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Five years ago, psychedelics helped break Ian Roullier free from depression. His mental health had been spiraling for years, despite various antidepressants, counseling, and personal efforts to meditate, walk, and journal his way back to health. In 2014, he heard researchers at Imperial College London were planning to test psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms, as treatment for depression. Out of desperation, he volunteered to try it.
The treatment, involving two therapy sessions under the influence of psilocybin, was a challenging experience, says Roullier, involving confronting past traumas. But he felt profoundly different afterwards. For three months, Roullier says, he had no depression whatsoever. And for the three months after that, he only had mild symptoms. “Depression is such a brittle rigid state,” he says. “Psilocybin is the opposite end of that and allows you that flexibility and freedom to see things in a different way, maybe for the first time.”
Over time, though, the depression slowly creeped back. And because psilocybin is illegal in the UK, Roullier had no way of accessing the drug. “I didn’t want to just find some mushrooms in the woods somewhere and take them with no support or even with friends,” he says. “This is purely therapeutic, not a recreational experience.” He began emailing researchers, asking if there was any way he could access psilocybin.
The lead clinical psychologist for the study at Imperial’s Centre for Psychedelic Research, Rosalind Watts, heard similar stories from several participants. “Having worked in two psilocybin for depression studies, I could see what we were giving our participants was an experience that was really helpful,” says Watts. She repeatedly saw patients who got relief from the psilocybin study, but then had depression return when they couldn’t get more. “By the fiftieth time of seeing that same thing happen, I started to feel like rather than continuing research, I really wanted to build something for those people,” says Watts.
Full Article Here
The treatment, involving two therapy sessions under the influence of psilocybin, was a challenging experience, says Roullier, involving confronting past traumas. But he felt profoundly different afterwards. For three months, Roullier says, he had no depression whatsoever. And for the three months after that, he only had mild symptoms. “Depression is such a brittle rigid state,” he says. “Psilocybin is the opposite end of that and allows you that flexibility and freedom to see things in a different way, maybe for the first time.”
Over time, though, the depression slowly creeped back. And because psilocybin is illegal in the UK, Roullier had no way of accessing the drug. “I didn’t want to just find some mushrooms in the woods somewhere and take them with no support or even with friends,” he says. “This is purely therapeutic, not a recreational experience.” He began emailing researchers, asking if there was any way he could access psilocybin.
The lead clinical psychologist for the study at Imperial’s Centre for Psychedelic Research, Rosalind Watts, heard similar stories from several participants. “Having worked in two psilocybin for depression studies, I could see what we were giving our participants was an experience that was really helpful,” says Watts. She repeatedly saw patients who got relief from the psilocybin study, but then had depression return when they couldn’t get more. “By the fiftieth time of seeing that same thing happen, I started to feel like rather than continuing research, I really wanted to build something for those people,” says Watts.
Full Article Here