TLDR
Researchers are looking at shrooms for therapeutic qualities, especially for persons suffering from treatment-resistant depression and MDD (Major Depressive Disorder). The evidence of recovery rises day by day.
Scientists conclude that depression in people can be helped by the “reset” that Shroom Psilocybin gives.
Research on Psilocybin, the active element in shrooms, shows how this organic and pure fungus significantly helps people who have a mental illness.
Now, magic mushrooms prove able to “reset” the brain of a depressive and help cure the condition.
We are on the brink of legally using mushrooms for depression.
THE NITTY GRITTY
Shrooms are psychedelics that some people still stigmatize as dangerous drugs. These hallucinogenic mushrooms are illegal in many nations across the globe, and in America, it is under the category for Schedule I Drugs together with cocaine. These shrooms are only entirely legal in places like Amsterdam and Jamaica. Shroom enthusiasts and scientists flock in those places.
However, a few years back, the American Food and Drug Authority encouraged research on the therapeutic effects of magic mushrooms and Psilocybin. It is a potential treatment for mental illnesses like depression and PTSD.
Scientists have proven that you can use mushrooms for anxiety, and the way it helps is by resetting your brain.
What mushrooms make you “trip”?
Magic mushrooms are a species of wild fungi. They are known for the active chemical PSILOCYBIN, a psychedelic drug that gives you hallucinations when you ingest them.
Shrooms and other psychedelics rose to popularity in the 60s and 70s. Unfortunately, however, users had to go underground when the American federal government declared shrooms a Schedule I drug alongside cocaine and other hard drugs.
As you take a magic shroom orally, its psilocybin content gives you mixed senses and unexplainable feelings.
What do mushrooms do?
Magic mushrooms get you high. When you trip on mushrooms, you see things in different hues or arrangements. Your visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile perceptions mix-up and distort while your feelings amplify. You may feel as if time has halted or is speeding up or slowing down.
Some of the effects of mushrooms are delusional: “hearing” pictures, “touching” sounds, “smelling” patterns, and “tasting” narratives. It’s like your brain is rewiring for a reset.
A lot of people say that taking mushrooms can make you see swirling wallpaper patterns and tiles, and have profound conversations with animals and inanimate objects. People on shrooms feel a “sense of sensible senselessness.”
The distorted sense that magic shrooms imbue people attracts creatives, musicians, and innovators to experiment on the substance. These people attempt to find the enlightenment that will give them a new profound inspiration to put into their work with their brain on mushrooms.
We now know how it works. Psilocybin significantly alters brain chemistry and function and awakens the senses.
Are mushrooms bad for your brain?
When you abuse them, mushrooms, like any other thing used excessively, will be dangerous. Otherwise, there is no scientific reason for fear of using mushrooms.
Psilocybin works by triggering neurotransmitters and giving the brain a chemical imbalance.
Psilocybin mimics dopamine causes good feelings, euphoria, and a “mystical” state.
Do mushrooms reset your brain?
Brain scans suggest that Psilocybin in mushrooms can “reset” the brains of people with untreatable depression.
A previous study of 9 depression patients found promising conclusions. Researchers gave each patient single doses of Psilocybin and scanned their brains to track neural activity. Half of the respondents lost their depressed state, and they experienced dramatic changes in their brain activity that continued for five weeks.
Some other small studies suggested that Psilocybin’s role in depression is like a “lubricant for the mind.” Scientists have said that this “lubrication” enables people to get out of a depressive cycle.
However, there was no available mapping of psilocybin-induced brain activity until ow.
A research team at Imperial conducted before, during, and after fMRI brain scans for patients who will take Psilocybin as a treatment for depression.
The study showed that Psilocybin profoundly affects two critical areas of the brain: the Amygdala and the default-more network.
It affects the Amygdala.
The Amygdala is an almost almond-shaped mass inside each cerebral hemisphere in the brain. Its function is involved with the experiencing of emotions for people.
The Amygdala is heavily involved in how we process, such as fear and anxiety. With Psilocybin, this organ becomes less active. The more inactive the Amygdala, the better depression patients feel.
It affects the default-mode network.
The default-mode network is a collaboration of different regions in the brain. Psilocybin gives them a workout and remixes neural pathways. When the brain stabilizes, “that stabilization” lasts long and keeps depressive symptoms at bay.
Depressed brain vs. normal brain
Depressed people have desensitized feelings. They don’t find joy in anything, and they seem to have “forgotten what happiness is.” This dormancy shows in the chemical balance, or more like imbalance, of the brain.
People who suffer from depression have imbalanced hormones. They may have an overabundance of an underabundance of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins.
Psilocybin helps reduce symptoms of depression by resetting dopamine receptors and opening new neural pathways.
Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, Imperial’s head of psychedelic research, describe the depressed brain is a “clammed up” brain, and that the psilocybin-induced psychedelic experience gave it a “reset.”
Dr. Carhart-Harris’ patients claim that they have reset, reborn, and rebooted, and they feel defragged and cleaned up.
These findings further Psilocybin to more extensive studies until proven to be a completely safe treatment for people with depression.
New approaches like psilocybin treatment are desperately needed.
Mushrooms and depression
The Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London’s Professor Mitul Mehta confirms the link between Psilocybin and depression. She finds it impressive that Psilocybin makes changes in the brain networks that are involved in depression, after just a single dose of the psychedelic. She proposes that this fact should be a clear rationale for the scientific community to further look at the potential of Psilocybin.
RESETTING the brain.
Psilocybin causes destabilization in the brain. It puts your perception into otherwise unachievable and inaccessible states.
Magic mushrooms rewire your sensory neurotransmitters. It awakens your senses and gives your mind a refreshed untargeted interest.
Many sensory neurons in a depressed brain become dormant, and Psilocybin can awaken them.
Psilocybin can help people suffering from depression. It is beneficial even to those who are treatment-resistant and those who have more severe cases.