
transformative experiences, sometimes rather misleadingly described as
mystical experiences,” Griffiths told HuffPost. “They’re
reorganizational in the sense that people find them deeply personally
and spiritually meaningful, and they attribute marked changes in
attitude, moods and behavior to them, and those effects endure months
and years after the experience.”
Into The Mystic
Lisa Callaghan, a New York woman whose late husband Patrick
participated in the NYU trials, said she witnessed a transformation in
her spouse after his psilocybin session.
“Patrick’s spirit grew as his body declined,” she said during the
teleconference. “It helped him and both of us live life fully up until
the very end.”
Patrick experienced a classic “mystical” experience comparable to
those described by generations of spiritual seekers and
shamans. Psychologists have identified the central qualities of a so-called “mystical experience” as
something that can’t be properly expressed in words, producing an
altered sense of time and space, feelings of unity and sacredness,
deeply felt positive emotions, and a quality of absolute truth or
reality.
These types of spiritual experiences may be closely tied
to the psychedelic experience’s therapeutic effects. The current
findings suggest that spiritually oriented treatments may be
particularly well-suited to psychological problems of an existential
nature, which are often experienced by people facing terminal illness
and the end of their lives.
Existential distress, or feelings of hopelessness related to a crisis
of meaning or purpose, is common in cancer patients. Clinicians have
generally had little success in treating this aspect of cancer-related
psychiatric disorders, and the existing drugs and therapies have been
shown to have little effect.
The use of psychedelic medicine “may signal that
medicine has come full circle to embrace the earliest known approach to
healing our deepest of human agonies.”Dr. Craig Blinderman, Columbia University Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
But with psilocybin, cancer patients often experience a renewed sense of spiritual meaning and purpose in life. “None of us are immune from the transitory nature of human life, which can bring fear and apprehension or conversely a real sense of
meaning and preciousness,” Dr. Paul Summergrad, a psychiatrist at Tufts
Medical Center, wrote in a commentary published in the Journal of
Psychpharmacology. “Understanding where these experiences fit in healing, well-being, and our understanding of consciousness may challenge many aspects of how we think about mental health,” he added. “These well-designed studies build upon a recent body of work that confronts us squarely with that task.”
Of course, this isn’t a new phenomenon. Spiritual leaders and healers
in cultures around the world have long used hallucinogenic plants and
substances such as psilocybin as “entheogens,” or “god-revealing” tools. Dr.
Craig Blinderman, director of adult palliative care services at Columbia
University Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, penned a
commentary published along with the study in the Journal of
Psychopharmacology. “A return to entheogens for the treatment of psycho-existential suffering may signal that medicine has come full circle to embrace the earliest known approach to healing our deepest of human agonies—by ‘generating the divine within,’” he wrote.
The Road Ahead For Psychedelic Medicine
The new trials join a growing wave of research into the use of
psychedelic drugs, including LSD, MDMA, ibogaine and ayahuasca, to treat
a wide range of mental illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. Due to the overwhelmingly positive results of many of these studies, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has been hailed as a “paradigm shift” in mental health care.
Psilocybin seems poised to follow closely in the footsteps of MDMA,
which got one step closer to becoming a legal medication when it was greenlit by the Food and Drug Administration for
Phase 3 trials this week. The FDA must to do the same for psilocybin
before it can be legalized as a psychiatric treatment. After these
trials, the treatment could be made available to cancer patients who
need it by 2021, but it could also take much longer.
Whatever the exact timeline, Griffiths expressed optimism about the
many possibilities for cancer treatment and beyond. Currently, his team
is also testing psilocybin for its effects on treatment-resistant
depression and smoking cessation, and examining its long-term effects on
meditators and religious leaders.
“I’m in it for the long run,” Griffiths said. “I think there’s
something incredibly important about the nature of these compounds and
experiences to provide unique information to us about the nature of the
human condition and the science underlying consciousness.”
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