Giving psilocybin, the psychedelic in magic mushrooms, to rats made them more optimistic in the longer term, suggesting that the psychedelic substance could have great potential in treating a core symptom of depression in humans.
https://newatlas.com/medical/psilocybin-optimism-depression/
16 Comments
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-024-03103-7
From the linked article:
Giving psilocybin to rats made them more optimistic in the longer term, suggesting that the psychedelic substance could have great potential in treating a core symptom of depression in humans.
In a recent study, they found that giving psilocybin to rats improved their optimism over the long term. If the findings translate to humans, the naturally occurring psychedelic has great potential to treat a core symptom of depression.
“Our team found that rats given psilocybin were more motivated to explore their environment and perform reward-based tasks,” said Professor Jakob Hohwy from the Monash Center for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies (M3CS) and the study’s co-senior author. “These exciting results show the mechanisms of how psilocybin may work to increase optimism in an animal model, which we hope may translate to humans as well.”
Psilocybin made me into a better person and made me feel way more connected to nature.
Just made me feel like I was taking a shower under a waterfall. Still depressed.
Government: people are feeling optimistic from taking it? Make it class A / schedule 1.
Anyone else wondering htf you tell if a rat is optimistic or not? :p
How tf do you track rat optimism over the the long term?
I used to grow my own mushrooms. after some microdosing and two 3.5~4g trips, my depression episodes were gone. I also stopped drinking.
It is crazy good!
Vets have been using it since the 70s to help with depression and ptsd so…..yeah. Bit of an obvious one. Didnt need to drug up the poor rats for it.
I thought we knew this, just unsure of the dosage ?
Science finally catching up to what hippies have known for 60+ years
Psilocybin and many other psychedelic drugs are being studied for anxiety, depression, and PTSD right now. I work at a site that puts on these clinical trials. If you’re interested you could get paid to participate and try it.
Has every single recreational shroom user told for the past millenias…
Great news, but when will we legally be able to much them, considering their condemnation has been obsolete for decades now and just politically motivated in the first place.
Yeah, maybe link to the further studies that then disproved this theory(sadly)
Best thing i ever did in my life was stop my psychiatric meds and try shrooms instead. The psychiatric meds made my symptoms worse, and gave me new symptoms/side effects that went away when I stopped them. Psychedelics helped me work through my past trauma and not just heal, but grow from it. Changed my life.
For me personally, psilocybin is the best anti depressant. It really does make you more optimistic and it helped me completely turn my life around.
Even microdosing is great, you get the benefits without really feeling the psychedelic effects. I highly recommend it if you’re able to give it a try
Countless cases of people getting better mentally after a trip, me included