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Tag: psychedelic drugs depression

  • Toad Venom May Be The Next Psychedelic Frontier

    Toad Venom May Be The Next Psychedelic Frontier

    The venom produces a powerful and immediate reaction that can include immobility, extreme emotional responses and euphoria.

    A feature in the New York Post highlights the growing use of toad venom among “well-off New Yorkers” for its psychedelic properties, which have been alternately described as a “total fusion with God” and a direct route to the emergency room.

    The venom, drawn from Colorado River toads, produces a powerful and immediate reaction that can include immobility, extreme emotional responses and euphoria. In certain cases, the response can be disassociation and anxiety that lasts for days and requires hospitalization, but researchers have also found that the toad venom may provide relief for depression.

    His First Experience With The Venom

    The Post feature includes a recollection from social media influencer and life coach Barrett Pall, who described his first experience with toad venom.

    “I was crying really hard, yelling, ‘I’m so sorry’ over and over,” he said. “I saw my younger self with my parents and ex-boyfriends in places [where] I’d been hurt.”

    According to Pall, the venom’s psychedelic properties ran their course after 45 minutes, but left him feeling “reborn.” He immediately broke up with a long-term boyfriend after the experience before booking a global excursion and reaching out to his estranged father. “I was just so sure that everything I was deciding was right,” he explained. “My life has never been the same since.”

    The venom, a milky toxin secreted by the toad when it feels threatened, contains a psychoactive ingredient, 5-MeO-DMT, which is four to six times more powerful than DMT, another naturally occurring psychedelic with a similar history of ritual uses.

    It is apparently extracted from the toad’s glands and then dried to a paste by “shamans” who sell it at ceremonies throughout the United States. Admission to such events can cost between $200 and $500 per person, according to the Post.

    An anonymous source quoted in the feature described the reaction by attendees at one such ceremony. “Some people moaned, cried or convulsed on their backs. Others started dancing, singing or chanting.”

    Promising Clinical Results But Consider The Risks

    The experience is not without its perils. Toad venom is considered a Schedule I classified substance, and as such, can carry fines or prison sentences if found in an individual’s possession. 

    The “trip” is also not without its problems. “It’s such an intense experience that, in most cases, doing it at a party isn’t safe,” said Alan K. Davis, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at the Psychedelic Research Unit at Johns Hopkins University.

    Davis warned against events overseen by “shamans,” whom he described as “more like drug dealers” than spiritual advisors who are ill-prepared for negative reactions by users. “If people get dosed too high, they can ‘white out’ and disassociate from their mind and body,” he explained. “Anxiety can persist for days, and we’ve heard of people going to the emergency room.”

    Experiencing the venom in a controlled setting with experienced observers is not only advisable, according to Davis, but could also prove beneficial for those who experience depression and anxiety. A study he conducted with 362 users found that 80% of participants felt relief after consuming the venom.

    “One of the hallmarks of depression is feeling disconnected and isolated,” said Davis. “5-MeO-DMT pulls you into something meaningful and makes people feel like they belong.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Study: Psychedelics Change The Way People With Depression Read Faces

    Study: Psychedelics Change The Way People With Depression Read Faces

    Researchers believe that even one dose of a psychedelic could change the way that people read facial expressions.

    Psychedelics may help alleviate the symptoms of depression and anxiety by making sufferers more adept at reading other people’s facial expressions, according to a recent review of scientific studies.

    The review, published in the journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology, looked at eight previous studies that examined the effects of psychedelics. The authors of the review found that psychedelics changed how people read facial expressions, and that change had an effect on their symptoms of mental illness.

    “Our most consistent finding was that these drugs reduced the recognition of negative emotions and modulated amygdala activity to these stimuli. This effect was correlated with antidepressive effects in depressed patients,” study authors wrote.

    They noted that the pool they reviewed was small, so there is a need for further review. Still, they said the results were promising.

    “Despite the small sample sizes, results suggest that serotonergic hallucinogens show promising beneficial effects on deficits in recognition of emotions in facial expressions,” they wrote.

    People with depression and anxiety often have unusual patterns of social cognition, in particular when it comes to interpreting other people’s facial expressions.

    “Some studies show that people with anxiety and mood disorders have deficits in the recognition of facial expressions,” study authors wrote. “For example, in social anxiety disorder, which is characterized by fear of undergoing criticism or negative judgment in social situations, there is hypervigilance to facial expressions of fear, sadness, and joy, and these expressions act as indicators of threat or social reinforcement according to the phenotype of the disorder.”

    Researchers found that even one dose of a psychedelic could change the way that people read facial expressions, and help alleviate depression symptoms.

    “Indeed, the studies reviewed showed that a single dose or a few doses of LSD or psilocybin was associated with a modified pattern of recognition of negative emotions that could be interpreted as beneficial, since several of these studies showed that these modifications were correlated with increases in positive mood and/or anxiolytic and antidepressant effects,” the study authors wrote.

    Psychedelics weren’t the only drugs that changed emotional facial perceptions. The study authors also found that MDMA (ecstasy) has similar effects.

    “There is also evidence that the serotonergic drug MDMA consistently reduces identification of negative emotions in tasks of face recognition and decreases the activity of the amygdala,” they wrote, adding that this could be similar to the way pharmaceutical antidepressants work.

    ”These mechanisms, associated with the capacity of MDMA to enhance serotonergic tone in the prefrontal cortex, could be shared mechanisms with traditional antidepressants and classic hallucinogens for emotional regulation in subjects with mood and anxiety disorders.”

    View the original article at thefix.com