‘Magic Mushroom’ Drug Edges Toward Mainstream Therapy

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Dec. 6, 2021 (HealthDay News) —  Tony Head was depressed and fearing demise from stage 4 prostate most cancers when, as a part of a supervised scientific trial, he took a big dose of the psychedelic agent in “magic mushrooms,” psilocybin.

Head donned a masks and headphones to close out the world round him, and had an expertise that modified the course of his life.

“At some level in that point I felt like a better energy or one thing — I did not see something, I did not see any kind of picture — I felt like one thing linked and touched me and as quickly because it did, I simply began crying,” Head, an award-nominated actor who lives in New York City, stated in an interview with HealthDay Now.

He stated the one-time remedy helped relieve a lot of the nervousness surrounding his prognosis.

“I feel it taught me the right way to dwell higher and never fear about dying,” he added.

“I used to be blown away by what had simply occurred. It’s an unimaginable expertise, no less than it was for me,” Head added. “It’s one thing that may’t be defined, however I can let you know it’s in all probability one of the crucial necessary issues that ever occurred to me.”

Psychedelic remedy targeted on psilocybin has garnered a lot new curiosity these days as a possible therapy towards nervousness, despair and different psychological ills.

In reality, the drug is now authorized for psychological well being therapy in Oregon, a results of a poll initiative. The current launch of Hulu’s miniseries “Nine Perfect Strangers” has additionally targeted contemporary consideration to the idea of microdosing psilocybin as a way of remedy.

Long historical past

It’s a subject that foundered within the Sixties as psychedelic medicine turned related to the left-wing counterculture, defined Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of scientific psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences with the UCLA School of Medicine.

However, previous to that, psychedelics like psilocybin had proven “nice promise” in psychological well being analysis, Grob instructed HealthDay Now.

“In the ’50s and ’60s, there was a time period when psychedelics have been actually thought-about the reducing fringe of psychiatric analysis, and there was super enthusiasm,” Grob stated. “There have been reviews of affected person populations who didn’t reply properly to traditional therapies that did very properly.”

Even Hollywood main man Cary Grant turned to psychedelics throughout that early interval. The actor took LSD as many as 100 instances underneath the care of a Beverly Hills physician, in line with the documentary “Becoming Cary Grant.”

“After weeks of therapy got here a day after I noticed the sunshine,” Grant stated within the movie. “When I broke by, I felt an immeasurably helpful cleaning of so many unnecessary fears and guilts. I misplaced all the strain that I’d been crippling myself with.”

Now, a brand new era of researchers are exploring the chances of those medicine to assist folks in disaster.

Head, 69, took his psilocybin journey as a part of a analysis effort at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, after medical doctors had instructed him he in all probability had three to 5 years to dwell. Head has appeared within the HBO dramas “The Wire” and “The Deuce,” and had a small position within the 2019 film “Joker.”

His  psilocybin expertise lasted for about seven hours, and through it he felt as if he had come into contact with a “larger energy” current in a spot past demise.

“The largest factor I acquired out of this was it taught me how to not concern dying. I do not concern demise. I do not need to undergo for years like that, however I do not concern demise in any respect,” Head stated. “I feel wherever demise is or results in, it may be place.

“I feel it taught me the right way to dwell higher and never fear about dying,” he added.

Head says he additionally acquired the whole lot he wanted from psilocybin throughout his single high-dose journey.

“I’ve no want to do it once more. I needn’t do it once more,” he stated.