The FT – Finally, It’s Time To: Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out With Psilocybin Mushrooms
Well, who’d have thought it eh, Vicar? That bastion of conformity, The FT, speaking out to highlight the ‘latest’, yet decades old mushroom research that’s escaping out of the lab. The FT, of all peeps, has joined the clamour to no longer keep us in the dark and feed us on manure. ‘Shrooms are here and there’s real Science to back them. Sound, peer reviewed, clinical trials evidence, validates their effectiveness, from: New York University School of Medicine and John’s Hopkins University School of Medicine, no less. At last, the research is in and it seems that 21st Century science is laying to rest outdated biases with patient reaction being transparently scrutinised using digital innovation.
The most recent trials focused on relieving patient depression, psychosocial stress and anxiety following their cancer diagnosis. Not just for the treatment of depression, mushrooms are being used to treat post traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and severe headaches. There’s also real treatment potential of alcohol dependency using psilocybin mushrooms for which current treatments are often limited, expensive, conflicting and ineffective.
The latest trials, subject to final Regulatory sign off, will begin next year in eight European Countries and will build on five decades of research whose time may finally have come. Best known for their recreational use in the 1960’s the growing interest in mushrooms from academic institutions confirms that they have truly come in from the cold and dark. It’s not just a new dawn we’re seeing but new leadership with bright, fresh, minds. The side effects of the current Chemical Health model are increasingly being challenged by a newer model of Biological Wellness more suited to the human condition. Our inbuilt receptors often welcome a more sympathetic approach following so many failed attempts at ‘chemical coshing’ via current anti-depressant ‘protocols’.
George Goldsmith as a co-founder of Compass Pathways was driven to focus on such therapies due to the serious depression of a relative – as ever it’s personal being the greatest of all motivators as we sail with him to those not so distant shores. But now, George has his Compass set on a true bearing and the greatest storms are likely behind him. That he was a regular visitor to our shores was an opportunity missed, yet one that is not easily forgotten. So perhaps, for all the lessons we continue to learn, a life of new rules shows it may yet be of more substance than a funghi old game – after all?
Mushrooms, we take our cap off to you.