Psychedelic therapy for depression: hope or hype? - with Alex Riley
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- We’ve long been trying to find a cure for depression. From the ancient Greeks to Freud, and from therapy rooms to the Prozac revolution, how far have we come? Join Alex as he takes us on a compelling journey through the new frontiers of psychedelic treatments. Watch the Q&A here: • Q&A: Psychedelic thera...
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Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin and ayahuasca have been used across the world for thousands of years. But what role does the placebo effect play in their usage? And what scientific evidence is there for and against their efficiency against depression?
Alex Riley is an award-winning science writer and scientist based in Bristol. He received a best feature award at the 2019 Association of British Science Writers Awards for his reporting on The Friendship Bench, a project that began in Zimbabwe in 2006 and has since provided mental health care to thousands of people in New York.
Since leaving academia in 2015, Alex began writing popular science articles for magazines such as New Scientist, PBS's NOVA Next, BBC Future, Mosaic Science, Aeon, and Nautilus Magazine.
This talk was recorded at the Royal Institution on 12 April 2022.
0:30 Introducing alpha waves
2:21 Treating depression with the psychedelic Ayahuasca
9:38 Ayahuasca or placebo?
12:34 Are magic mushrooms more effective than existing antidepressants?
16:05 How hype can be harmful
21:45 How do psychedelics work?
26:56 The positives of the placebo effect
32:45 History of biological psychiatry
38:30 History of psychotherapy
47:20 Preventing abuse of power in psychotherapy
50:49 Stopping the psychedelic experience with a single receptor
54:48 Would psychedelic therapies be accessible to all?
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Psilocybin saved my life. I was addicted to heroin for 15 years and after Psilocybin treatment I will be 3 years clean in September. I have zero cravings.
This is something that truly needs to be more broadly used in addiction treatment.
I’d appreciate your comment
I got some psychedelic products from an online store
from
cruise_mycologist.
in
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This is the first balanced presentation on psychedelic therapy I’ve seen; every other article I’ve seen has either been utopian boosterism or moral panic. Proper science, well done.
I have tried many things under the sun. But only psychedelics have made me, as a fully grown man, shed tears of joy while looking at google art slideshows or at my bedroom cupboard as it starts to wave off and depict celtic knots. Throw in some cuneiform and hieroglyphs because why not and I can truly say I believe in something greater than myself now and it is everpresent waiting for your attention. Caveat emptor; feeling a full week worth of emotions in mere hours is not for everyone.
I feel pity for you, not because your condition, but because all your replies are from bots
anecdotal, but psychedelics have worked very consistently and in a long-lasting manner against depressive symptoms (and bad habits)
for you?
Microdosing Psychedelics drugs like the psilocybin mushrooms are great, the capsules i got from a friend long time ago contains the golden teachers which i took it for my mental health and it did a great impact on me, it changed my perspective of life for the best. Would love to try them out again just don't know where to get them, so rare in my area
once I took shrooms on accident they were in a chocolate bar and my fat ass thought it was regular choclate 😂
Wanna try, but keep being told I can’t do it alone for the first time but I’d literally be so much more comfortable alone
when i tried shrooms i ate way more than i should of because i thought they wouldn’t work and then my face got numb and i threw up shrooms and my friend was laughing but trying to comfort me and the bathroom lights were flickering cuz they were old and i had to go home
Mushrooms helped me overcome my addiction and I’ve never felt more in control. One year clean
Do not look in mirrors or ur phone it can ruin the trip, I looked in my full size mirror once and I got so scared and thought something was coming after me (I was just moving closer 💀) it ruined my trip
To the video team: The speaker's dynamics make this painful to listen to. Turn it down so the peaks don't hurt, and the low points are hard to hear. This is the raison d'etre of the compressor. Please cut those peaks down a bit.
TL;DR: it's complicated.
Excellent talk as usual, thanks Royal Institution!
That's really not the TL;DR at all, the idea about the placebo effect and how psychedelics might act in a similar way is very interesting. So, do read.
I really loved both the speaker and the talk
I'm surprised to see a title that casts doubt on psychedelic therapy just as the research on these substances is finally getting underway. Surely, a more patient approach waiting for far more data to emerge would be more objective - particularly considering the political opposition and barriers to conducting research into psychedelics. Shouldn't the scientific community be doing what is necessary to at least encourage rigorous research, not cast doubt?
This is a small qualm - perhaps trivial.
Count me among the many who have suffered from recurrent episodes of major depression for years who are very aware of how imperfect psychiatry and clinical psychology can be as a branch of modern medicine. The questions we are finally asking now about psilocybin, DMT, peyote, MDMA, and ketamine should have and would have been asked fifty years ago were it not for political (and cultural) opposition. In those fifty years, how many people have had their lives ruined - or have lost their lives by suicide - to depression (or other related mental illnesses)? What patients want is hope - but we also want to see psychiatry make far more advances in this area and countless other ones more rapidly. Many of us have endured inadequate psychotherapy, ineffective medications, improper medication titrations or combinations, not to mention unequal or diminished access to care in many places. We ALL should be impatient with the scientific work that needs to be done - doctors, patients and the public.
The speaker points out how the hype around psilocybin may positively bias the outcome of these trials (people who respond better because they’re given the psychedelic substance). But shouldn’t participants be unaware of they’re actually given, meaning that they shouldn’t know if they’re given a placebo, an antidepressant or psilocybin?
Interesting talk.
Moshe Bar just talked about narrow and wide focus in his "Mind Wandering" talk, linking depression and ruminating thoughts to narrow focus (few available associations). I could well imagine that psychedelics simply widen the association space, making a lot more associations available again, maybe by bypassing self-censorship, thus breaking the rumination.
They work on the default network and they definitely squash ruminating thoughts. I think that was my main problem. Ruminating thoughts are a killer.
Interesting overview about the current state of research. Sad that the comment section is getting spammed by people peddling their psychedelic adjacent scams/businesses of dubious legality.
Curious, but I do not see such messages on this comment board. Well, perhaps one very incoherent one. Perhaps you are writing this preemptively. (In that case, I agree that they are likely to end up populating this message board.)
I would only add that if industrialized nations like ours would move towards the decriminalization and controlled and limited legalization of certain psychadelics, it is possible that we could squash the black market and with it, in time, a fair amount of the misinformation and dissembling that usually circulates through that black market. I have been watching how this is being done in Portugal, the Netherlands and Oregon (USA) with interest and curiosity. On the other hand, cannabis is legalized in many US states now and there have been many positive results of this, but pseudomedical claims for cannabis have increased.
@@ems7623 mb yt is removing them now, but when there were like 10 comments, 4 were spam
Internet spam from Psychedelic peddlers is like annoying billboards .
Unfortunately theyre in almost every thread related to psychedelics.
Unless youre looking for them just report them as spam.
And I'd never reccomend them. many are scammers benefiting off the gullibility of innocents.
I really appreciate your point about hype. It always bothers me qhen folks roll out psychedelics as a magic cure all for everything. Same with the new age community. Definitely benefit in psychedelica but let's have a balanced perspective please.
I’d appreciate your comment
I got some psychedelic products from an online store
from
Psychedd_pharmacist
in
instagram
Awesome channel with awesome content and great quality as always say 💖🌍
I love this one because it all feels like body knowledge. None of it surprises. In fact most of the conclusions, while theories, hit you like “oh, yeah!”
As an advocate of psychedelic assisted therapies and mental health, I have to say that this talk is dry and lacking empathy. Depression is anhedonia manifested. It's a dry riverbed. It is the inability to channel vitality and vigor even though you know it once flowed through you. Ultimately, it becomes the inability to remember joy. That's what psychedelics reverse. They are like rain in a desert. A deluge of life. As informative as this talk is, it's incredibly poorly delivered because the focus is medical analysis instead of human/emotional connection which is what we work to renew in psychedelic therapy overall.
Great shirt.
Tried it. It was a dead end street for me. Some swear by it. I can't speak to that. Only my experience. I'm far better off without the use of psychedelics. Perhaps that is therapy in its own right. Who knows? The psyche is a complex beast. Be well.
Important to state how you tried it,
The biggest pain in this is the vagueness of statements
1 how much how often
2 what was you trying to achieve in it
2 what was your environment
E.G. we know that if you drop a trip and watch a screen the effects are massively reduced
Ketamine has saved my life
I have always believed in the effect of placebo. It is cheap too, and safe.
But be wary of withdrawal symptoms once you stop using ...
A common symptom is a longing for real drugs.
@@50-50_Grind If one placebo runs out, just hop to another. Placebos are the best!
Agreed. The only true cure is Cyanide.
CERN has proven that micro dosing affects the Amygdala
So asking people how they imagine they feel is nonsense, because that's the cortex,
which we know does not get affected by a low dose
If they measured, heart rate, breathing, muscle tension, nervous tension and blood pressure on a micro dose then we have a real test
But you would also have to know the current Amygdala size before dose, but by measuring the above you could get an indication
The current imagination focused method is nonsense for micro dosing
Especially as already proven by the Brahma Gurus, LSD states can be achieved by mediation and self physical control
Martin ball?
Why is such an interesting and important lecture so poorly attended?
So it gets on line for the rest of us??
@@spocksdaughter9641 You what?
No money in psychedelic's they actually help people
Thanks for emphacising the biases involved in those studies. Opposed to hyping up a topic, that many others do.
I'm curious as to if our speaker had an opinion on virtual reality therapy which is currently being hailed as a new treatment for drug addiction and alcoholism here in the States. It is being pushed by a woman who calls herself Lima Ravenavich (but she keeps changing her surname). She has founded a company called Aura and an has hired a man named Steven Blaine Timer as a so called "interventionist" Timmer, who had been a member of the Illinois bar, had previously been convicted of a felony and disbarred. For supplying immigrant clients with forged immigration documents.
Lima has taken out questionable conservatorships on a number of people and put them into Aura managed treatment centers.
One Black girl, Amanda Rabb, was taken from Los Angeles. They tried to get a California LPS conservatorship.The court refused but did issue an court order for her to undergo treatment. She was taken to Las Vegas Nevada, over a state line (illegal in the United States) a put into an Aura managed treatment center. On May 9, 2021 Amanda was found face down in her bed dead from unknown causes.
Lima came on the Chanel "Soft White Underbelly" and claimed to have had Amanda's autopsy report. The only drug in her system was Tylenol. Cause of Death was "seizure disorder" (epilepsy) This suggested to me that Amanda died from status epilepticus (a nonstop deadly seizure) but this was proven not to be the case.
This had the girl the runs "That Surprise Witness TV", who goes by BJ, was disturbed. She downloaded the autopsy report and found that Amanda had no Tylenol in her body but rather two seizure control drugs. One of them was about five times the therapeutic level. The cause of death was cardiac arythmia, or in other words, our girl died of a heart attack. The report made no mention of the seizure disorder (epilepsy).
So we have two versions of the autopsy report. Both cannot be true.
The girl was interned disrespectfully. After she was cremated her father dumped her ashes on a Southern California Beach.
If the reader wants to know check the UA-cam channels
"That Surprise Witness TV" and
"BJ Investigates" on UA-cam.
I would like to know what our.speaker thinks about this virtual reality therapy.
It's always curious when folks post long comments that have nothing to do with the subject at hand.
Even more strange , this comment is mostly not the commenters own question, but just some bizarre horror story. 😨
While I love the RI, I have to say, I am quite disappointed that in almost every RI lecture I have watched, the seats were all filled, yet in this one, there were a handful of people in the audience. Treatment of depression, anxiety, and the like are very important topics in healthcare today. I wish people would take it more seriously. This is not a hit on the RI or the presenter, but rather a greater observation of the disparity between what people say, and what they actually do.
Lots of good stuff here but this guy is completely off base when he discusses the projected cost of psychedelic treatment. I’m tired of hearing the “experts” insist that you need a team of psychologists, government approval and a note from your mother to be able to safely benefit from psychedelic therapy. You don’t. Do some research, have a loving and wise trip sitter and be mindful of set and setting and you stand a good chance of success with an extremely good risk profile. My wife and I recently volunteered to trip sit a couple of friends and witnessed a miracle of healing. It was one of the most profound experiences of my life and I was the trip sitter! We all have an enormous amount of healing power and psychedelics are a powerful catalyst. Cheers!
Screen based citizen scientists, will soon alarm the authorities...... I hope we are never willing to get back in the Box! I assume extreme reactive repression. Critical thinking wasn't allowed in the pandemic...powers that be.... will notice and seek every means to hold control. After all it took yrs to get letters behind their name!
Always worked for me, also helped me get out of my low self esteem @ 14 years old taking it alone in the country, when a hit was 250Micrograms, I usually took 3. Always had that clear thread of thought, no matter how high I got and was impressed with what Amy brain was capable of.
A friend of mine tried half of what I took but got a bit lost, so I asked him "what came first, consciousness or reality?" Well for a while he became god...thinking if he stopped believing the universe existed then it would disappear. But it kept him busy, and he stopped worrying about anything . Then I found out if you fall asleep very high, you lose that glandular cascade, and most of the effect is gone in about 10 min in my case. AND yes, if you take enough, you can fall asleep. At 64 I still love the occasional dose. Keeps my perspective from getting cluttered up. I think it could go a long way to bringing society back to being much more civil again. It s topped a war in the 60/70's so the media had to be changed to prevent that.
We have DMT vapes openly available here too, and a little known fact, mescaline is legal in Canada. Shhhh!
Another good watch is "DMT:The Spirit Molecule".
I think that psychedelics may open us up, to consciously experience more of the non-terminal sub-signature of reality. Spacetime or the physical universe being the terminal sub-signature of reality.
Do you know that Ketamine, magic mushrooms and LSD have been found to help in the treatment of Anxiety, depression, etc. This are known facts. If you need a supply of these products, hit us up for a swift delivery within 3 days to any location to start some medication 🍄🍄🤞🤞☝️☝️
Wait till the fisherman finds out he wasn't given the real thing.
Hope ...
manipulation is a very strong and inaccurate word speaking about publications of exploratory objectives not included in the official original report (which only reports primary and secondary objectives publicly). Working in drug development for a major pharmaceutical company for more than a decade I will say this is the case for every single clinical trial with positive results
Interesting.
This is very interesting stuff. Too bad that he is speaking like he is really bored about the subject. Doesn't help to stay focused.
yes he could use a little injection of charisma
He's anxious not bored. He has a very dry mouth and with anxiety, the brains self-inhibiting is firing intensely probably causing the cardboard vibe
There's no rule that scientists need to be entertainers. It is far more important that they can simply do scientific research in a highly effective manner - a relatively rare skill.
Psychedelics---- hype or hope. What is diffeence between hype and hope---- only one letter difference!!
I really hope that the word they use in Brasil is not "mirações" but yes "miragens" wich is the portuguese word 😅
All drugs have some of the same pathways. The VA doesn't have the resources to have 1 or 2 therapists, an 5 hr+ mushroom trip, and follow up with extra doses and CBT for a year. Right now, they have STSFT- short term solution focused therapy, a 3 visits, 20 minute visits mind you, 3 visits and out. I heard a VA nurse talk about vets learning mantras-- mantra therapy, where you say your own calming thing.
Psychedelics will make a former or unacknowledged addict have feelings of intense calm--because they are cheating. Supervised cheating, but cheating, and it feels good.
Let's see the study, 50 hr/half a year CBT by an experienced well trained, highly rated therapist, and 'shore therapy.
I put my money on CBT.
CBT is currently being phased out because we are realizing just how ineffective it is in the scope of more modern solutions. Psychoactive therapies are potentially some of those new treatments. Especially for individuals in which CBT has proven unsuccessful.
Netflix cob?
LOL, the mirror, know that can turn into quite a circus in a hurry, seems you have control over that constant scanning motion your eyes have much like highway hypnosis so when you stare, all of a sudden you are on some alien world and something really really strange is looking at you. I know it's my face but sometime just6 for a millisecond it's "Holy crap!" then laughter. Strapping fireworks to my car and d riving my my friends used to be a hit in the countryside too.But dangerous? Not according to the chemical abstracts it's not, safer than your tap water with no tissue dam mage, and no known lethal dose. Cary Grant found it therapeutic, Hollywood had to threaten him to stop talking about the 52 sessions with LSD he did.
Psychiatry is unfortunately the worst in reliability , compared to non-psyche ailments. Problem is that whole psychiatry is based upon subjective symptoms, not that objective and solid somatics which can be verified by lab and imaging studies. The moment ----any psyche symptoms can be based upon some lab & imaging studies----that symptom/ syndromes are taken out of psychiatry, and gets to be part of somatic medicine.
He is drinking ayahuaska (santo cipó) all the time during the lecture...
LOL
Brasil
Remarkably balanced presentation. I almost didn't watch it because I was prepared for a sales job and didn't want to waste my time. This talk was well worth the time. I believe many of these drugs apart from the psychedelic aspect, to be very dissacoiative, with the dissociative aspect increasing with repeated administration and increasing dosage. Also addictive in the susceptable. Hit yourself in the head once, and maybe be a revelation occurs. Hitting yourself 100 times with increasing force is a recipe for brain damage. A clear example is AUD. A couple shots of whiskey, nice effect. You get a little goofy. Drinking into a blackout (the ultimate dissasociation) can lead to self annihliation. There's a reason they call it dope. I found it interesting in the accompaning Q&A video the man who said his experience was not something that expanded his vista or space but something he had to recover from. That comment took some guts.
I think the hype about the c19-"vaccines" is probably much more problematic.
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Can marijuana treat depression as well?
No
Absolutely, if you have cognitive abilities
No, if anything it'll make the person more depressed.
@@iseriver3982 it'll show you more of yourself... it's up to you on how you wish to proceed with that
@@KerbalSpacey no it doesn't, it's a drug, it literally retards your mental faculties.
Ayahuasca is not for everybady.
What about everygoody?
@@skylinegtsrock People with blood pressure, heart, asthma, mental disorders and others, be careful. When ingesting the drink you; It accesses memories that it has not accessed for a long time, faces its personal conflicts, traumas, disappointments in love in a totally intense way; In this sense of ecstasy those who have the problems mentioned above be careful.
I recommend for those who want to drink that:
01: 03 days before attending a ceremony try to eat an all-organic diet.
02: At the ceremony, bring a bottle of water to hydrate your body
03: In the ceremony, always confront your thoughts and never give reason to them.
04: Always use forgiveness, compassion and love in your reflections within the ceremony.
05: Never touch people during the ceremony.
06:Keep your eyes closed and beware of feeling fear.
07:Never take action without consulting the person responsible for the ceremony.
08: understand that thoughts do not define reality and therefore must be confronted and never taken for granted. Only love is true.
09: Never drink where you don't feel safe and at ease.
Watch the Q&A for this talk with Alex Riley here: ua-cam.com/video/z0-X99Q_CZ4/v-deo.html
Psychedelics are risky meds ---- and contnue to be very controversial at this point.
Hype. Not that I know anything about it, nor can I back up my claim with data.
But, every time I hear psychedelic proponents talk about therapy, they always start saying things like 'psilocybin is the universes way of talking to you'. Also, they all go on about how the government is keeping psychedelic therapy down, just like everyone who promotes free energy devices.
I hope I'm wrong though.
when they say that phrase they don't mean it literally as if the universe is talking, it's a metaphorical way of saying you get to see parts of yourself you may be suppressing consciously/sub-consciously and never get to see under normal circumstances, all i take from it is people undergo a paradigm shift and "unlock" a little more awareness of themselves and the reality they exist in.
not sure if you believe in the big bang but if you do then you must also agree that you are simply the universe experiencing itself anyway and your comment is the universe having self-doubt of it's own existence :P
it's pretty common knowledge and evident the governments are keeping psychedelic therapy down along with alternative energy products including water/hydrogen cars etc
it's unwise to lump everything into little boxes and dismiss as "conspiracies" or "woo" that's all i'm suggesting.
I mean psilocybin is literally illegal in most circumstances so the claim isn't baseless
@@olbluelips so is heronin, and yet we have morphine.
There's a big difference between letting the public have it and researching it.
Why didn't you stop talking at "not that I know anything about it"?? You were good there.
@@railgap because all I see is hype. And all I hear is a lot spirituality and conspiracy talk.
But thanks for your empty rhetoric 😜