Category: Anxiety

2 Things Certain in Life: Death and Fungus

10/31/2015

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Updated 2/14/16

Some fungi teach while others turn ants into zombies

Focus:

Healing Mushroom Medicine: Communicating with humans to help with living and dying
Ben Franklin corrected
Big Pharma and addiction: Getting Between Culture and the Next Overdose Epidemic
Psilocybin Research Fundraiser

PSU: Zombie ant fungi 'know' brains of their hosts

Live Science: Zombie Fungus Enslaves Only Its Favorite Ant Brains

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. Click for Wiki.

From A New Understanding: "Death is as much a part of life as birth. We all know we are heading there, yet Western culture does everything possible to ignore it. Although our mortality is inevitable, we still can’t begin to imagine dying or what happens after we die. The truth is we fear death."

Winner of the Gordon and Tina Wasson Award from the Mycological Association of America communicates his vision for mushrooms:

"Each year 2.5 million people die in the U.S. Over twenty percent of these deaths are due to cancer. In 2015, over 589,000 Americans will die of cancer and 1,658,370 new cancer cases will be diagnosed. While we can’t change these numbers, we can change the approach to which we come to terms with the inevitable.

Witness the story of three individuals that were part of a larger study exploring this unique palliative care technique. The research documented in this film will transform your take on cancer treatment and deeply empathize with the lasting peace the patients gain. With the convergence of science and spirituality combined with shifting paradigms, psilocybin research is moving forward quickly with the likelihood that within the next five to six years, this could be a palliative care option approved by the FDA and DEA."

Nutt, Nichols: Effects of Schedule I drug laws on neuroscience research and treatment innovation

Click for link.

American Psychiatric Association President Paul Summergrad held a special interview with pioneer psilocybin researcher and spiritual leader Ram Dass at the 2015 APA Annual Convention.

What are fungi? "Death is what fungi are all about. By feasting on the deceased remains of almost all organisms on the planet, converting the organic matter back into soil from which new life will spring, they perform perhaps the most vital function in the global food web. Fungi, which thrive on death, make all life possible."

Shulgin: Why I do what I do

Mental Health Benefits and Effects of Psilocybin on the Brain: Quieting the Cingulate Cortex and More. From the video below: "Is it possible that, because of the war on drugs, we have demonized a treatment for otherwise untreatable diseases?"

"...A way to increase personal well-being, permanently treat depression, break the cycle of addiction, and ease the transition from life into death?

What makes serious research on psilocybin is that it's illegal even harder is that it's just about illegal everywhere just about everywhere, including the mushrooms from which its extracted and even its spores. "

"Of course, keeping mind-altering substances off the street is one thing, but it's another thing to hamper research into what could be a breakthrough for mental health everywhere."

End-of-Life Care

High Costs at the End of Life Rarely Equate to Better Death. Cutting healthcare costs for older adults includes improving end-of-life care. Many Americans spend their last days in an intensive care unit, subjected to uncomfortable machines or surgeries to prolong their lives at enormous cost.

It's more than just having a discussion about end-of-life with patients.

CBS 60 Minutes: The Cost of Dying

From 8 pages to 1 card: Making it easier for patients and families discuss Advance Directives before the end of life

Sydney Morning Herald: Dr. Ashleigh Witt's view on why everybody should know the dying wishes of their loved ones

Do Not Resuscitate: Dr. Witt's blog on resuscitation and knowing when to stop

A Piece from Ashleigh's blog:

Alan Watts: Our Need for a Sense of Unity

There are endless costs with end-of-life care that stem from doctors, patients, and family members not being comfortable with death. Psychedelic medicine has the potential to improve how patients and their families psychologically cope with mortality.

Alan Watts: Acceptance of Death

HuffPost: Baby Boomers' Last Revolution Will Be Changing the Way We Die, Part 1

Jobs & McKenna: Because the Fact of the Matter is... Words of Wisdom About Life and Death

Dying Better.An Amazing Moment that is Taking Place in Our Lifetime?

Dr. Gabor Maté Leads TJ Dawe on an Ayahuasca Healing Retreat, Plus End-of-Life Thoughts

Stroke of Insight (for Smoking Cessation)

Amazing Art: Alex Grey (below)

Could Psilocybin Be Useful in Combating Depression and Anxiety in Homebound Older Adults and Patients with Chronic or Terminal Illness?

American Psychological Association: Could the psychedelic drug psilocybin help ease the existential distress common in people with cancer?

DMT (Found in Ayahuasca): Might Be Released into Our Brains When We Die

DMT: A Religious Model.Psychedelics Researcher Rick Strassman Gives His First Presentation in 5 Years at CU Boulder

Casey A. Paleos is Co-Principal Investigator of the NYU-Bellevue IV Ketamine for Depression Study, a study therapist in the NYU Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study, and a Clinical Instructor of Psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine.
Jeffrey Guss is a Co-Investigator in the NYU Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study as well as the upcoming Alcoholism Psilocybin Study and is an Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine.
Alexander Belser is a co-founder of the New York University Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study and is currently heading a qualitative study to conduct in-depth interviews with these patients to vividly explore their experiences. He is a Fellow and Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Department of Applied Psychology.

Toward a New Understanding of Altered States of Consciousness: Egolysis and Egolytic States – NYU Psilocybin Research Team "We introduce a new term, “egolytic” (“a loosening, setting free, releasing, dissolution,” of the ego), as a descriptor of the process that may be evoked by a variety of consciousness-altering phenomena; by correlating the egolytic processes with existing neuroscientific, psychoanalytic, and clinical research on meditation, psychosis, and psychedelic therapy, we hope to offer a new model for the therapeutic effects of psychedelic medicines. Paleos, Guss, and Belser:

NYU Psilocybin Music Sampler: Helping Patients with Psychological Distress

America's RxProblem: Lack of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Treatment Options Prevents Recovery, Increases Stigma

HUGE Speaker for TEDMed 2015: Mindfulness, Psilocybin, & Spirituality Psychopharmacologist Roland Griffiths

Psychology of Religion Expert Ralph Hood: Good Friday Psilocybin Experiment

Shamanic Medicines: Want to Help a Broken and Addicted U.S. Mental Health Care System

America:Land of the Free?

Psilocybin, Not Prozac or Xanax: Shows Promise for Existential and Spiritual Distress

Psychedelics Expert Interviews: America's Mental Health & Addiction Tragedies

Johns Hopkins Seminar Series: End-of-Life Pain & Palliative Care as an Alternative to Physician-Assisted Suicide

Because the Fact of the Matter is...Words of Wisdom About Life and Death

You Created 'Drug Culture': DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

Tim's Story and fundraiser: "A recent but still unpublished study at Johns Hopkins demonstrated rapid, substantial, and sustained (lasting up to six months) antidepressant and anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) effects of a single dose of psilocybin in psychologically-distressed patients with life-threatening cancer diagnoses.

Author of The 4 Hour Work Week

This is incredibly exciting. What if we could decrease or avoid altogether the known side-effects (and frequency of consumption) of current antidepressant drugs like SSRIs? This study could help establish an alternative.

Current popular antidepressant medications have significant adverse side effects, with up to 50% of patients failing to respond fully and as many as 30% remaining completely resistant.

Psilocybin has been safely consumed by humans for millennia. Despite this, the study of entheogens like psilocybin was blocked for several decades due to political rather than scientific factors. Now, we can finally explore the therapeutic and medical potential of these powerful compounds."

Researchers Discuss Pilot Study on Hallucinogenic Therapies for Cancer Anxiety

Hallucinogen in 'magic mushrooms' helps longtime smokers quit in Hopkins trial

Researchers enlist Psilocybin to help fight alcoholism

Single Dose of Psilocybin May Create Lasting Change in the Personality Domain of Openness

Psilocybin in the Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance

Plant Medicines Looking to Improve American Mental Health

The work Tim is hoping to fund "will determine the efficacy of psilocybin in treatment-resistant depression, and will also use cutting-edge brain imaging to clarify the mechanism of action of psilocybin's antidepressant effects. In the world of science, it is a rare opportunity to be able to conduct such potentially groundbreaking work for a mere $80,000. It’s almost unheard of. Psilocybin has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of major depression that cannot be properly addressed with current treatments. This also applies to end-of-life care for terminally-ill cancer patients." (Follow Psilocybin and Cancer Research on Facebook).

Why does important mental health research require crowdfunding?

From Michael Pollan's The Trip Treatment in The New Yorker:

Click for link.

According to Jeffrey Lieberman, M.D. recent president of the American Psychiatric Association, "We have had a nearly 50-year hiatus in any serious investigation, except for some heroic investigators at a few universities."

"We Need to Study These Drugs."

"My point is not to say that these drugs should be discounted and relegated to the criticism and dismissal similar to that of treatments for which we have no basis for claims of therapeutic efficacy.

Click for video.

These psychedelic drugs clearly are pharmacologically active, have profound effects, could be useful for therapeutic purposes, and need to be studied in an intensive and extensive way before an informed determination can be made.

Courageous Heffter-Funded Work at UAB School of Public Health that Changes Perceptions & Could Change Your World

Will "The Coming Boom" in Brain Medicines Include Mental Health?

FDA-Approved Drug Therapies and Classic Hallucinogens to Treat Alcoholism: Barriers, Background, and the Latest Research

Psychoactive #RxProblem: Patient Abuse, Drug Diversion, Pharma Fraud/Greed

Psychology Study Explains Entheogen Ethics: Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior

Individual States and an American Public Fraught with Addiction, Mental Illness, and Jail Time Looking to Alternatives

If not, we will find ourselves in a situation that may resemble what we are seeing with marijuana, with its increasing legalization despite having an inadequate knowledge base, because of social and political pressure.

I believe that the scientific investigation of mind-altering psychedelic drugs in the 1960s and '70s was a truncated but promising avenue of research, and that these medications, these drugs, could have significant value for a variety of indications if studied adequately."

VIDEO: Lieberman Talks about Steve Jobs, Freud, and How Early Experiences with Entheogens Inspired Him Pursue a Career in Mental Health

Life Magazine introduced psilocybin to 1950s Americans in a May 1957 photo essay by banker and amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson titled, Seeking the Magic Mushroom. Read a copy of the article here.

Full video of the Vine.

Mycological Society of America: Mushroom Expert and Winner of the 2015 Tina and Gordon Wasson Award, Paul Stamets, Describes how Psilocybin Mushrooms Were Introduced to Western Society

America's Greatest Ethnobotanist Richard Evans
Schultes Discusses the Importance of Plant Medicines

Meditation and Psychedelics as Mental Health Preventative Medicine: Stunting the Growth of Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, Pain Meds

Is Consciousness the Only Savior for a Changing America? Meditation Has People Believing
Overprescribing Appalachians, Anatolians ft. Stephen Loyd, M.D.
Terence McKenna Blesses America and the ACLU

Comments

Southern Injustice: Politicians Lack Courage to Fight Substance Abuse and Improve Mental Health and Drug Policy

10/11/2015

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Updated 2/20/16

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, wrote in Secrets of a Healthy Society.

"What if governments defined security in a broader way—as the health not only of its people but also its society?

A healthy society is much more than a community in which the causes of disease are minimized.

It is one where, at the very least, human creativity is free to flourish, individuals have the liberty to be who they wish to be (without violating the liberties of others), and the spirit of life (all life and not merely human life) prospers.

The peak period for human creativity is between 30 and 40 years.

If we accept this harsh judgment, society's future health must be powered by the (relatively) young. There are five qualities that make creativity possible.

First, a base of mastery. You can't escape the need to know things. Abstract genius is a fairy tale. Without a foundation of knowledge and skill, we will live permanently in a state of societal ill health.

Second, breadth. Original thinkers who can foster healthy societies will not worship geekery. To solve global problems, people will need to look beyond the knowledge they have mastered.

They will have to seek insights between disparate disciplines in ways that our current educational apparatus disincentivises.

Third, the ability to frame new questions. What matters is not problem solving. It is problem finding.

Elizabeth Warren: Change Can Happen, Quit Bedding with Billionaires

Click for link.

Fourth, courage. Are you brave enough to explore avenues others think are hopeless cul-de-sacs? Are you confident enough to survive failure? If yes, you might have a big contribution to make to the health of your society.

Finally, openness. Never close your mind. Enjoy the idea of ideas. Bask in a sea of hypotheses."

Focus:

Inefficient, expensive healthcare system in the United States that bankrupts the middle class and is a barrier to utilization for lower income citizens.
Neglect and futility in treating mental illness in the United States and overprescribing of addictive psychoactive drugs: Poor understanding and overtreatment of centralized pain with opioids is no different than our poor understanding and mistreatment of mental illness and behavioral issues with antidepressants, benzodiazepines, and antipsychotics. The opioid overdose problem is an epidemic that medicine made, medicine that is the most expensive and least efficient healthcare system in the world.

Click for link.

The images and video clips below show how public health, pharmaceutical, and healthcare policies of the United States have put Americans on a different health trajectory than citizens of other countries.

How America is Killing Itself
Politicians Lack Either Moral Courage or Intelligence: http://www.ouramazingworld.org/science/addictingamericaPerhaps a Cultural Issue: bit.ly/1ZOOdpNOr Greed? bit.ly/1R8okvfPrescription Opioid Epidemic, Crackdown, No Harm Reduction ==> Heroin use====> Hepatitis C epidemic
Posted by Our Amazing World on Wednesday, February 17, 2016

NEJM: "But treatment providers in abstinence-oriented programs and their government allies never accepted indefinite maintenance, and their moral and political reservations kept the issue simmering. It simmers still, despite the 2002 approval by the Food and Drug Administration of new products containing buprenorphine, a partial opioid agonist.

The lack of resolution has hindered another important medical task — tertiary prevention by minimizing harm in cases of firmly established opioid addiction. The key objectives — reducing fatal overdoses, medical and social complications, and injection-drug use and related infections — are difficult to achieve if abstinence-oriented treatment is the only option available. Yet that remains the situation in many places, particularly in rural locales, where officials dismiss methadone and buprenorphine as unacceptable substitute addictions. “IF YOU WANT PROBATION OR DIVERSION AND YOUR ON SUBOXIN,” declared an erratically spelled sign outside a Kentucky courtroom, “YOU MUST BE WEENED OFF BY THE TIME OF YOUR SENTENCING DATE.”

More from NEJM: Threading the Needle — How to Stop the HIV Outbreak in Rural Indiana

American culture has never been comfortable with harm reduction: The prescription opioid epidemic led to a heroin epidemic, which created a hepatitis C epidemic. A life-saving cure for hepatitis C was discovered a few years ago, but 90% of hepatitis C patients cannot be treated because of the price of the drug. The Medicare budget for hepatitis C went from $300 million to $4.5 billion, overnight. More on this below.

NOTE: The hepatitis C epidemic and HIV outbreak in Indiana convinced the culturally-opposed House Republicans to lift a ban on Federal funding for syringe exchanges in December 2015.

Hidden Costs of the Opioid Epidemic - Hep C drug costs
#RxProblem w/o Harm ReductionSee: http://www.ouramazingworld.org/science/addictingamericaPrescription Opioid Epidemic==> Heroin Epidemic====> Huge Spike in Hepatitis C Life-Saving Cure Discovered a Few Years Ago, but 90% of Hepatitis C Patients Cannot Be Treated Because of the Price of the Drug. Medicare budget for Hepatitis C: Went from $300 million to $4.5 billion, overnight. Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and DoD budgets exceeded, Prisoners can't be treated, etc. - - - - - - -Senate Special Committee on Aging 1.usa.gov/1QqaeEgStatement from ASHP: http://www.ashp.org/DocLibrary/Advocacy/GAD-Statement-For-Aging.pdfPharmacists Urge Transparency, Payment Updates as Congress Examines Generic Price SpikesPharmacy Times: bit.ly/1UjHjBS- - - - - - -Ways to protect the public...Dr. GERARD ANDERSONProfessor, Health Policy And Management, Medicine, And International Health, Johns HopkinsGeneric: Important to have competitionBrand: In the brand area, it’s very important to take a look at the patents, when they’re appropriate, when they’re not appropriate, and essentially how long they should be. Because right now, the patent law was originally established during the George Washington administration and was originally for 14 years for 2 years and 2 indentured servants. And now, it’s 17 and 20 years and it’s not reflective of the investment that a drug company makes. Sometimes they invest a lot. Sometimes they invest a little. We need to support the investments and we might want to figure out how to do that differently.MARK MERRITTPresident & CEO, Pharmaceutical Care Management AssociationWell, government has a real important role hear, obviously. It’s a huge purchaser. And we think the role is more in ensuring competition, making sure that there are safe products on the market, that people are getting the products that they think they’re getting, insurance that they think they’re getting, and so forth. And on the purchasing side, the challenge that we see is that it’s such a complicated, fast-moving market. Just like what we did with Imprimis Pharma, this little compounding pharmacy. We found that kind of in real time and it helped drop the price of the products significantly. And the challenge, if you look at price controls or price interventions, direct negotiations, there are kind of two ways to do it. One, you could peg prices to the market and get a discount on it, which does save money for public programs, but will increase costs elsewhere. Or you can kind of just make the price drug by drug. And the danger there, ironically, is that you can end up overpaying. As we saw in this Turing thing…I know it’s a temporary solution, but, if a drug’s $5,000 a day, it might seem good to charge $2500 tomorrow, or maybe even $100. But, little did anybody know, you can get the same drug, basically, for $1. And so, I think we all want to find ways to reduce costs and there are ways government can help.WARREN: No matter how the drug industry sugarcoats it, the America pays the highest for drug prices in the world. And it’s not impossible to fix, and it doesn’t have to be partisan. Just last month, Congress passed legislation that created a new Medicaid inflation rate for generic drugs, which will require drug companies to rebate money when their prices go up faster than the inflation rate. So we’ve got a lot that we could be doing here. I want to talk more about other countries, but the chairwoman is rightly trying to hold us to our 5 minutes. So I’ll just say thank you very much. You’ve laid out good steps…things we need to investigate. Thank you for starting this.Committee Members:https://www.govtrack.us/congress/committees/SPAGPharm Exec's 2015 Brand of the Year: Sovaldi and Harvoni for Hepatitis Chttp://www.pharmexec.com/pharm-execs-2015-brand-year-sovaldi-and-harvoni-hepatitis-cPew Urges Senate Committee on Aging to Maintain Drug Safety Standardshttp://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/speeches-and-testimony/2015/12/pew-urges-senate-committee-on-aging-to-maintain-drug-safety-standardsSenate Committee Scrutinizes High Drug Priceshttp://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/12/08/skyrocketing-prices-for-generic-drugs-compromise-health-carehttp://www.policymed.com/2015/12/senate-aging-committee-hearing-on-drug-prices-faster-generics-approval-could-cut-drug-costs.htmlFirst hearing on drug prices by US senate committeehttp://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40274-015-2669-6
Posted by Our Amazing World on Saturday, January 23, 2016

Tennessee fails its citizens like no other state in the Union.

LA Times: Tennessee's effort to protect babies from mothers' drug use creates new problems

Few mental health and substance abuse treatment options lead to long list of pharmacy robberies in Northeast TN:

National Geographic Southern Justice,
"Within 10 days, three pharmacies are robbed of prescription painkillers. Sheriff's deputies and detectives try to determine if a single suspect is responsible for all three robberies. The thief gets away with tablets of prescription painkillers including Oxycontin, nicknamed 'hillbilly heroin.'"

NEW IMAGES: Johnson City Walgreens armed robbery suspect possibly connected to similar case in Gray

JCPD search for Walgreen’s robbery suspect

Man wearing surgical scrubs, mask accused of robbing Walgreens pharmacy

Caught on video: 2nd Johnson City Walgreen's robbed 6 days after 1st

Man Disguised in Calamine Lotion Robs Pharmacy

BREAKING NEWS: Bristol, TN Police on the scene of Walgreens Armed Robbery

Johnson City Walgreens robbery could be linked to last week's Walgreens robbery

UPDATE: 1 arrest made in Boones Creek Walgreen's armed robbery

WJHL News 11: More likely to die from a drug
overdose in Tri-Cities than other areas of the state

SPECIAL REPORT: Rx Marks the Spot - If you or a loved one you know is dealing with substance abuse and would like some...
Posted by WJHL on Monday, November 2, 2015

What is Wrong with Healthcare, Mental Health Care?

Learn about the single payer system and the direction American healthcare must take. This video describes how Big Pharma and insurers lobbied against Americans having a less expensive public option for care. It should start with mental health care.

Quoting a 2014 story from The Atlantic, "The United States healthcare system is the most expensive in the world, but when it comes to health outcomes, it performs worse than 11 other similar industrialized nations, according to a 2014 report by the Commonwealth Fund.

It's important to note that one reason for America's lag, as the authors explain, is our historic absence of universal health coverage."

Top 2 healthcare priorities in a recent Kaiser health tracking poll:

Making sure expensive drugs for chronic conditions (i.e. asthma, mental illness, cancer, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's, HIV, hepatitis) are available to those who need them.
Government action to lower prescription drug prices

Our current healthcare system only benefits top income earners while burying most United States citizens under insurmountable debt if they ever have to utilize the system.

The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) will not fully work unless there is a single payer national healthcare system where government can negotiate a reasonable price for healthcare services and prescription drugs. Create a healthcare tax and initiate radical healthcare reforms that do not hurt the struggling middle class.

Version 1.0 of the Affordable Care Act is unsustainable. However, the previous healthcare system was much worse. Those with chronic health conditions like asthma and Crohn's disease could simply be denied health insurance and prescription drug coverage due to a preexisting condition. Still, we need to do more, and do it better. Senator Bernie Sanders explained it best in his speech at Georgetown:

"Medicare-for-all would not only guarantee health care for all people, not only save middle class families and our entire nation significant sums of money, it would radically improve the lives of all Americans and bring about significant improvements in our economy."

Click images to enlarge.

"People who get sick will not have to worry about paying a deductible or making a co-payment. They could go to the doctor when they should, and not end up in the emergency room. Business owners will not have to spend enormous amounts of time worrying about how they are going to provide health care for their employees. Workers will not have to be trapped in jobs they do not like simply because their employers are offering them decent health insurance plans."

A Capitalist Case for Health Care Reform (video): John Green discusses some of the many ways that our current massively inefficient health care system leads to the irrational allocation of capital. He discusses the fascinating cases of Henry Reich (creator of http://www.youtube.com/minutephysics) and Hank Green (creator of, you know, all this) and how in a world without health care reform, their careers might look very different. John argues that employer-dependent health insurance privileges employees over entrepreneurs, thus limiting innovation, growth, and job creation.

Implementing a single payer system in mental health care would allow rigorous trials to be conducted to determine the effectiveness of non-drug therapies. It would create jobs in the mental health sector and ensure proper mental health care for Americans in rural and low-income communities with few behavioral health providers.

Study psychotherapies that are assisted with serotonin 2a receptor agonist psilocybin or kappa-opioid agonist Salvinorin A. Quoting chair of the department of psychiatry at the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, Dr. John Kane, "I believe we have to separate the politics from the science and make sure that our political decisions are informed by data and by evidence. That has been lacking in recent years. We need much more information that people can use. There are always risks and benefits. We have compounds that may have abuse potential but may also have some valuable therapeutic indications."

Even the Veterans Affairs System, arguably the best healthcare system in the United States, cannot provide adequate mental health care for veterans.

Stripes: VA care hard to get for mental health

Click for link.

In terms of psychoactive drugs, the American system allows way more harm to be done than good. It is well known that guidelines for treating pain and mental illness have been weighted heavily toward pharmaceutical company interests.

In the United States, it has resulted in overprescribing of expensive prescription opioids, benzodiazepines, antidepressant, and antipsychotics, while limiting insurance reimbursement of non-drug therapies

"Opiates, for your baby, too."

Click for video.

Proliferation of potentially dangerous and addictive psychoactive drugs has been a problem for centuries around the world (Britain pushing opium in China) and over 200 years in the United States. It would be okay if psychoactive drugs actually improved outcomes in the same way blood pressure and cholesterol medications reduce cardiovascular events and decrease death.

On the contrary, psychiatric medications work only half the time, are expensive, and have the potential to cause side effects such as impotence, addiction, and weight gain. Morbidity from suicide has not decreased in the past 50 years and has increased the last ten. Self-treating subclinical to mild anxiety and depression with alcohol and doctor-supplied prescription opioids harms thousands. 24,000 Americans died from prescription opioid and heroin overdose in 2013 alone.

Politics and the War on Drugs: ""Drugs" is a word that has polluted the well of language. Part of the reason we have a drug problem is because we don't have an intelligent language to talk about substances, plants, psychedelic [and] sedative states of mind, states of amphetamine excitation. We can't make sense of the problem and the opportunities offered by substances unless we clean up our language.

See:

Click for link.

"Drugs" is a word that's been used by governments to make it impossible to think creatively about the problem of substances and abuse and availability and so forth and so on.

So it's a kind of a paradox isn't it?

"Drugs" mean that which cures us and the greatest social problem of the generation.

Apparently there are "good drugs" sanctioned by science and medicine and "bad drugs" used by brown people in strange rites and growing in unusual plants in distant parts of the world. This kind of thinking, because it's naive, leads of course to social problems and bad politics and bad social policy.

Stars and Stripes: Budget bill forces VA to review policy on medicinal marijuana

Every society chooses a small number of substances, no matter how toxic, and enshrines them in its cultural values, then demonizes all other substances and then persecutes and launches witch hunts against those users whenever some political pretext requires...So it's an old game and it's been played in many places."

Why does American society rely so heavily on prescription drugs for mental illness, so much that non-drug therapies become unavailable to those who actually need them?

Although many forms of mental illness are debilitating, those which most often require antipsychotic medication are considered serious mental illness in American culture.

U.S. News: America Wakes Up to Mental Health

After the Asylum: How America's Trying to Fix Its Broken Mental Health System

No Help for Those with Serious Mental Illness: Fraud, Waste, and Excess Profits

Drug War Follies: Prohibition's Last Dance with Mary Jane

VICE: Amphetamine of the Year Treats Binge-Eating Disorder

Two bills are in the works that could provide great help to those with serious mental illness: Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with severe mania.

Over-reliance on drug therapies that work only half the time erodes the availability and affordability of non-drug therapies that are first-line treatments for many forms of mental illness.

It's easier for doctors and cheaper in the short-term. In the long-term, it's less effective and more expensive to society.

As the video above shows, problems related mental illness and prescription drug abuse have not changed in four decades.

"Recently my psychiatric journals have been full of glossy ads promoting a new diagnosis, “binge eating disorder.”

A picture of a sad, lonely woman surrounded by junk food sits underneath text introducing me to the diagnosis, encouraging me to ask my female patients if they sometimes regret how much they eat, because they may be ashamed to talk about it.

These ads were paid for by Shire Pharmaceuticals, the same company that makes the amphetamine Adderall. But Adderall has lost its patent, hence Vyvanse, a new, ultra, long-acting amphetamine. Shire’s newer ADHD ads also target women, recommending Vyvanse for 12-hour control of symptoms “throughout her day.”

It’s getting harder to remain unmedicated in the Altered States of America. Street drugs, speed and heroin, have come in, out of the cold, and are now Adderall or Vyvanse, OxyContin or Zohydro as Big Pharma expands into the recreational market. More women are becoming addicted to opiates and dying of overdoses, and more women are taking antidepressants and sleeping pills than ever before." - Psychiatrist Julie Holland, Seattle Times

Source: CDC. click for link.

Despite enactment of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, there is still no parity that requires insurance companies to pay for adequate behavioral health and addiction treatment services. Insurance companies denying claims and requiring ICD codes for prolonged therapy only increases mental health stigma and restricts access to care in our society.

Learn from Canada? Adopting their more efficient single payer system would be a start.

Though a larger body of evidence exists for pharmaceutical therapies to treat mental illness, the long-term outcomes are not better. The Institute of Medicine recently created a framework for establishing evidence-based

Click for link.

standards for psychosocial interventions for mental and substance use disorders that will hopefully lead to increased insurance reimbursements in the future.

Consequences of a deteriorating mental health infrastructure are severe, especially for rural and lower-income communities that cannot pay for services up-front. Inability to pay behavioral health providers in these communities results in providers only establishing practices in larger cities. As a result, patients do not receive adequate mental health care throughout United States.

Click for link.

Pew: How Severe is the Shortage of Substance Abuse Specialists?
Rural Health: Mental healthcare needs are not met in many rural communities across the country because adequate services are not present
WJHL: Treating Addiction with Prescription

This lack of care affects every spectrum of mental distress imaginable, from someone who has trouble overcoming grief, those with eating disorders or anger problems, to someone who has substance abuse problems.

Click for video.

Victims of the American Mental Health System: Lack of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Treatment Options and Local Politics Feed Stigma, Create Cycle of Hopelessness in NE Tennessee

Dr. Stephen Loyd: Overprescribing the Appalachians

Loyd is also featured here:

White Man's Burden
Highlights the lack of progress in treating mental illness the past three decades
#RxProblem: The Psychoactive Prescription Drug Problem
Focuses on the evolution of America's opioid crisis

Click for link.

The state of Tennessee has the second highest opioid prescribing rate per capita and has experienced a 250% increase in opioid-related overdose deaths from 2001 to 2010.

Johnson City, largest of the Tri-Cities with a population 65,000, is home to 3 of the top 10 Suboxone prescribers in the United States. Suboxone–a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone–is a form of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) to overcome opioid addiction. "MAT has proved to be clinically effective and to significantly reduce the need for inpatient detoxification services (rehab). MAT provides a more comprehensive, individually tailored program of medication and behavioral therapy."

Buprenorphine–the opioid in the Suboxone formulation–reduces opioid cravings, while opioid receptor antagonist naloxone is
included to prevent misuse and overdose.

According to SAMHSA, medication-assisted treatment has been shown to:

Improve patient survival and retention in treatment
Decrease illicit opiate use and other criminal activity among people with substance use disorders
Increase patients’ ability to gain and maintain employment
Improve birth outcomes among women who have substance use disorders and are pregnant

Suboxone Is Not a Perfect Solution and Shouldn't be the Only Solution

CNN reports, "Half (49%) of those addicted to opioid painkillers were able to reduce their drug abuse when taking Suboxone for at least 12 weeks. The success rate dropped to less than 10% [8.6%] once patients stopped taking the drug." The video below, again from Johnson City, shows how a husband and wife can have completely different responses to Suboxone.

Patients are tapered off of Suboxone for several months until opioids are no longer needed. Addiction is a chronic disease, so some patients may need to be on medication-assisted treatment long-term.

Are patients in Johnson City receiving the appropriate level of care that is needed, such as additional medication-assisted treatment options (i.e. methadone clinics) for opioid use disorder and quality mental health care?

Patients are often co-prescribed benzodiazepines with Suboxone, increasing the risk of respiratory depression and death.

Unfortunately, prescribing benzos for anxiety is often the only ill-advised mental health treatment option doctors are able to provide patients in communities like Johnson City that have a severe shortage of mental health providers.

Benzodiazepines Treat Anxiety, Cause Long-Term Problems
Continued Questions on Benzodiazepine Use in Older Patients
The Next Earl of Sandwich, Luke Montagu: Rapid withdrawal and misprescribing of a benzodiazepine leads to £1.35m settlement for Luke Montagu, CEP co-founder

Why is Suboxone the only treatment option in a community that is clearly as high-risk as Johnson City? As the video above shows, Suboxone doesn't work for everyone and is easily diverted into the community. Another option, methadone clinics, do not carry the same risk of drug diversion.

Nov 2015: Two methadone clinics could be coming to Johnson City

Strictly-regulated Opioid Treatment Programs that administer methadone are few and far between in Tennessee. According to the SAMHSA Opioid Treatment Program Directory, the closest OTP to Johnson City and the Tri-Cities region (population 500,000+) is almost 2 hours away in Knoxville. In fact, the two OTPs in Knoxville are the only two in east Tennessee, excluding Chattanooga.

Click for link.

Do citizens in your community have adequate treatment options? Check the directory.

By comparison, Georgia has a 61 OTPs–almost six times as many as Tennessee–spread evenly across the state. Several South Georgia towns such as Vidalia (pop. 10,000), Valdosta (pop. 56,000), Bainbridge (pop. 12,500), 2 in Dublin (pop. 16,000), Waycross (pop. 16,000), and Brunswick (pop. 15,000) have Opioid Treatment Programs.

Neighboring North Carolina has 52 Methadone Clinics. Five alone are located across the mountains less than an hour away in Boone and Asheville.

Leading the Charge: North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition

2015 CDC Report hig hlights Opioid Treatment Provider Need:

"Although the number of physicians and programs that provide medication-assisted treatment (MAT) in the U.S. increased from 2003 to 2012, this increase was not enough to adequately address growing opioid abuse and dependence. A new study points to the need to expand access to methadone and buprenorphine to address the opioid addiction epidemic in the U.S."

Conservative local politicians play a role in the lack of care:

Zoning Ordinance Blocks Methadone Clinic in Johnson City

Why is Suboxone the only MAT option for such a large number of patients in a high-risk community like Johnson City? Failure to provide adequate treatment options and behavioral health services to supplement recovery efforts results in more Suboxone being diverted to the street and increased stigma against victims of addiction. Remember, medicine created this unique American epidemic.

Click for link.

If proper behavioral health and substance abuse treatment services are available, drug users gain access to the support they need to live healthier lives.

Mental illness, suicide, and drug addiction do not spare trusted healthcare professionals like doctors and pharmacists. A "New Deal" for American healthcare, mental health, and substance abuse care will improve the quality of life of patients as well as providers.

Overprescribing Appalachia: Stephen Loyd, MD

Click for links to physician depression and suicide.

Creating Drug Seekers: Baeteena Black, TPRN

Click for link.

Too much incarceration, not enough support

Without adequately funding behavioral health and support systems, government cracked down on pill mills and overprescribing, then implemented electronic prescription drug monitoring programs.

When the prescription opioid supply decreased, users switched to an unregulated and much cheaper opioid–heroin, administered via injection–resulting in increased overdose deaths and infectious disease transmission.

An FDA and CDC Vital Signs report analyzed data from the 2002-2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).

Key findings include:

Those who abuse or are dependent on prescription opioid painkillers are 40 times more likely to abuse or be dependent on heroin.

As heroin abuse or dependence has increased, so has heroin-related overdose deaths. From 2002 through 2013, the rate of heroin-related overdose deaths nearly quadrupled.

There were significant increases of heroin use among groups with historically low rates of injectable drug use–women, those with private insurance, higher incomes–groups that have historically high rates of prescription opioid abuse.

NYTimes: Big Pharma disproportionately targets women (1 out of 4 women take psych meds) according to psychiatrist

Heroin use via injection was responsible for an HIV outbreak
in southeastern Indiana and a hepatitis C epidemic that is currently sweeping through Appalachia.

Click for video.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hepatitis C infection rates in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia tripled from 2006 to 2012, coinciding with increased injectable drug use.

Click images for sources.

Hepatitis C may lie latent for years and not cause harm to patients. However, when it become acute, it destroys the liver and kills those who have it.

Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) is a new drug that can essentially cure hepatitis C. Made by Gilead Sciences, Inc., Sovaldi costs about $1,000 a pill, or about $84,000 for a patient on a standard, 12-week treatment schedule.

The U.S. is unique among Western countries in that it doesn’t regulate drug prices. One nurse tells the story of what it’s like to watch patients get sicker when they can’t afford a pricey treatment: The True Cost of an Expensive Medication

Liver Disease Stage Req. for Medicaid Coverage of Sovaldi

Restrictions for Medicaid Reimbursement of Sofosbuvir for the Treatment of Hepatitis C Virus Infection in the United States. Source: Annals of Internal Medicine. Click image for link.

In an unusual move for a Republican, Indiana governor Mike Pence expedited legislation to allow syringe exchanges, a harm reduction measure that halts infectious disease transmission and increases contact between substance users and the healthcare system.

NOTE: The United States bans federal funding for syringe exchange programs. According to the Huffington Post, "The ban was put in place in 1988, repealed in 2009, and reinstated by Congress in 2011." (NOTE: The Indiana HIV outbreak finally convinced the culturally-opposed House Republicans to do something as simple as lift a ban on Federal funding for syringe exchanges in December 2015)

JAMA: Ideological Anachronism Involving Needle and Syringe Exchange Programs. Lessons From the Indiana HIV Outbreak

NEJM: Threading the Needle — How to Stop the HIV Outbreak in Rural Indiana

Politicians acting as moral police do not have the courage to adopt harm reduction measures such as syringe exchanges and/or sterile injection facilities in times of crisis.

What more can being done to help victims of addiction?

Harm reduction is an approach to substance abuse that is based on support rather than punishment. It reduces stigma and encourages greater healthcare system utilization among drug users. Leaders have implemented life-saving intranasal naloxone initiatives, but are slow to adopt other harm reduction programs due to ideological differences and stigma against drug users. Ineffective and stigmatizing "tough on drugs" attitudes still exist in many areas of the United States, especially in areas hard hit with addiction.

What is being done improve care in northeast Tennessee?

Continuing Education
- Outpatient Opioid Treatment
- Prescribing Practices

Harm Reduction
- Intranasal naloxone
NEEDED:
- Syringe/needle exchanges that would reduce rates of infectious disease transmission and increase healthcare utilization among heroin users. Injection centers would reduce overdose deaths.

American culture has never been comfortable with harm reduction:

History shows that treating substance use as a crime (i.e. "War on Drugs") does not reduce the rate of substance abuse. It only makes it worse, driving users to the unregulated "criminal underworld," shown described below. In the United States, it has resulted in the highest incarceration rate in the world and acted as a barrier to impactful research of mental illnesses and addiction. Globally, the drug war has killed hundreds of thousands and violated human rights.

Amount spent annually in the U.S. on the War on Drugs:

More than $51,000,000,000
More Drug War Statistics

America's War on Drugs:

PBS Frontline: Staggering Death Toll of Mexico’s Drug War

A more effective system of drug policy would treat drug use as a public health problem rather than a criminal offense. More compassion and education, less incarceration.

Substance and Shadow: Women and Addiction in the United States

American culture has never been comfortable with harm reduction:

Obama Tells Outdated Opioid Treatment Industry It's Time To Change

"President Barack Obama tackled the opioid epidemic on October 21 by telling health care providers across the country that access to medication-assisted treatment must be expanded.

For decades, those treating opioid addiction ignored the scientific consensus that the best approach involved medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration, coupled with counseling. Instead, the treatment industry insisted on a model known as "abstinence," in which any prescription medication aimed at addressing a patient's opioid use disorder was forbidden."

Try me.

What about inpatient drug rehabilitation facilities (rehab)?

If they can afford it, patients who visit rehab will first spend time in detox, then learn to trust the higher power of a 12-step program meant to dissolve ego and reduce addictive behaviors. Patients stay for 30 to 90 days and are encouraged to attend daily AA or NA meetings once they are discharged. Click here to learn more about the higher power that the world has used for eighty years to overcome addiction, in addition to the mystical experience occasioned by psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy.

Inpatient rehab is EXPENSIVE and difficult to access. In other words, it's not an option for 99% of Americans. For example, Cornerstone of Recovery in Knoxville, Tennessee, costs $2500 for a 5 day inpatient stay. Residents at the facility attend group sessions and learn the first 5 steps of AA/NA. Could one psilocybin psychotherapy session replace an expensive 5 day stay at rehab?

Follow this link for an excellent flow chart titled "Roadblocks to Seeking Treatment for Substance Addiction" that details the difficult process of accessing a rehab facility.

Rethink Drugs

America must rethink how it approaches drugs by shifting funds away from law enforcement and toward support services: Education, prevention, and treatment.

"The top cops in America's four biggest cities said on Wednesday that the war on drugs has failed to keep America safe and that it's time to reform the country's criminal justice system, a view now officially shared by more than 125 other prosecutors, sheriffs, attorneys general, and law enforcement leaders from across the US."

"The war on drugs has been a tremendous failure," Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland said on Wednesday, advocating for treatment instead of prison for drug offenders. "We've got to rethink the equation when we're making young people, especially young people of color in their mid-20s unemployable because they have a high-level misdemeanor or felony on their record for drugs or nonviolent crime and have no vocation, education, or job skills."

Dr. George Koob, Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Click for link.

Shamanic Medicines: Trying to Help a Broken and Addicted U.S. Mental Health Care System

Mental Health Argument for Psychedelics: The Kennedys, Addiction, and America's Top Psychiatrist

American Culture is Not Your Friend: Bernie Sanders Gets Between American Cultural Institutions and the Next Overdose Epidemic

Click for link.

In the Words of Apple Co-Founder and Psychedelics Proponent Steve Jobs, "Think Different"

When will thought leaders seriously consider allowing non-addictive, archaic means of resilience like meditation and psychedelic psychotherapy become a part of American culture? Mistreating chronic pain in the United States helped create the opioid problem, yet cannabis, with evidence of effectiveness against chronic pain, is illegal. We need behavioral health to be under a single payer system or create alternate means of resilience that are accessible for all.

FDA-Approved Drug Therapies & Classic Hallucinogens to Treat Alcoholism: Barriers, Background, and the Latest Research

According to Jeffrey Lieberman, M.D., past president of the American Psychiatric Association, Chairman of Psychiatry at Columbia University, Psychiatrist-in-Chief at NY Presbyterian Hospital, and Director of the NY State Psychiatric Institute:

"We have had a nearly 50-year hiatus in any serious investigation, except for some heroic investigators at a few universities."

"We Need to Study These Drugs."

"My point is not to say that these drugs should be discounted and relegated to the criticism and dismissal similar to that of treatments for which we have no basis for claims of therapeutic efficacy.

Lieberman & Steve Jobs agree: "LSD was
a very important experience to have"

If not, we will find ourselves in a situation that may resemble what we are seeing with marijuana, with its increasing legalization despite having an inadequate knowledge base, because of social and political pressure."

Given American mental health's epidemic of death, government should fund psychedelic therapy research to generate needed evidence, then support its integration into society. If not, states might take matters into their own hands. The public already has.

CNN: Could this be the next medical marijuana? 

Lieberman continues, "I believe that the scientific investigation of mind-altering psychedelic drugs in the 1960s and '70s was a truncated but promising avenue of research, and that these medications, these drugs, could have significant value for a variety of indications if studied adequately."

See: When Robert Kennedy Defended LSD

In his book, Shrinks, Lieberman states, "Perhaps I’m biased, since without psychiatry I might not be alive. As a teenager my depression nearly got the upper hand before I was saved by drugs—a one-two punch of tricyclic antidepressants and tryptamine psychedelics—and I continue to find better living through chemistry.

My trip did produce one lasting insight, though--one that I remain grateful for to this day...I marveled at the fact that [if] such an incredibly minute amount of a chemical...could so dramatically alter my cognition, the chemistry of the brain must be susceptible to pharmacologic manipulations in other ways, including ways that could be therapeutic."

Click for link.

2011. Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness. MacLean. J Psychopharmacology.

Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance 14 months later. Griffiths. J Psychopharmacology. Press Release. 2008.

Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Griffiths. J Psychopharmacology. Editorial & Commentaries. Press Release. Griffiths Q&A. 2006.

Psychiatry and mental health's recent turn toward spirituality–and vice-versa–may be a good sign for the future of psychedelics.

2014-2015 American Psychiatric Association President Paul Summergrad sat with Ram Dass (formerly Harvard psychedelics researcher Richard Alpert) for a taped interview that was shown at the 2015 APA Annual Convention that had a spiritual theme: "Psychiatry: Integrating Body and Mind, Heart and Soul."

Uncle Jesse
Posted by Our Amazing World on Friday, November 27, 2015

Could plant medicines such as cannabis, psilocybin (from Psilocybe mushrooms), and ayahuasca that are current DEA Schedule I drugs have therapeutic benefit? Cannabis has anti-cancer properties, alleviates seizures in some patients when other drugs fail, and is a safer pain-relief option than opioid analgesics. LSD leapt onto the scene in the 1950s as the most promising drug ever to treat mental illness and addiction.

After a 40 year hiatus, the LSD's serotonin 2a receptor-stimulating counterparts–psilocybin and ayahuasca–are being studied to treat mental disorders such as addiction, anxiety, and depression.

A myriad of difficult-to-treat mental disorders are waiting to be researched using treatment with psychedelic psychotherapy.

Roland Griffiths, PhD, Addiction Pharmacologist, Psychedelics & Spirituality Expert, Recipient of the 2015 Nathan B. Eddy Award from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence Speaker at TedMed2015

Benjamin Franklin, Redacted: Nothing Said to Be Certain but Death and Psilocybin's Potential Benefit to Mental Health Treatment and Research

See: Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize winner for inventing the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and Mullis on psychedelic problem solving

See: America's Greatest Ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes Discusses Ayahuasca and the Importance of Plant Medicines

Medical Ethics: Is it Unethical Not to Research These Plant Medicines?

Psychedelics, Spirituality, and More: A Religious Model for DMT

Julie Holland, M.D.

Regarding psilocybin to treat anxiety in patients with cancer, Johns Hopkins researcher Matthew Johnson states in an interview with the Canadian Medical Association Journal, "The small pilot study at UCLA found a reduction in both anxiety and depressive symptoms. And the really important thing about this is that these reductions are seen not just acutely, but long-term. People seem to have these major shifts in perspective long-term. So we have been conducting here at Johns Hopkins a study on the same thing, using psilocybin to examine (treatment of) anxiety and depression associated with a potentially terminal cancer diagnosis. The findings that we're seeing so far–and we're yet to publish these–they're very large effects, much larger than the effect sizes you typically see with medications used to treat anxiety and depression in this population."

And I should mention MDMA for PTSD. In the first study published, the majority of the folks having had received active MDMA therapy no longer qualified for the diagnosis of PTSD anymore. Again, the effect size is much larger than is typically seen with the approved medications that are used to treat PTSD, which don't work very well."

Additional highlights in the interview:

There are going to be both biological and psychological answers to many of these questions about mechanism with much work to be done. Safety is discussed at 13:00.

Tim's Story and psilocybin research fundraiser: "A recent but still unpublished study at Johns Hopkins demonstrated rapid, substantial, and sustained (lasting up to six months) antidepressant and anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) effects of a single dose of psilocybin in psychologically-distressed patients with life-threatening cancer

diagnoses. This is incredibly exciting. What if we could decrease or avoid altogether the known side-effects (and frequency of consumption) of current antidepressant drugs like SSRIs? This study could help establish an alternative.

Current popular antidepressant medications have significant adverse side effects, with up to 50% of patients failing to respond fully and as many as 30% remaining completely resistant.

Psilocybin has been safely consumed by humans for millennia. Despite this, the study of entheogens like psilocybin was blocked for several decades due to political rather than scientific factors. Now, we can finally explore the therapeutic and medical potential of these powerful compounds."

The work Tim is hoping to fund "will determine the efficacy of psilocybin in treatment-resistant depression, and will also use cutting-edge brain imaging to clarify the mechanism of action of psilocybin's antidepressant effects.

See Tim's Fundraiser for psilocybin research

From Nature: "Standard approaches to developing drugs for mental health have not reaped significant benefit in the past two decades, but it is a dilemma for the companies because there is a large and growing market for these products.” Mental disorders impose the largest disease burden worldwide and current treatments do not work particularly well for most patients."

"If you can treat anxiety and depression in people that are dying, why do they have to be dying? If people have chronic anxiety about something or depression, it may be that we'll find treatment so that people don't have to be on antidepressants for years and years and years." David Nichols, PhD, Former Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology, Professor Emeritus, Purdue University

Laws Prevent Research to Treat and Prevent Mental Illness and ...
"If you can treat anxiety and depression in people that are dying, why do they have to be dying? If people have chronic anxiety about something or depression, it may be that we'll find treatment so that people don't have to be on antidepressants for years and years and years." David Nichols, PhD, Former Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology, Professor Emeritus, Purdue UniversityWatch the full documentary: https://youtu.be/dm1TPRQyYnAMore: http://www.ouramazingworld.org/spirituality/psilocybin-prozac-xanax
Posted by Our Amazing World on Saturday, January 2, 2016

In the world of science, it is a rare opportunity to be able to conduct such potentially groundbreaking work for a mere $80,000. It’s almost unheard of. Psilocybin has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of major depression that cannot be properly addressed with current treatments. This also applies to end-of-life care for terminally-ill cancer patients." (Follow Psilocybin and Cancer Research on Facebook).

Why does important mental health research require crowdfunding?

From Michael Pollan's The Trip Treatment in The New Yorker:

In evidence-based medicine, large randomized controlled trials are required to properly evaluate potential treatments. Unfortunately, Big Pharma is usually the only entity that can afford to fund large clinical trials, leading to evidence being skewed in favor of pharmaceuticals.

Existing pharmaceuticals do not help ease depression and anxiety in homebound older adults. Could psilocybin help to relieve psychological distress in aging baby boomers?

Could Psilocybin-
Psychotherapy Be Used
to Treat Depression and
Anxiety in Homebound
Older Adults?

Psychedelic Drug Use Could Reduce Psychological Distress, Suicidal Thinking. Source: Johns Hopkins University. Click for link.

Click for link.

Nutt, D, et al. Drug Harms in the UK: A Multicriteria Decision Analysis (2010). The Lancet. Drugs ordered by their overall harm scores, showing the separate contributions to the overall scores of harms to users and harm to others The weights after normalization (0–100) are shown in the key (cumulative in the sense of the sum of all the normalized weights for all the criteria to users, 46; and for all the criteria to others, 54). CW=cumulative weight. GHB=γ hydroxybutyric acid. LSD=lysergic acid diethylamide. Click for link.

As you can see in the chart below from The Lancet, psychedelic drugs (LSD, mushrooms) carry much less risk of harm compared to other drugs. Scroll down for additional psychedelics research links. More studies found here.

Benefits of Nature...And More Importantly, What Makes Americans Unhappy? A Pew survey found something of a stress gap by race and education. College-educated parents and white parents were significantly more likely than other parents to say work-family balance is difficult. This is a big reason people are having fewer kids or none at all.

Click for link.

Add onto that expensive health insurance driven by overpriced healthcare and prescription drugs, high cost of college that is laughed at by the rest of the world, reduced religiosity, American society's tendency to self-medicate with alcohol and psychoactive prescription drugs (benzos, opioids, muscle relaxants, etc), few means of resilience and scarce/expensive mental health care, it's why we have a huge mental health and substance abuse problem in the United States.

Mental Health Preventative Medicine?

Source: CONTEMPLATIVE MIND IN LIFE A GLOBAL COLLECTION OF MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION RESEARCH RESOURCES. Click for link.

RxProblem: Antipsychotics Used for Unapproved
Purposes in Children and Elderly, Overused in Adults

"Antipsychotic drugs are currently the primary treatment for people diagnosed with schizophrenia. However, Steve Brill’s groundbreaking exposé on the antipsychotic Risperdal revealed that pharmaceutical companies, like Johnson & Johnson, specifically targeted vulnerable groups, like children with disabilities, foster care kids, and the elderly, for off-label prescribing of antipsychotic drugs, to expand their markets and increase their profits.

Click for link.

The results of such marketing efforts are evident. Studies estimate that approximately 50% of prescriptions for antipsychotics are given without an approved diagnosis and that, among those with intellectual disabilities, 71% receive these drugs without such a diagnosis. Also, almost one in four (25%) of children in foster care are prescribed an antipsychotic, and they are three times more likely than other children on Medicaid to be prescribed the drug off-label.

Antipsychotics have a number of severe side-effects and have been linked to long-term structural brain abnormalities, but they carry even bigger risks in elderly people. In March, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan examined the records of older veterans from 1998 and 2009 and found that one of out every 27 patients with dementia treated with the antipsychotics Haloperidol or Risperidone died within six months."

MedlinePlus: Many Seniors Given Antipsychotic Meds, Despite Potential Problems (Risks: kidney damage, stroke, and even death)

NY Times: When Crime Pays: J&J’s Drug Risperdal
"Risperdal is a billion-dollar antipsychotic medicine with real benefits — and a few unfortunate side effects. It can cause strokes among the elderly. And it can cause boys to grow large, pendulous breasts; one boy developed a 46DD bust. Yet Johnson & Johnson marketed Risperdal aggressively to the elderly and to boys while allegedly manipulating and hiding the data about breast development."

TIME: Antipsychotics Flood Top 10 Drug Company Settlements

Click for link.

Of the children on Medicaid who receive antipsychotics, 92% receive them for unapproved uses.

92% of Foster Care and Poor Kids Receive Antipsychotics for Unapproved Uses

California Moves To Stop Misuse Of Psychiatric Meds In Foster Care

See the most common side effects of second generation antipsychotics below, described as potentially "unbearable" and include weight gain, drowsiness, menstrual irregularities, decreased sex drive and arousal, akathisia (inability to sit still), insomnia, and dry mouth.

From authors Olfson, Blanco, Liu, Wang, and Correll in Arch Gen Psychiatry. National Trends in the Office-Based Treatment of Children, Adolescents, and Adults With Antipsychotics (2012):

"Over the past several years, an increasing number of adults and children in the United States have been treated with antipsychotic medications.1,2
Antipsychotics are now among the most commonly prescribed and costly classes of medications.3
In adults, antipsychotic medications have demonstrated efficacy and have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a primary treatment for schizophrenia4,5 and bipolar disorder6,7 and as an adjunctive treatment for major depressive disorder.8
In children and adolescents, antipsychotics are indicated for irritability associated with autistic disorder (5-16 years), tics and vocal utterances of Tourette syndrome and bipolar mania (10-17 years), and schizophrenia (13-17 years)."

When Crime Pays: J&J’s Drug Risperdal

JAMA Psychiatry: Children and youth prescribed antipsychotics had an increased risk of type 2 diabetes that increased with cumulative dose.

Click for link.

New Approach Advised to Treat Schizophrenia:
Less drug, more support

"More than two million people in the United States have a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and the treatment for most of them mainly involves strong doses of antipsychotic drugs that blunt hallucinations and delusions but can come with unbearable side effects, like severe weight gain or debilitating tremors.

Now, results of a landmark government-funded study call that approach into question. The findings, from by far the most rigorous trial to date conducted in the United States, concluded that schizophrenia patients who received a program intended to keep dosages of antipsychotic medication as low as possible and emphasize one-on-one talk therapy and family support made greater strides in recovery over the first two years of treatment than patients who got the usual drug-focused care.

The report, to be published on Tuesday in The American Journal of Psychiatry and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, comes as Congress debates mental health reform and as interest in the effectiveness of treatments grows amid a debate over the possible role of mental illness in mass shootings."

On Living and Dying

Click for link.

Overprescribing Appalachians, Anatolians

Click for Link.

Click for link.

Using Current Schedule I Drugs to Prevent and
Treat Mental and Substance Abuse Disorders

Addiction, Culture, Ayahuasca... and Drug Policy
Addiction Specialist Gabor Maté, M.D.

Science and Psychology of Classic Hallucinogens
Dr. Gabor Maté Uses Ayahuasca to Treat Opioid
Addiction in David Suzuki's Nature of Things

Therapies Past, Present & Future

Click for link.

Psychoactive #RxProblem: FDA Addicted
Patient Abuse, Drug Diversion, Pharma Fraud/Greed

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, PATIENTS MUST PAY FOR THIS POOR LEVEL OF CARE

Click for link.

Fearing: A Song to Shiver Your Amygdala

8/27/2015

Comments

Professor Joseph LeDoux, 2015 recipient of the William James Fellow Award and author of a new book, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety, Argues That Everybody Is Misunderstanding Fear and Anxiety. From NY Mag:

"Drawing on the latest research from NYU’s Center for Neural Sciences, Joseph LeDoux, head of the LeDoux Lab at the Center and the author of The Synaptic Self and The Emotional Brain, looks at fear and anxiety as products of conscious experiences as well as of the brain’s non-conscious processes, suggesting that successful treatment calls for both new drugs and fresh methods of psychotherapy.

Learn:

The Amygdala is NOT the Brain's Fear Center.

If You Give a Mouse a Xanax...Developing drugs that reduce fearful behaviors in rats has misled us into thinking that they would do the same for humans.

Victorian poet Emily Dickinson wrote about her depression and anxiety in Part 1, Life, XCVIII:

While I was fearing it came,
But came with less of the fear,
Because that fearing it so long,
Had almost made it dear.

LeDoux's band, The Amygdaloids, creates songs about about the mind, the brain, and mental disorders. "Fearing" is their song about anxiety that was inspired by Dickinson's poetry.

Song: FEARING

Part 1: The functional or psychological aspects of fear

Fear is the most basic and primitive emotion
It occurs when we encounter danger
An animal can put off the good stuff eating, drinking sex for days
But responding to danger must be immediate
Or there will be no more eating, drinking or sex.
The fear response is the same humans and other mammals
Muscles tense, heart beats fast, hormones flow
These responses help keep us alive when threats arise.

Part 2: The neuroscience of fear

Evolution says, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”
Indeed, the brain mechanisms of fear are highly conserved
The amygdala is a key structure
It detects danger and produces hard wired protective responses
The amygdala also forms emotional memories
It uses these to predict harm in the future
Fear learning is rapid and persistent
While fear memories can be controlled but are hard to eliminate
The amygdala is hyperactive in many psychiatric conditions
Some of which can be treated with drugs
While others respond better to psychotherapy
We need better treatments for fear

When triggered by fearful sounds or sights, the amygdala rapidly signals to our bodies to freeze while the brain processes the threat.
(NYU Alumni Magazine)

LeDoux On the Amygdala and Unconscious Memories (from video below):

Can we think of the amygdala as the seat of what Freud called the unconscious?

"I think it's a distraction because... I mean, it's true in the sense that the hippocampus is necessary to have a conscious recollection of some past event, and the amygdala participates in unconscious memory. But we shouldn't really taint it with the Freudian concepts because that adds a lot of baggage.

The amygdala is an unconscious processor because it's just not connected with the conscious system. It's kind of like by default unconscious as opposed to being in the Freudian sense of unconscious something that was conscious, but was too anxiety-provoking and therefore shipped to the unconscious. The amygdala gets direct sensory information and it learns and stores information on its own, and that information that's stored then controls emotional responses. The connectivity is hardwired, so one way to think about it is that a rat will respond to a cat without any learning by freezing, raising its blood pressure and heart rate and respiration and releasing stress hormones."

"But it will also respond to a stimulus associated with a cat and have the same responses. So you don't learn how to be afraid, your amygdala doesn't have to learn what to do, it learns what to do it in response to. So it learns what stimuli it should respond to. So it's learning and memory in that sense that we call an implicit kind of memory where you don't have to have any conscious involvement. Whereas, the hippocampus is necessary to have a conscious memory. So, yes, they do participate in conscious and unconscious memories, but not in the Freudian sense.

But there's a whole other side of the amygdala's role in memory, which is that when the amygdala is activated and all of those hormones and other things happened to get released, that provides information that feeds back to parts of the brain, like the hippocampus and allows them to store their memories in a much more efficient and strong way. So we know that emotional memories are stored more vividly than other kinds of memories. It used to be thought that they were more accurate, but in fact now we know that they are not more accurate, they're just more vivid and strong in the personal sense.

But they can be highly inaccurate. This is shown by studies of natural disasters and so forth, well not always so natural. But like the Space Challenger Shuttle... or the shuttle, Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, a lot of people witnessed that and they were studied almost immediately by psychologists who made notes of exactly what their responses, what they were experiencing at the time and then a year later, they were surveyed again and the responses were completely different from what they remembered originally and then several years later it completely changed again. So what we remember is not necessarily what we experienced originally. So the accuracy of those memories changes over time, but their strength in terms of your subjective feeling that it was a really powerful experience is there."

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Similarities Between Addiction and Anxiety Disorders. Learning to Forget. [VIDEO]

8/20/2015

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Targeting memories to treat addiction and anxiety:

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Psychedelics Reclassification & Research the Right Thing to Do For Mental Health? UK Psychiatrist James Rucker Thinks So.

5/27/2015

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To allow appropriate research on classic hallucinogens, Rucker gives evidence that supports removing them from the strictest of legal classifications, arguably the greatest barrier to research.

Psychedelics are more legally restricted than heroin or cocaine, “but no evidence indicates that psychedelic drugs are habit forming,” Rucker writes, “little evidence indicates that they are harmful in controlled settings; and much historical evidence shows that they could have use in common psychiatric disorders.” The unnecessarily restrictive legal environment means clinical research using psychedelics "costs 5-10 times that of research into less restricted [but more harmful] drugs such as heroin."

From Michael Pollan of The New Yorker:

UK psychiatrist James Rucker makes an argument for rescheduling psychedelics in this month's British Medical Journal, pointing to LSD and psilocybin's potential to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder, tobacco and alcohol addiction, cluster headaches, and anxiety associated with cancer and terminal illness.

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Novel psychoactive compounds for treating mental illness have been few and far between the last 30 years, which emphasizes the importance of incorporating time-tested non-Western means of treating mental illness, stress, and addiction. Advocates for integrative mental health programs include the David Lynch Foundation, Botanical Dimensions, ICEERS, Patrick Kennedy's One Mind, and One Mind Institute.

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"Phil Borges’ and Kevin Tomlinson’s new documentary 'CRAZYWISE’ is a game changer. It’s going to be an important step forward in starting the long overdue conversation on how we define and treat mental illness in America.”

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Pioneering research in the last decade supported by Heffter Research Institute (US), MAPS (US), and the Beckley Foundation (UK) provide some of the strongest evidence so far for reclassifying these historically significant substances and making them available for mental health research.

PRISM, recently founded in Australia, is a similarly-modeled organization that researches a range of diseases for which conventional medicines provide limited relief.

Ayahuasca is another classic hallucinogen that is currently being researched. World-renowned addiction and palliative medicine doctor Gabor Maté explores the potential of classic hallucinogen (N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT)-containing sacramental tea ayahuasca for treating opiate addiction David Suzuki's "Nature of Things."

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Johns Hopkins University addiction pharmacologist Roland Griffiths, recipient of a $463,000 psychedelics research grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), gives a candid interview that meditation and explains his motivation for studying sacred plant compounds psilocybin, DMT, and Salvinorin A.

With billions of dollars going toward the 'BRAIN Initiative' (USA), 'Human Connectome Project' (USA), & 'Human Brain Project' (EU), now is the time to expand research of consciousness and mental health using classic hallucinogens, also known as 'psychedelics,' 'serotonergic hallucinogens,' or 'entheogens.' Consciousness determines personality. It determines how we view ourselves, others, and the world.

The term 'entheogen' is related to classic hallucinogens' unique ability to induce a mystical or spiritual experience. Spirituality is important part of recover programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and the everyday well-being of people across cultures, so why are psychedelics such a taboo subject? Misconceptions and use that does not involve proper ritual, set, and setting are partly to blame.

For the sake of mental health, Americans should embrace the rescheduling of classic hallucinogens to allow proper research into their benefit. With our poor understanding of the brain, fully incorporating archaic mental health practices with Western psychiatry could help alleviate the everyday mental and existential suffering of millions of Americans.

From NPR:
Brain Chemistry & Mysticism: Can
Psychedelics Expand Our Consciousness?

Current NIH Director Participates in a Pew
Forum Where the Peyote Ritual is Discussed:
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Given the benign safety profile of psychedelics compared to opioids and psychiatric medications, should they even be considered drugs, or a special class of psychotherapy in a pill?

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will focus on nondrug approaches

National Research Action Plan
Responding to the Executive Order
Improving Access to Mental Health Services for Veterans, Service Members, and Military Families

The Department of Veterans Affairs is well-aware of the mental healthcare and chronic pain crises in America:

“Unless the 'cultural transformation' called for by the IOM begins in earnest, our nation faces additional crises in the future. Many service members and veterans with pain also have comorbid conditions such as posttraumatic stress syndrome or traumatic brain injury,” a commentary in the journal said. “Many of them are at risk for a lifetime progression of increasing disability unless the quality, variety, and accessibility of evidenced-based 'self-management' skills are improved. Without more effective and less costly approaches to pain management, the estimated costs of care and disability to the country will approach $5 trillion.”

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Psychedelics Reclassification & Research the Right Thing to Do For Mental Health? UK Psychiatrist James Rucker Thinks So.

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Peyote Cactus (Mescaline)

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The Bipartisan CARERS Act

VA Meditation App:
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