Women's Health | +70 articles

[mr peabody]

Women behind the scenes: Making MDMA a legal medicine*

by Jasmine Virdi | CHACRUNA | 25 Aug 2021

Amy Emerson is the Chief Executive Officer at the MAPS Public Benefit Corporation (MAPS PBC), a fully owned subsidiary of the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Working for almost two decades to make MDMA a legal, FDA-approved medicine, Amy began as a pro bono consultant for MAPS in 2003, helping to create MAPS’ clinical department and managing the MDMA Clinical Development Program. Her painstaking time and efforts have played a key role in seeing MDMA-assisted psychotherapy as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through clinical trials, driving it ever-closer to being a legal, accessible therapeutic treatment in the US and abroad.

In this interview, Amy shares how she first came to work in the field of psychedelic science, detailing the hurdles along the path to legalizing MDMA as a therapeutic treatment for PTSD. She touches upon the contentious subject of commercializing MDMA and psychedelics more broadly, exploring what it means for MAPS to be a public-benefit corporation in the rapidly expanding sphere of psychedelic pharmacy.

Jasmine Virdi: First of all, I’m curious as to how you became interested in psychedelics. Were you always interested? If so, what was the culture and environment like towards them in Kodiak, Alaska, where you grew up?

Amy Emerson: I don’t remember when I first encountered the term “psychedelic,” but I do remember being in grade school [in the 1980s] learning about drugs through a “just say no” type of lens. I went to Catholic school and there was no drug or sex education, and when there was it was the prohibition type of education which is no education at all. The first time that I heard anything about drugs I was told to stay away from them, which has the opposite effect on me as it does on most teenagers.

I’ve always been a curious person, always loved being in nature, and exploring, so when I first heard about drugs, I thought they sounded interesting. My parents never really talked about drugs. My dad had probably tried smoking cannabis in college once, nor did my parents drink much, but at the same time, they were encouraging of exploration.

As I got older, I did try smoking pot and alcohol, and when I finally learned about LSD, I instantly knew that I wanted to try it. Anything that sounded exploratory would immediately prick my curiosity, but I didn’t actually try LSD until I was in college. In my junior year, with my now husband, I tried LSD. We had an incredible time, and I started to explore more with him. Later, I tried mushrooms with my best friend who is still my best friend 30 years later. The two people that I tried these substances with are still in my life and we still explore together. By the time I got into the idea of psychedelic research, I had already had my own explorations with them.

“By the time I got into the idea of psychedelic research, I had already had my own explorations with them.”

JV: How did your path in the psychedelic field start and how did you come to work at MAPS?

AE: I started my career working in drug development. I always thought that psychedelics were powerful tools for healing, but it never occurred to me that they would be medicalized again. In the late ‘90s I went to Burning Man and heard about the Mind States conferences.

That is where I got introduced to elders in the psychedelic world like the Shulgins, Terence McKenna, and Allison and Alex Grey, and many others. That is where I first heard Rick Doblin talk about his dream of starting a non-profit drug development company using MDMA for PTSD. As soon as I heard him talk about it, I knew that I had to help him do it.

It was a very clear moment of for me, although I hadn’t ever considered that my career and the knowledge that I gained through it could be used in the psychedelic field. I was first exposed to the idea of psychedelic research from an academic angle, but when I heard Rick say “non-profit pharma company,” I thought I actually might be able to help. My husband very kindly didn’t tell me that he thought Rick was crazy and it would never happen until many years later, after I was already immersed in it.

JV: What year was it?

AE: I can’t remember which Mind States conference it was, but it would’ve been the early 2000s. I went to the MAPS table, which was a rickety little table. Earth and Fire Erowid, founders of the non-profit psychedelic education platform, Erowid Center, were working at the table, and Rick had already left. No one from MAPS was there, in fact, I don’t even think there was anyone working at MAPS at the time! They told me to email MAPS and tell them I wanted to volunteer, so I sent my resume, and I didn’t hear anything for a couple of months.

Finally, I got a call at work asking me if I knew how to write a monitoring plan. MAPS were trying to get approval for their protocol from an external Review Board Ethics Committee to pursue their clinical trials with MDMA, and they needed to have a contract research organization (CRO) that would contract the whole clinical program for a $70,000 fee. Instead, I started volunteering my time on the nights and weekends, and I did the work that the CRO would have, building a monitoring plan alongside it. I started in 2003, and it turned into six years of volunteering my time. I only finally started to get paid for my work in 2009. In parallel, I was working at Chiron (which later became Novartis) in vaccine development, helping to write ethics applications to submit to the Federal Drug Administration (FDA).

JV: I would imagine that since your time starting at MAPS your role has expanded exponentially, besides the fact of your now getting paid.

AE: Volunteering for all that time, finding time on nights and weekends to do the work with Rick or taking vacation time to go and travel to locations where we were conducting studies—I was just fitting it in, and we had such a tiny team. It was very slow, and we made slim, but incremental progress, getting PTSD patients treated in senior medical director for medical affairs, training and supervision at MAPS B-Corp, Michael Mithoefer’s randomized controlled pilot study with MDMA. One of my main contributions at the time was making sure that we had a database and case report forms, otherwise the data would have never been useful. The data from our early studies is still part of our portfolio that we use when engaging with the FDA. It went from that to hiring a small research team and growing it from there.

Until 2015 we grew MAPS as a research team, and then we started MAPS B-Corp, which I took of leadership of. In the beginning, I had to take on multiple roles, working on every single aspect, and now we have 90 people employed. Even when I did start to get paid, Berra Yazar-Klosinski, deputy director of MAPS B-Corp, and I worked on every single thing, growing it into a fully-fledged company. We are growing a lot again, and my role as CEO now is so different. I’m still involved in mapping out how certain research fits into our overall FDA strategy to get MDMA-assisted therapy legalized, but I no longer work on individual studies. It is not something I ever imagined I would be doing, being the one in charge of getting MDMA through FDA approval and now growing a patient access and commercial program.

JV: The commercialization and corporatization of psychedelics is a contentious subject for many who have long been in the community. I’m curious to hear your thoughts about how MAPS is navigating this and what it means for MAPS to be a non-profit pharma company? Do you think we can avoid the psychedelic field being run by traditional biotech companies?

AE: It is a really complicated subject and the role that we play is to show that we can do it differently. We are trying to maximize benefit, not maximize profit. Incorporating as a public-benefit corporation owned by a non-profit and going the data exclusivity route [protecting the clinical data submitted to the FDA for a period of five years] instead of a patent exclusivity route [having the exclusive right to produce a specific drug that usually lasts for 20 years], our role is to keep pushing the ecosystem in a way that shows that it is possible to do it this way. I don’t think that all the development in the psychedelic space could be done by non-profits as there no way to raise that much money for every company through philanthropy.

That being said, there are really important roles for non-profits, taking on projects that most others steer clear of; that is what we did at the time. Now the psychedelic field is open, this is part of living in capitalism, and that we don’t want to block people from acting. Although, we do want to encourage people to think about doing medicine in a different way, putting public benefit over profit in all ways.

JV: I know that public benefit corporations are a relatively new type of legal entity that are different from traditional corporations in that they reject prioritizing profit for shareholders, rather prioritizing purpose and long-term public benefit. In terms of being a B-Corp, what are the challenges on the horizon for MAPS? I’d imagine there are significant challenges to developing MDMA through independent funding.

AE: As a wholly owned subsidiary of a non-profit, all money comes through fundraising, and it costs way more to do this than Rick could have ever anticipated. It is easy to run out of people and places that are still going to be willing to donate philanthropically, especially when we are getting so close to the end goal. Part of our goal is to be a self-sustaining organization and to do that we need to make a profit. Again, we are not aiming for profit maximization, but we will make a profit. The closer we get to making a profit, the less people want to donate.

The complete commercialization part costs as much as a clinical development program. It is so expensive to put everything in place, and it is necessary to have all of the roles that a traditional pharma company would have if this is going to work. Additionally, if we don’t do it well, we only have five years of data exclusivity, which could jeopardize the profit that we do make to create a sustainable organization. When people have a patent, they can take a lot longer and screw up the first year, but we have to get it right.

“We don’t want to just get MDMA approved, we want to do it in a way that tackles misinformation and stigma around mental health and psychedelics, and makes them accessible to underserved, marginalized communities.”

Since 2003 to 2018, we moved slow conducting a Phase 2 Clinical Program, but now we have to move much quicker, and the faster you do something, the more it costs. Now there are a lot of other people entering the market too, and if we want to be the ones shaping the ecosystem, we have to keep moving. Plus, there are the challenges of psychedelics becoming accepted within the paradigm of mental health and education as well as ensuring that they are accessible to underserved communities. We don’t want to just get MDMA approved, we want to do it in a way that tackles misinformation and stigma around mental health and psychedelics, and makes them accessible to underserved, marginalized communities.

JV: I get goosebumps just thinking about it… How far are we from getting MDMA to be a legal, FDA-approved medicine?

AE: We will be submitting the new application by the end of 2022/beginning of 2023 and hope that the approval will come at the end of 2023. Joy Sun Cooper, our Chief of Patient Access, did a really deep dive on what the commercial landscape looks like for us, and we are building a plan with that information so that we are prepared to launch this commercially.

JV: Perhaps a segue of a question, but as a woman working in the psychedelic field have you come up against any particular challenges?

AE: Overall, it has been great. When I first started working in this field, the Women’s Visionary Congress (WVC) was pushing to include more women in psychedelics. Not that there weren’t already women in psychedelics, but they were usually behind the scenes. The WVC has done an amazing job of making sure that there were women sharing the stage in this field. There have always been a lot of women in clinical research and drug development, although they are not necessarily in leadership positions.

As I was building the team at MAPS PBC, we were always predominantly women. Growing together as team, we all moved into leadership positions, which is rather unusual. We are also working on diversity too. When I look at that leadership team across the company that we have a healthy amount of diversity, although there is not so much at the very top yet, but that will come too. I’ve never run into any negative issues being a woman working in psychedelics, but I think it is because I partly work in a small group of people that are very much aware and supported, very different from working in a corporate environment.

JV: Is there anything else that you feel called to share and want people to hear?

AE: I really want people to be open-minded. We already have open minds within our inner circles, but we need to remember that it isn’t the case when we go further out so we all need to be ambassadors. Part of the way you change people’s minds is by sharing stories of healing. I also think we need to be open-minded about how this field is expanding and developing. In the psychedelic ecosystem, we are going to have the whole spectrum including for profit, patents, non-profits, and benefit corporations. Whilst moving forward, we need to keep asking ourselves, “How do we do this differently and be collaborative?”

“Do the work to keep the lines open. Do the work to reach out to communities. Don’t rely on just one group to do it, everyone has a role to play in the shaping of this movement.“

We must be open-minded enough to keep influencing the ecosystem in the way that we dream it to be. There are going to be times when we disagree with how other groups are driving this movement forward, but if we shut down communication and turn into only being competitive, are we really going to be doing this any differently? We have to have a different attitude; Do the work to keep the lines open. Do the work to reach out to communities. Don’t rely on just one group to do it, everyone has a role to play in the shaping of this movement.

From the article here :

Women Behind the Scenes in Psychedelic Science: Making MDMA a Legal Medicine with Amy Emerson

Amy Emerson recounts how she first became involved in the work of psychedelic science and her efforts to legalize MDMA-assisted therapy.

chacruna.net

 

[mr peabody]

CBD suppositories are the only thing that helps my horrible period cramps

by Rebecca Norris | BuzzFeed

I've had horrible menstrual cramps for years and these CBD suppositories are the only thing that actually helps.

Hey, hi, hello. I'm Becca and I know a thing or two about cramps. You too? Yeah, I know I'm not alone in the monthly body-crippling moments of womanhood, and that's precisely why I decided it was time to do a little investigative journalism in the form of untraditional period pain solutions.

A quick note before I dive in: This is my experience with my period and symptoms and treatments, but this in no way is every person's experience. I hope you can enjoy and maybe learn something new, but remember to consult your personal doctor before starting a new regimen.

Throughout high school, I got by with a doctor's note to excuse my cramp-related absences. College was different. With a nasty iron deficiency and just about zero regard for sleeping through alarms on day one or two of my period, it was a nightmare. For the past 13 years of life, I've tried just about everything for cramps — from extra strength OTC remedies to the warm comfort of a heating pad — but it was clear that my period called for more.

Recently I was at VSPOT MediSpa in NYC — a women's health medispa that focuses on science, sex and strength — when, lo and behold, CBD suppositories for period cramps caught my attention. Needless to say, I went home with a big pack in anticipation of my next period.

Short for Cannabidiol, CBD is one of the over 400 compounds found in good 'ol marijuana. It's made to interact with the network of neurons in our bodies called the endocannabinoid system. When it interacts with the receptors in this system, a whole slew of responses can happen — making it ideal in alternative medicine and therapy.

While CBD can be used topically and orally for everything from regulating mood to stimulating appetite and reducing varying types of pain, my adventures with CBD were going to be internalized to target the body-crippling period cramps that so often associates the first day of my period.

And, if you're unsure what a suppository it is — let me be clear: By internalized, I mean it was going to be put all up in me before my tampon.

Here's how it went down: At the first sign of my period, with subtle cramps and that weird starting tint (don't even pretend like you don't know) I took a proactive stance, popped the suppositories in the freezer and waited a few minutes.

You have to put them in the freezer because they're made of oil and need the low temps to set into the proper form. Once the suppositories hardened, I opened one and got in formation. This was the tricky part because 1) as soon as the suppository touched my finger, it began to melt, and 2) my period had already begun. But there we were, so I just went with it.

At first, I didn't feel anything and I began to wonder the validity of all the claims I had read. But then it hit. All of a sudden my cramps disappeared and my uterus felt like full on dreamland. Fast forward 15 minutes and that dreamy feeling spread to my entire body, pulling me into a low dose Xanax-like state.

At this point I did more research and found that CBD isn't only amazing for period cramps, but for people with anxiety, too. Like me!

I ended up falling asleep in that calm, euphoric state, but as soon as I woke up, I knew I had more research to do on the amazing way my body and mind felt.

I had such a positive experience and felt super relaxed, so I found a CBD product called Sunday Scaries, CBD gummies specifically for anxiety. When I received them a few days later, I popped one and waited to see if it was as euphoric as the suppository.

Sure enough, it calmed my mind and slowed my body, proving that it really can be a natural alternative to so many of the chemical anxiety medications on the market. It's worth saying, however, if cramps are your main agenda with no attention towards anxiety, suppositories are the way to go.

Bottom Line: CBD? Yes, please!

CBD Oil Is The Only Thing That Legit Helps My Horrible Period Cramps

All praise the CBD gods.

www.buzzfeed.com

 

[mr peabody]

​

How Psychedelic Mushrooms Support Me

by Amanda Gelender | Psychedelic Exploration

This piece is my contribution to the #ThankYouPlantMedicine campaign to de-stigmatize and decriminalize psychedelic plant medicine. From microdosing to full dose experiences, psilocybin “magic” mushrooms have supported me tremendously me over the years. I also work intentionally with cannabis, which continues to bring me healing and positive transformation.

For context, I have struggled for many years with several mental health challenges including OCD, depression, and anxiety. I’ve been on many prescription medications over the years and am currently on an SSRI antidepressant. I’m from the Bay Area and live in the Netherlands where psilocybin is legal for purchase in the form of mushroom truffles. I’m the founder of a sliding-scale psychedelic mushroom truffle practice in Amsterdam - my team and I support people from around the world through psychedelic mushroom truffle sessions with the goal of helping to create a more just, equitable, and sustainable world.

Through my own personal transformations and the many client sessions I’ve facilitated, I’ve seen first-hand how with supportive preparation (set) and environment (setting), psychedelic mushrooms have tremendous potential to support people in a multitude of ways (something that indigenous people have known for a long time).

Learning to work with psychedelics has been an ongoing process: Along with euphoric and joyful moments in trips, I’ve also had very challenging experiences where I was grateful to have a nourishing environment and supportive person at my side. While psychedelics are not for everyone at all points in their lives, they are now a vital part of my wellness and social change work. They also complement and enhance the therapeutic benefits of my other healing modalities.

I believe that psychedelic plant medicine, including psilocybin and cannabis, should be decriminalized and widely accessible for people to grow and share in community. Our focus must always prioritize access, justice, and equity over profit - a significant battle under racialized capitalism. But any movement to reduce individual pain has a responsibility to address the systemic causes of suffering. The rise of psychedelic medicine must include reparations to address the generations of damage inflicted on Black and Brown communities through colonization, mass incarceration, and the war on drugs. The global struggle for indigenous rights is pressing and deeply linked to all plant medicine practice.

I write my story about working with mushrooms in part because my whiteness shields me from impunity - I can speak openly about substance use with less risk than my friends of color. My ability to work with largely illegal medicines as openly as I do and with as little friction as I experience is a direct result of my whiteness - all of the times I have not been stopped and frisked by police, for instance. I hope our collective stories shared today lead to positive, systemic change. Here are ways psilocybin mushrooms have supported me:

New Ways of Perceiving

In mushroom sessions, I can access fresh perspectives on all facets of life. It can sometimes feel like being given a universal key to explore every room in the house of my brain. I can wander into any space and explore memories, desires, and fears in ways that often feel inaccessible in my standard state of consciousness. Heightened sensations and perceptive shifts in psychedelic sessions allow me to continually gain a deeper understanding of myself and the world around me. This is particularly helpful as someone who frequently experiences anxiety and depressive loops: A new mindset and path forward can mean tremendous relief.

Everything I encounter during a psychedelic journey can teach me a lesson, a mindset that also serves me well in daily life. I marvel with profound curiosity and appreciation for everything around me, even if I don’t have language to describe its complexity.

Creative Flow

Mushrooms help me to create without self-censoring. I write and draw freely and unselfconsciously, focused on the joy and power of creating rather than the output. New ideas emerge organically. I deepen my appreciation for music, art, poetry, and natural beauty, as I can perceive these mediums with enhanced meaning and feeling. I gain more forgiveness and understanding for my own creative process, helping me release the shame of not producing “enough” or “better.”

Feel my feelings

Mushrooms help me to feel my feelings with depth and profundity - I often weep, rage, marvel, and burst into uncontrollable laughter. Accessing the entire emotional spectrum helps me to better understand and appreciate my multitudes. The catharsis of full, embodied emotional release on psychedelics has been tremendously healing. Psychedelics help me process through trauma not just cognitively but with my whole being (body, mind, spirit).

Psychedelics let me access a well of inner wisdom which gives me a sense of safety, security, and groundedness in my daily life. In working with mushrooms and cannabis over the years, I now feel less resistance to change and more at ease in transition. Even though I have a long way to go in releasing my perfectionism and unnecessary fears, it’s been a relief to feel more at peace with the natural ebb and flow of things - endings, beginnings, birth, life, death.

Embodiment

Mushrooms help me feel through pain and trauma that is stored in my body and programmed into my cells. I can work through fatphobia and more easily release body shame. I can explore my embodied experience of gender and sexuality. I often experience a resounding, indescribable sense of somatic gratitude which spills into my daily life, relationships, and social change work in the days and weeks to come.

Deepened Connections

After sessions, I often have an enhanced desire for deep connection. I feel more present with myself and others, grateful for the time we have together. I‘m open to new, aligned connections. Because my sessions help me tune into my wants and needs, I feel less fear in sharing my truth and asserting boundaries. After sessions I often initiate uncomfortable conversations that I had been putting off or take the leap to do something I’ve been wanting to do but felt too afraid. I often emerge from trips revitalized, nourished, in deeper connection with those around me, and with a spark of optimism, which feels particularly important and elusive in these bleak political times.

Fuel to Imagine and Build a Better World

We still have a lot to learn about how psychedelics impact ideology and political change. But I certainly see their radical potential. Mushrooms can help us imagine possibilities outside of dominant paradigms and systems: Tunnels to a better world. Mushrooms let us dissolve boundaries and borders, reminding us that all of our fates are intertwined. They can help us engender deep empathy for all living things, reconnecting us with our roots in the natural world. Psychedelics are not just tools for individual improvement, as asserted by the medical model and dominant neoliberal paradigms. Our collective challenges are systemic and our solutions must be as well. Psychedelics aren’t a substitute for structural change, but they can open us up to new ideas, connect us to our values, and re-energize us to fight for structural solutions, breathing new life into our social change work.

As adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy, wrote, “Where we are born into privilege, we are charged with dismantling any myth of supremacy. Where we are born into struggle, we are charged with claiming our dignity, joy and liberation.” I think psychedelics can support all sides of this work. For those who experience oppression - particularly Black and Brown folks - psychedelics can be an access point to feel tremendous freedom and healing from generations of racial trauma. They can usher in powerful joy, release, and ancestral connection. They can with the process of decolonization , feeling freedom, worth, and truth outside of systems of oppression. And for those with privilege, we can work with psychedelics to explore how to best leverage our resources and positionality for a more just world. Mushrooms can help us all to dream up a better society and then boost our momentum and capacity to actually build that world.

Explore All Things - Mind, Consciousness, Dimensionality, Identity, and Spirituality

Mushrooms give us an opportunity tap into the interconnectedness of all things, the expansiveness of our consciousness, and the energy flow of the universe. They provide direct access to spiritual planes and ancestral wisdom (one the reasons why colonizers were threatened by indigenous sacred use of mushrooms was unmediated access to the divine). Each trip, mushrooms reveal more data in an unlimited stream of channels, windows, mirrors, and portals. They help to continually pull away at a seemingly endless series of veils, opening access into facets of dimensionality, nonlinear time, and consciousness. Psychedelic exploration will continue to have a tremendous impact on what we know about existence and consciousness.

With mushrooms I can deeply explore facets of my race, sexuality, and gender. I can melt walls I’ve built to shield and protect myself from pain. I can muster the courage to walk into the basement of my subconscious and see what I’ve been too afraid to look at - trauma, guilt, shame, death, failure, abuse, resentment, anxiety, sadness, uncomfortable truths. This work can be painful and exhausting, but it can also be gentle and fortifying. Each session I gain more embodied strategies to accept all parts of myself and traverse life’s challenges. It has been some of the most profound healing work of my life.

*From the article here :

How Psychedelic Mushrooms Support Me — Psychedelic Exploration

By Amanda Gelender

psychedelicexploration.com

 

[mr peabody]

HPV vaccine effective against cervical cancer

by Karolinska Institutet | Medical Xpress

Women vaccinated against HPV have a significantly lower risk of developing cervical cancer, and the positive effect is most pronounced for women vaccinated at a young age. That is according to a large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in New England Journal of Medicine.

"This is the first time that we, on a population level, are able to show that HPV vaccination is protective not only against cellular changes that can be precursors to cervical cancer, but also against actual invasive cervical cancer," says Jiayao Lei, researcher at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet and the study's corresponding author. "It is something we have long suspected but that we are now able to show in a large national study linking HPV vaccination and development of cervical cancer at the individual level."

HPV (human papillomavirus) is a group of viruses that commonly causes genital warts and different types of cancer, including cervical cancer, a disease that globally kills more than 250,000 women a year. More than 100 countries have implemented national vaccination programs against HPV, and Sweden as of August 2020 also includes boys in this program.

Previous studies have shown that HPV vaccine protects against HVP infection, genital warts and precancerous cervical lesions that could develop into cancer of the cervix. However, there is lack of large population-based studies that on an individual level have studied the link between HPV vaccine and so-called invasive cervical cancer, which is the most severe form of the disease.

In this study, the researchers during a period of 11 years followed almost 1.7 million women between the ages of 10 and 30. Of those women, more than 500,000 were vaccinated against HPV, the majority before the age of 17. Nineteen vaccinated women were diagnosed with cervical cancer compared to 538 unvaccinated women, corresponding to 47 and 94 women per 100,000, respectively.

The researchers' analysis shows that HPV vaccination was linked to a significantly reduced risk of cervical cancer and that girls vaccinated before age 17 reduced their risk of cervical cancer by 88 percent. Women vaccinated between ages 17 and 30 halved their risk of cervical cancer compared to unvaccinated women, according to the study.

"Girls vaccinated at a young age seem to be more protected, probably because they are less likely to have been exposed to HPV infection and given that HPV vaccination has no therapeutic effect against a pre-existing infection," says study co-author Pär Sparén, professor at the same department.

The study has been adjusted for several covariates that may influence the outcome, including age, residential area, calendar year, follow up time, and parental characteristics such as education, income, birth country and disease history.

"In conclusion, our study shows that HPV vaccination may significantly reduce the risk of cervical cancer, especially if completed at an early age," Pär Sparén says. "Our data strongly supports continuing HPV vaccinations of children and adolescents through national vaccination programs."

HPV vaccine effective against cervical cancer

Women vaccinated against HPV have a significantly lower risk of developing cervical cancer, and the positive effect is most pronounced for women vaccinated at a young age. That is according to a large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in New England Journal of...

medicalxpress.com

 

[mr peabody]

Low cholesterol linked to higher risk of stroke in women

American Academy of Neurology | Apr 10, 2019

Lowering LDL cholesterol reduces the risk of heart attacks and stroke, with an ideal value below 100 mg/dL. But is this too low?

A new study finds that women who have levels of LDL cholesterol 70 mg/dL or lower are more than twice as likely to have a hemorrhagic stroke than women with LDL cholesterol levels from 100 to 130 mg/dL. The study is published in the April 10, 2019, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

LDL cholesterol is called bad cholesterol because it can lead to fatty build-up in the arteries. The study also found that women with the lowest triglyceride levels, a fat found in the blood, had an increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke compared to those with the highest triglyceride levels.

Hemorrhagic strokes, or bleeding strokes, are much less common than ischemic strokes, when blood flow is blocked to the brain. They are also more difficult to treat and therefore more likely to be deadly.

"Strategies to lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels, like modifying diet or taking statins, are widely used to prevent cardiovascular disease," said study author Pamela Rist, ScD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. "But our study shows that in women, very low levels may also carry some risks. Women already have a higher risk of stroke than men, in part because they live longer, so clearly defining ways to reduce their risk is important."

The study involved 27,937 women age 45 and older enrolled in the Women's Health Study who had total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, high density lipoprotein (HDL), which is known as good cholesterol, and triglycerides measured at the start of the study. Researchers then reviewed how many women had a bleeding stroke. With an average of 19 years of follow-up, researchers identified 137 women who had a bleeding stroke.

Nine out of 1,069 women with cholesterol 70 mg/dL or lower, or 0.8 percent, had a bleeding stroke, compared to 40 out of 10,067 women with cholesterol 100 mg/dL up to 130 mg/dL, or 0.4 percent. After adjusting for other factors that could affect risk of stroke, such as age, smoking status, high blood pressure and treatment with cholesterol-lowering medications, researchers found that those with very low LDL cholesterol were twice as likely to have a bleeding stroke.

For triglyceride levels, researchers divided the women into four groups. Women in the group with the lowest levels had fasting levels 74 mg/dL or lower, or non-fasting levels of 85 mg/dL or lower. Women in the group with the highest levels had fasting levels that were higher than 156 mg/dL, or non-fasting levels that were higher than 188 mg/dL.

Researchers found that 34 women of the 5,714 women with the lowest levels of triglycerides, or 0.6%, had a bleeding stroke, compared to 29 women of the 7,989 with the highest triglycerides, or 0.4%. After adjusting for other risk factors, researchers found that those with the lowest triglycerides were twice as likely to have a bleeding stroke.

No difference in risk was found for total cholesterol or HDL cholesterol.

"Women with very low LDL cholesterol or low triglycerides should be monitored by their doctors for other stroke risk factors like high blood pressure and smoking, in order to reduce their risk of hemorrhagic stroke," Rist said. "Also, additional research is needed to determine how to lower the risk of hemorrhagic stroke in women with very low LDL and low triglycerides."

Low cholesterol linked to higher risk of bleeding stroke in women

Lowering low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol reduces the risk of heart attacks and stroke, with an ideal value below 100 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). But can it be too low? A new study finds that women who have levels of LDL cholesterol 70 mg/dL or lower may be more than twice as...

medicalxpress.com

 

[mr peabody]

Reclaiming ownership of your body with psychedelics
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by Jessika Lagarde | Psychedelics Today | 24 Feb 2022

Prolonged negative body image will often lead to depression and anxiety, and unfortunately for many people, can lead to body dysmorphia or an eating disorder. Could psychedelics help reframe one’s relationship with their body?

Psychedelics offer promise for those who struggle with eating disorders – 9% of the world’s population according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.

These conditions primarily impact women, and now more of them are coming forward to share how psychedelics are helping them leave a constant cycle of dissatisfaction, body dysmorphia, and the accompanying anxiety, depression, and stress. They explain how the use of psychedelics helped them develop a new relationship with their eating disorders and improve their self-image.

While large-scale studies are (currently) scarce, the anecdotal evidence of these shifts is powerful.

“The first time I sat with a hero’s dose of magic mushrooms, I realized I could put my eating disorder down and never carry it again,” shares Francesca Rose, who is now an eating disorder recovery advocate. “It finally clicked: my eating disorder was not part of me. It wasn’t even mine. It all made sense. I was free from my eating disorder. I no longer needed to control food or my body to feel safe or worthy.” Having her life changed through the use of psychedelics and being on the recovery path for 13 years, this psychedelic-assisted shift is part of what led her to add her current work; supporting other women with eating disorders along their healing journeys.

For many women, talking about their insecurities is still seen as a taboo, weakness, or shameful. Yet finding a supportive space to speak of one’s challenges, plus engaging in embodied experiences – including psychedelic sessions – can offer a gateway to healing. Rose’s work also includes leading embodiment practices via yoga and conscious dance. By helping women speak of their struggles and reconnect to their bodies, she aims to break these stigmas.

Adding in the intentional and safe use of psychedelics can allow women to reconnect with their bodies and cultivate a gentler relationship with themselves. Rose says, “An eating disorder is unconsciously employed as an attempt to feel protected in the world and to even give a sense of meaning and identity. The internal world is fractured and the eating disorder is a way to try to stitch things together, even if it’s an unsustainable method. When we are journeying with psychedelics and engaging in post-journey integration, people can find they rely less on the eating disorder because there is a general sense of ease in the world and more internal wholeness. We can get in touch with our essence, and connect with our inherent worth, belonging, dignity and divinity. Psychedelics can help us embody pride and self-acceptance. We can connect to love, and feel our capacity to give and receive love.”

Understanding Negative Body Image

To have a better understanding of these conditions, we need to first comprehend body image. For most women, it’s not as simple as liking or disliking their own bodies. Body image is complex, and can include a combination of our feelings, beliefs, and perceptions of how our body looks to us and others, the understanding of what it can do, and its estimated size.

Body image issues can start as early as 5 years old. Changes to our physiques kicked off by puberty can deepen our dissatisfaction. Culture also exerts a huge influence on the way we view ourselves. The way society sees gender, the color of skin and hair, and countless other things can also impact the way a person thinks and feels about their physical appearance.

Body dysmorphia is a psychological disorder characterized by an excessive concern for the body, causing the person to overvalue small imperfections or even imagine imperfections. This creates a negative body image and lowers self-esteem. It can drive possible eating disorders and problems in social, professional, and personal lives. Both men and women may experience body dysmorphia and eating disorders, though women are three times more likely to have their lives affected by it.

In the United States, approximately 30 million people suffer from some type of eating disorder. Of these 30 million, 70% do not have the assistance of a specialized professional. As a consequence, anorexia nervosa, one of the most common eating disorders, has a 5.9% mortality rate – one of the highest rates within mental health conditions.

The potential of psychedelics in building a positive body image

Eating disorders are notoriously challenging to treat relative to other mental health disorders. Traditional treatments, such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), have a remission rate of about 45%, a relapse rate of about 30% within one year, and can be hard to follow. Now, some experts and researchers are considering psychedelic therapy as an alternative, and are analyzing the potential benefits of this treatment.


“Eating disorders typically develop as maladaptive coping mechanisms when internal resourcing is overwhelmed by what’s happening in a person’s life,” says Lauren Taus, a California-based therapist who offers ketamine-assisted sessions. Taus and other therapists who contributed their perspectives for this piece say that psychedelic therapy can alleviate the symptoms that are normally associated with these conditions, such as depression and anxiety, in ways that traditional therapy fails to achieve. As Dr. Adele Lafrance points out in this article for EdCatalogue, "psychedelic therapy has the potential to alleviate symptoms that relate to serotonergic signaling and cognitive inflexibility, and the induction of desirable brain states that might accelerate therapeutic processes.”

Taus shared an example of her own work with psychedelics as an alternative treatment that helped her with many of her challenges, including her eating disorder: “My experience with empathogens has invited me to see how much conflict was warring inside of me. I saw all the pain of my personal history, and all that was beyond my control in my family system. Fundamentally, these psychedelics invited me to directly process what was beneath the surface. I accessed great grief, rage, and fear while opening to deep levels of love and compassion for myself and everyone else. I understood my parents and the choices they made, so I could forgive them. I also sourced the willingness, desire, and strength to fight for myself – and my life.”

So what is it about psychedelics specifically that can facilitate profound breakthroughs like Taus’? For starters, they can positively impact the Default Mode Network (DMN), which handles communication between brain regions. This region appears to be hyperactive in some mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, and OCD. And certain hallmarks of eating disorders, such as the poor cognitive flexibility seen in many anorexia nervosa patients, may also be related to an overactive DMN. Studies such as “Rethinking Therapeutic Strategies for Anorexia Nervosa: Insights From Psychedelic Medicine and Animal Models” indicate that psychedelics lower the activity in this area, and, by doing so, allow us to create new thought patterns, giving us a fresh perspective on life, the world, and ourselves.

Another way that psychedelic psychotherapy can be effective is by helping a person understand the true source of their feelings of dissatisfaction. A 2013 analysis of why eating disorder therapy fails reveals that a patient’s resistance stems from the disorder’s “ego-syntonic” nature. Ego-syntonic means that the ego’s demands and aspirations drive many of the disorder’s behaviors, feelings, and values. Psychedelic substances can offer a temporary dissolution of the ego, allowing the possibility of transformation, healing, and change of certain behaviors, thought patterns, or addictions.

Taus explains that “Psychedelic assisted psychotherapy supports embodied change where traditional psychotherapy often stays in the realm of cognition and intellect. A person, for example, may come to understand with depth and clarity their patterns in therapy, but still struggle to shift them.” For example, a woman might know that purging is a harmful behavior that leads to feelings of shame. “She may even know exactly why and when it all started, but still she may not be able to stop. Psychoactive substances can create experiential shifts that more efficiently translate into internally-led and sustained behavioral change. The job of the therapist is to provide a safe container for the exploration and a good relational context for a person to make sense of the experience and to anchor in the good that comes from it.”

It’s important to highlight that the use of psychedelic substances on their own does not work as a magic bullet and treatments must be done alongside psychotherapy and/or other healing modalities such as journaling and yoga. A holistic approach seems to be the most effective path to long-term healing for women with eating disorders and body dysmorphia.

The research so far

Ketamine, ayahuasca, MDMA, and psilocybin are the four psychedelics that have been the focus of the majority of the latest research for the potential treatment of eating disorders. Let’s take a look at how each one could help with eating disorders:

Ketamine:

Ketamine is a non-classical psychedelic that can alter consciousness for a short period of time. This synthetic compound’s antidepressant qualities have been researched for treating severe depression, PTSD, and OCD.

Ketamine can be administered through IV, injected, taken orally, or it can be insufflated (blown into a body cavity, such as the nasal passages). The dose is titrated according to weight, with the understanding that everyone metabolizes the medicine differently. Ketamine is known for its dissociative effects, such as feeling like things are moving in slow motion or that you are separated from reality, with objects looking different and other characteristics that can be seen in this study.

“With regards to ketamine, the dissociative experience can translate into more joy in embodied experience. Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) creates a break from the ordinary mind and a loosening of the belief systems that eating disorders are so rigidly held by. From a scientific perspective, psychedelics interrupt the default mode network, which governs self-image, memories, beliefs, and patterns.” says Taus. “The drug essentially creates an opportunity to reorganize the brain into a system that is more supportive for good living. Ketamine also results in increased neuroplasticity, which creates a golden hour opportunity for potent therapy work with a client 24-48 hours after a KAP experience.”

A few studies include: Treatment of compulsive behaviour in eating disorders with intermittent ketamine infusions, Ketamine and Activity-Based Anorexia, and the ongoing work of Dr. Adele LaFrance with Emotion-Focused Family Therapy.


Ayahuasca:

Ayahuasca is a fermented herbal drink that contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT), one of the most potent psychedelic drugs known for its role in shamanic or religious ceremonies. The brew has been utilized as a sacred ritual by various South American Indigenous tribes for at least 1000 years. Journeyers frequently claim mystical and transcendent visions that lead to self-discovery.

The first ever study of ayahuasca’s potential to help people heal from eating disorders was published in 2017, co-led by Dr. Adele Lafrance and Dr. Kenneth Tupper. The majority of the people in the study said that ayahuasca helped to reduce their eating disorder symptoms and showed them the root cause of the disorder. Regarding the purging effects of the brew, participants found it easy to differentiate between an eating disorder purge, and the purge of an ayahuasca experience.

The ayahuasca experience has the ability to favorably affect behavior, stimulating self-reflection and increased awareness. Studies suggest that drinking it can aid in the treatment of anxiety, addictions, and depression, as well as eating disorders by also shifting body perceptions.

MDMA:

MDMA, another laboratory-created compound, has a physiological effect that alters people’s behavior such as openness. MDMA boosts serotonin levels while also upping oxytocin, dopamine, and other chemical mediators, resulting in feelings of empathy, trust, and compassion. The substance also has an effect on the way people process trauma and emotions for a period of several hours.

In clinical settings, MDMA is taken orally in capsules. The patient first takes a full dose (75-125 mg) and has the option to add a second dose about 2 hours into the session. An MDMA session will typically last between 6 to 8 hours.

MDMA causes an increase in prefrontal cortex activity, which is important for information processing, and a slowing in the amygdala, the part of the brain that is key in processing memories and emotions associated with fear. The key therapeutic benefit of MDMA is its capacity to excite the brain, allowing it to create and store new memories. Patients become more emotionally flexible and capable of exploring challenging memories during psychotherapy sessions, which often leads to long-term changes in how they react to emotional changes.

Psilocybin:

Psilocybin is a substance generated by more than 100 different mushroom species around the world. Psilocybin is said to have the best safety profile of all psychedelic substances. The fungi could be useful in the treatment of eating disorders by targeting the brain’s serotonin imbalance and therapeutically shifting the person away from symptom-focused treatment. This could establish changes in self-worth and self-compassion.

Aside from that, the efficacy of psilocybin therapy in the treatment of OCD shows how it could be useful in the treatment of eating disorders, as obsessive thoughts and compulsive and obsessive actions are also common hallmarks of eating disorders.

Reclaiming ownership of your body with psychedelics

Psychedelics can help women see their eating disorder as a coping mechanism and not as part of their identity. Once they embody this insight, they can also slowly start to replace bad habits with healthier and kinder new habits. They can rewrite the inner narrative of lies and self-limiting beliefs about their bodies.

Once more, there is a need to emphasize the importance of integration, relationships, and a holistic approach alongside other therapeutic methods and modalities. Change comes with time, effort, and consistency, especially when deconditioning behaviors that have been a big part of our lives for many years.

When asked about how long it takes for those changes to fully take place, Rose points out that “Eating disorders and addiction are transformational experiences that hold enriching value. Indeed, the word, ‘transformation’ means change or conversion. When thinking about recovery, it is not about stopping or restricting a behavior but rather allowing it to change and transform, taking us along for the ride so that our beliefs, feelings, thoughts, behavior, and action take a new form. Grounded, sustainable change does not happen overnight.”

“For me, recovery is about inner personal and spiritual growth, and incremental daily, positive changes. My experience with eating disorders and addiction has led me to believe that they offer lessons and advantages, transforming me into more of who I truly am: alive, free, appreciative, and connected.”

Although more research is still needed to better understand the safety and efficacy of psychedelic medicines and therapy in the treatment of eating disorders, the promising results we’re seeing show that this is a worthy goal to pursue. Stories such as Rose’s and Taus’ are just two among many other women who have experienced transformational change thanks to these compounds.

“With the support of therapy, community, spirituality, and relationships, I no longer judge my body, or effort to dominate her,” says Taus. “My experiences with plant medicines have supported me in understanding my body as a perfect part of nature, and in much the same way that I don’t complain about the shape of a leaf or a wave, I accept – even appreciate – the parts of me I’ve historically struggled with.”

“The power of psychedelic-assisted therapy is in its experiential quality,” she says. “When knowing meets feeling and understanding, we can galvanize the courage and strength needed to shapeshift our lives and reconstruct ourselves.”

Reclaiming Ownership of Your Body With Psychedelics – Psychedelics Today

Prolonged negative body image will often lead to depression and anxiety, and unfortunately for many people (primarily women), can lead to body dysmorphia or an eating disorder. Some women, though, are finding relief and a reframed relationship with their bodies through psychedelics. Co-Founder...

www.psychedelicstoday.com

 

[mr peabody]

Microdosing LSD Makes Me a Better Mom
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by Amy Hogan | Psychedelics Today | 25 Aug 2021

Raising children requires a lot of patience, compassion and energy, which is why parents like me turn to microdoses of LSD.

My introduction to LSD happened in 1997 at Penn State University. Phish’s Lawn Boy CD acted as the soundtrack and de facto tour guide for that trip. It was such a fantastic experience that I crammed seeing dozens of Phish concerts on psychedelics into my college curriculum. The acid ignited my senses and soothed my soul; worries about my future and body fat percentage faded and I could live in the moment; one with the music. Then late one night in 2004 atop a muddy mountain in Coventry, Vermont, Phish momentarily ended and a new era of my life began.

I met a man. We fell in love. Swept up in the fairytale romance, I was blissfully unaware that my freewheeling, psychedelically enhanced Phish festival days were being replaced with the crushing realities of juggling a job with family life and childcare concerns. For years I feared that I would never find balance without making myself—or my husband and kids—miserable. Luckily Phish and LSD still play an important role in improving my life, though in much smaller doses. So how does a modern mom—between work, cheer practice, swimming lessons, and PTA meetings—find time to start microdosing lysergic acid diethylamide?

How does one become a microdosing mom?

In 2009, I was too busy working long hours at a weekly tabloid magazine, planning my wedding, and buying a house to care that Phish reunited. During the next few years, life changed so rapidly in such a short amount of time that I lost sight of my own needs and could feel the light inside me dimming. I got married in October and was pregnant by Christmas. Those were happy days, but just a week before my daughter’s first birthday (and the day before my own birthday) my father died undergoing heart surgery.

The day after his funeral, I dropped my one-year-old off at my mother-in-law’s house in an utter haze before heading to my first day of work at a brand-new celebrity weekly magazine. Quietly sobbing in a bathroom stall during lunch and panic attacks before editorial pitch meetings became my normal routine, while everyone I loved told me that the demands of the job would be the best way for me to get through my grief. I wanted to believe them. Instead, I felt sadder and meaner to those closest to me as they reminded me that I was no different or special than any other working mother. My doctor gave me a lecture on my weight gain and a Prozac prescription.

For years, I self-medicated with too much cannabis and wine and popped Prozac. I quit it all to get pregnant again. My second daughter was delivered in distress at 31 weeks. She weighed just two pounds. I was too scared to celebrate her birth and fell deeper into depression. Today she’s a strong-willed, fearless five-year-old and I love her more than words can express. The entire NICU experience left me with severe PTSD, which I had no time to truly treat because I had to get back to my magazine job. I spent just two hours a weekday with my girls and half that time I couldn’t wait to put them to bed because I was too mentally drained and depressed to find any joy in the motherhood journey.

When I got laid off a year later, I felt relief for a brief moment before the anxiety, despair, and depression of not having a steady income crept back into my brain. Of course, there is no time to properly deal with those feelings when you’ve got a teething toddler and curious kindergartner. I desperately wanted to be a better mom, but some days all I could do was prop them up with snacks and the Disney channel and weep silently in the next room. I know I’m not the only parent that experiences this.

Could parenting and psychedelics go hand in hand?

“When you’re a trauma survivor, you think you’ve healed and then you have children and they just push you into your shit,” Pepper Wolfe, a New York-based yoga therapist and wellness coach tells Psychedelics Today. “After my first was born I was struggling with postpartum [depression] and then my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She died when I was six months pregnant with my second and I could not snap out of it. No amount of meditation, yoga, talk therapy, or breathwork made me feel better. I was hitting a wall, not getting better.”

While Wolfe, who is also a licensed social worker, recalls feeling short-fused and super-triggered by normal childhood things, like tantrums and messy meals, I flashback to my own experiences with my young daughters. “I fell apart and was not the mom I wanted to be,” Wolfe tells me. Her dark days could be my dark days. And then, while cleaning her basement she found a long-forgotten stash of magic mushrooms. She took them. “And it was powerfully transformative in my perspective, my reactivity, my patience, and how I felt my body,” says Wolfe. “It was like the lightness came back.”

While that was a full-on trip, Wolfe says that she has since learned how to use psychedelics “in a more disciplined, formal way,” which has helped her to be a better parent by healing her past wounds. “I found that things that I had been working on for years in talk therapies, these issues were just clearing up, these blocks were being removed, and I was having new insights.”

Curiosity got the best of me once I noticed microdosing being discussed as a sort-of-Hail-Mary-miracle in my Phish-loving parents’ social media group. I recalled the bliss of tripping at a show immersed in the sounds and lights and energy. Though I have no desire to melt my face off and then attempt to make patty melts for family dinner, I did wonder if microdosing could be the key to calming my short-fuse and lack of patience for the nitty-gritty of parenting.
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I am still in awe of the fact that a tiny bit of LSD helps me to be the mother I’ve always imagined I’d be. I can’t say the same for Prozac.​

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Obviously, taking a do-it-yourself-at-home approach to dabbling in psychedelics is not for everyone. I’ve used cocaine in conjunction with Weight Watchers to lose 100 lbs., so I may be a little crazy, but I’m also open to experimentation for the sake of self-improvement. That’s how I ended up asking a friend to “get me some Lucy.” I skipped the shrooms and went right for the chemical because I have never been a big fan of psilocybin—it gives me intestinal distress, that is, if I could even chock them down, which for me, is a bad way to begin a trip. Plus, I’ve always preferred the smooth climb to the peak and comedown cycle of an acid trip as opposed to the continuous up and down sensations I experience on psilocybin-containing mushrooms.

A microdosing experiment

My friend showed up with a little, inconspicuous bottle and said, “This is such a small amount, I can’t charge you.” He left with a carton of eggs from our backyard flock. I stood, alone, in my kitchen looking at that tiny drop encased in amber glass. No one was home; I had hours alone ahead of me. I thought back to that night at Penn State and all of the Phish shows where I felt carefree. Yearning to feel some iota of that joy again, I touched the tip of the dropper to my tongue. Must be a microdose, right?

Twenty minutes later I was at the grocery store, giggling about cheese names and wandering around the glossy stacks of apples and pears in produce. I patiently waited with a smile on my face to pay for the manchego. Back home the living room curtains rippled and dewdrops glistened like chunky metallic glitter on each blade of grass in the backyard. Giggling uncontrollably, I realized this might be more than a microdose.

An acid trip can last anywhere from eight to 12 hours on average. When my husband walked in, I informed him of my microdosing misjudgment. We laughed and he promised to get the kids off the school bus and handle homework duty. I asked Alexa to “play Phish songs” and danced while dusting the house, enjoying the burst of energy. As the sun set on that evening, I began to come down but still had energy to run around the backyard helping my girls catch and release fireflies. I felt genuinely connected to them for the first time in as long as I can remember.

Brad Smith* had a similar experience. The father of two tells me that microdosing LSD “continues to bring me to a more open and understanding place in my daily life, which includes dealing with my two toddler boys. Empathizing with a struggle they are enduring that I would have considered trivial previously, has helped me to better communicate and provide for them.”

Remember, the whole point of microdosing for me was to get mentally healthy and happier without actually hallucinating. Since that day, I’ve learned 10 micrograms works best for my body—I spent a week experimenting while my daughters were on vacation at their grandma’s farmhouse. And I can honestly say that microdosing has made me a better parent by easing my depression and making me more approachable. Plus, I’m more active, aware, and available to my girls both emotionally and physically. I delight in playing games and crafting with them and even have the energy to race around the backyard playing Freeze Tag. I am still in awe of the fact that a tiny bit of LSD helps me to be the mother I’ve always imagined I’d be. I can’t say the same for Prozac.

What the experts and other microdosing parents are saying

Much like my own experience misjudging a microdose, it’s a common occurrence. Adam Bramlage, who hosts a microdosing course for DoubleBlind Mag and is the Founder and CEO of Flow State Micro, explains to me that the very first thing a person needs to do is dial in their dosage. “It’s important to remember that a very small amount of LSD—especially in liquid or even paper form—can be very, very strong,” says Bramlage. “It is important for parents to start low and go slow—that’s somewhere between 5 or 10 micrograms. Once they find the ‘sweet spot,’ which is the dose that they feel but doesn’t have that classic psychedelic effect, they can experiment with protocols.”

Bramlage recommends microdosing a few days in a row to properly start the process. The Stamets protocol—either five days on and two days off or four days on and three days off—is a popular approach. For beginners, Bramlage usually recommends the Microdosing Institute protocol, which is one day on and one day off. He says, “There is a 48-hour effect to psychedelics, even in small doses. We call it the afterglow or the halo effect. If starting specifically with LSD, which can be considerably stronger than psilocybin in small doses, the user wants to make sure they have the right dose; having the day off will let them see how it’s affecting them.”

According to Bramlage, the Fadiman protocol, which is one day on and two days off, is “a great one for parents because again you’re getting the day off, which is the afterglow, and then the second day off, you’re getting back to baseline so you can notice a difference.”

He speaks from experience. As a single dad with shared custody of a 7-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son, Bramlage says that microdosing LSD “helps increase my energy and stamina throughout the day. It seems to block that default grumpy old man that overreacts to the spilled milk. It puts you in a flow state and when you’re more in the moment and not thinking about other things you can be more present. It allows people to live in the moment instead of worrying about the future or ruminating over the past.” Who couldn’t benefit from that?

Wolfe says she has a lot of friends that “microdose on LSD and are having a lot of peak experiences, flow states, and great work performances. And I just kept thinking, ‘I just want to be a better parent. I want the generational trauma to stop with me. I don’t want to make my wounds their wounds.’ And for me, that’s what psychedelics did.”

Microdosing for parents: Not a miracle cure for everyone

Of course, microdosing doesn’t work for every parent. Oregon mother of five, Ashleigh Stevenson, didn’t see any benefit from trying microdosing. “I was looking to improve my mood and allow me to be a more present parent to my crew, which includes 2-year-old twins,” she says. After getting no relief from magic mushroom capsules, she moved on to LSD. “But it still didn’t do anything for me. I knew it wouldn’t make me trip or anything like that, but it didn’t make me feel any happier or at peace with my crazy home life. I just felt more anxious, like what is wrong with me? Why won’t this work?”

She’s not alone. Washington D.C. native Leo Greene* is disappointed in his microdosing experience, too. “I’m normally a pretty happy-go-lucky guy. But the pandemic and being home with the kids nonstop for like a year really put me in a difficult place, and I struggled not to default back to yelling. Parents in my social circle were raving about finding their joy and having the energy to chase their kids around the National Zoo,” he shares. “So I tried microdosing a few times, and what a letdown. I felt nothing, nada, zilch.” Though Greene says, he is open to continued experimentation. “I will keep messing around with the dosage and hopefully find one that works for me. My kids are the best, and I want to be my best as a dad for them.”

Due to restrictive drug policies, placebo-controlled studies on psychedelics are few and far between. Despite that, the Imperial College of London managed to conduct the largest placebo-controlled trial on microdosing psychedelics, although it was ‘self blinded’ meaning participants did it all themselves. The results suggest that the benefits of microdosing may be the result of the ‘placebo effect’—or all in our minds. In other words, we might be creating our own microdosing euphoria more so than the LSD. During the study, 191 participants followed online instructions on incorporating placebo control into their microdosing routines to observe whether it can improve cognitive function and psychological well being. There was significant improvement of all psychological outcomes for the microdose group, however the placebo group—who had no idea they weren’t taking the psychedelic—also experienced nearly equal improvements.

However, that doesn’t stop many parents from having very positive effects, like Oregon native Danica Aria* who is positive that microdosing LSD makes her a better mom, too. “I don’t think it’s hindered my parenting skills but rather helps bring me more patience and calmness to many scenarios that would normally stress me out. I wish other parents would know the beneficial qualities hallucinogens can provide,” she says.

Bramlage believes that day is coming. “We have long known that LSD has been an amazing chemical and agent for change,” he says. “I believe that psychedelics and microdosing are the secret to saving our society and that all starts with re-educating people. We need to break the myths down, to tell the truth—let parents know that there are amazing potential benefits and uses for LSD.”

Until then, you can find me hanging out with my friend Lucy whether I’m at home getting crafty with my kids or at Phish shows surrendering to the flow.

Microdosing LSD Makes Me a Better Mom

Raising children requires a lot of patience, compassion and energy, which is why parents like me turn to microdoses of LSD.

www.psychedelicstoday.com

 

[mr peabody]

Women and Psychedelics – The Big Picture

by Barbara Bauer, MS | Psychedelic Science Review | 21 Oct 2020

As psychedelic research moves ahead, some have started to identify several topics of significant interest to women.

Psychedelic research is continuing to show promising results for treating conditions like anxiety, depression, and addiction. But what about women when it comes to psychedelics? There are many unanswered questions about how and why some psychedelic drugs affect women differently. Also, little attention is being paid to how these compounds could provide therapeutic and life-enhancement opportunities for the challenges women face every day and throughout their entire lives. One interesting and overarching question is whether there is a uniquely female entourage effect.

Scientists don’t yet know how a woman’s physiology (both pre- and post-menopausal) may influence the pharmacology of psilocybin, LSD, and other psychedelic drugs. With research still in its early stages, it’s essential to remain aware of women-specific considerations throughout the process of studying people in general.

The study of women and psychedelics is a wide-open area. Almost nothing is known about whether psychedelics work differently in women’s bodies. The entourage effect is likely different in women due to the influence of hormones like estrogen and progesterone. More women scientists are needed in psychedelic studies to ensure female data is broken out and analyzed separately as well as totally female-focused research.

Women underrepresented in medical research

As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. But that doesn’t mean that mistakes and bad decisions in the past are never repeated, even if it’s a matter of life and death. Historically, studies aimed at representing the general population have failed to represent female issues adequately. From 1997 to 2001, eight out of ten prescription drugs that were withdrawn from the US market had greater health risks for women than men.

Early research on heart disease in the 1970s and 1980s focused primarily on men. One of the main reasons for this focus is the reluctance to include women because of possible risks to their future reproductive capabilities, pregnancy, and growth and development of their children. At that time, it was just easier to gather data on men and extrapolate the results to women.

In an interview with BU Today, Julie Palmer, an epidemiologist at Boston University, said,​

Some research results do translate, but men and women have different hormones. There are many pathways affected by hormones in the body. Cardiovascular disease, in particular, and some of the cancers are affected by hormones.​

For hundreds of years, many women have been told “it’s all in your head” when it comes to their health issues and therapies that don’t work. Women are unique. They have hormones that make their physiology different, and thus, what is true and effective for men does not always translate into the same potency, dose, and ultimate quality of care for women.​

Limited female-focused psychedelic research​

Psychedelic research studies examining women independently from men are scarce. One study from 2000 funded by the Heffter Research Institute pooled and analyzed data from three controlled studies.2 The studies examined the psychological and physiological effects of MDMA on healthy volunteers (54 male and 20 female) who had never used the drug. The data showed that the psychoactive effects of MDMA in women were more intense than those of men, possibly due to women being more susceptible to the serotonin-releasing effects of MDMA. The effects reported included perceptual changes, thought disturbances, and the fear of loss of body control. The dose of MDMA was positively correlated with the intensity of the effects. Women also had more adverse effects and outcomes from MDMA than men.

The 2016 US Global Drug Survey found that female British clubbers were 2-3 times more likely to seek emergency treatment than men after using MDMA.3 There was also a 4-fold increase in the last three years in emergency room visits for women who had used MDMA. Researchers theorize that the cause may be related to women’s unique body chemistry. Also, it’s possible that women are more risk-averse than men overall.

In a recent interview with Chacruna.net, psychedelic research historian Erika Dyck, Ph.D. summed up what she has discovered when it comes to the recognition of female scientists in psychedelic research and its impact on the current paradigm:​

My research suggests that women were almost always involved in the counseling sessions, recruitment, etc., but are rarely identified in the published work. The legacy of that history continues to distort our understanding of who does the work, and what kind of work is valued.
​

Everyone benefits when women are involved in research​

Gender equity in science is not only a matter of justice and rights, but crucial to producing the best research and the best care for patients.​

The quote above comes from Dr. Jocalyn Clark, executive director of the journal The Lancet, in a 2019 interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Focusing on female participation on both sides of research is essential—not just as study subjects but also as researchers. Some recent research on the latter shows there is some good news for women when women scientists are involved in research work. It’s now understood that female co-authorship of research papers makes it more likely that gender-based differences in the data will be discussed.4 Dr. Clark said,​

These findings corroborate discussions of how women’s participation in medical science links to research outcomes, and illustrate the mutual benefits of promoting both women’s scientific advancement and the integration of gender and sex analysis into medical research.​

It’s also interesting to consider the possibility that female-focused research could improve the development and effectiveness of drugs (including psychedelic drugs) for men. Segregating women into a pool of study participants removes any physiological variables they may introduce into the data for men. This may improve the accuracy of study data for all people, subsequent drug development, and result in more positive therapeutic outcomes for all people.​

Some top women in psychedelics – past and present​

So, where are the female psychonauts and psychedelic researchers? The spotlight doesn’t often fall on them these days, but they’re out there. Recognizing the unsung female psychedelic pioneers in the past who have made significant contributions in the field is important. As the new era of psychedelic research is taking shape, looking at a who’s who of women currently occupying the psychedelic space is an excellent way to come up to speed.

Here are just a few female researchers, businesswomen, therapists, and psychonauts who have influenced psychedelic research and are in the psychedelic space.

• Ekaterina Malievskaia – Chief medical officer and a co-founder of COMPASS Pathways.
• Amanda Feilding – Founder and executive director of the Beckley Foundation in Oxford, United Kingdom.
• Julie Holland – Psychopharmacologist and author of “The Pot Book,” “Ecstasy: The Complete Guide,” and “Moody Bitches.”
• Ann Shulgin – Artist, author, lay therapist, speaker, psychedelic advocate, and widow of the renowned psychedelic chemist Dr. Alexander Shulgin.
• Sheri Eckert – Psychotherapist and co-founder of the Oregon Psilocybin Society and the Psilocybin Service Initiative ballot petition.
• Ayelet Waldman – Lawyer, public defender, former adjunct professor at US Berkeley Law School, and author of “A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage and My Life.”
• Valentina Wasson – Wife of R. Gordon Wasson and the first to suggest psychedelic therapy for the dying.
• Zoe Helene – Promoter of medicinal plants, founder of Cosmic Sister, and originator of the term “psychedelic feminism.”
• Mabel Luhan – New York socialite in the early 1900s who was the first woman to document her experience on peyote.
• Kat Harrison – Once married to Terence McKenna, Kat is an independent scholar and ethnobotany teacher. She and her late husband founded Botanical Dimensions, a non-profit organization that collects medicinal and shamanic plants and documents their history and uses.
• Maria Sabina – The first contemporary Mazatec shaman to allow Westerners to participate in psychedelic mushroom veladas. She gave R. Gordon Wasson samples of Psilocybe mexicana from which Albert Hofmann first isolated psilocybin.

Research overlooks many female-specific issues

Another aspect of women and psychedelics encompasses the things that make it amazing, unique, and challenging to be female. Pregnancy, menstruation, menopause, and premenstrual syndrome (PMS) are just a few of the life-changing events women can expect in their lives from just being women. Women’s health and mental health issues women face include ovarian and breast cancers, miscarriage, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from rape and sexual assault, postpartum depression, anxiety, and addiction. Historically, the one-size-fits-all mindset in medical research has overlooked many of these issues. The new era of medical research into the benefits of psychedelics is poised to change this paradigm by optimizing psychedelic drugs and therapies for women.

Speaking about the current state of women and psychedelics, Zoe Helene told Vice,​

We’re sure as hell not going backwards. That’s not going to happen.​

Women and Psychedelics: The Big Picture

As psychedelic research moves ahead, some have started to identify several topics of significant interest to women.

psychedelicreview.com

 

[mr peabody]

​

Wonderland #1 - Luciana Comas Bitz​

by Luciana Comas Bitz | Women On Psychedelics | 27 Jan 2022
​

Luciana is a yoga teacher and ex-photographer that has experienced the creative and healing effects of psychedelics.

Magic truffles helped her discover full love and acceptance for herself, and here she shares the photo essay that was created in those profound moments.

Luciana hopes that sharing her story and her art can help demystify the use of psychedelics, and that others can find out more about its incredible power to heal one’s relationship with the self.

​

In my first psychedelic experience, I was with my boyfriend. It was the first time for both of us, so we did a lot of research online.

I learned that being surrounded by nature was recommended as it could have a very positive effect on your experience.

We made sure to be in a safe and natural environment, and took 10 grams of magic truffles each.​

The first experience was really emotional, it connected me back to deeply buried parts of myself. The longing for my language; the people, sounds, smells I was missing, and ways of feeling myself.

I traveled the world in order to “find myself”, yet in that process, I lost parts of myself that were necessary and integral to my essence, that was my true “home.”

After about an hour, I was already experiencing a change in perspective. My boyfriend's face, the grass, the trees, flowers, forms - everything brought me to a state of awe, as if I was discovering it for the first time.​

Another hour later, the image of one of my dearest friends back home in Argentina came to me, and a strong urge arose in me to speak with her. So I called her and started sharing my experience with her.

However, as soon as I started speaking in Spanish, the feelings of sadness, yearning, and homesickness started to arise from the deepest part of me. I had to hang up, curl up into a little ball, and hide my face.

Inside my mind, it was like seeing the Sagrada Familia´s ceiling upside down from the inside, with pink and purple colors. There was no ground inside my mind, just the deep dome structures, color, and sunlight coming through those peaks.

I started to cry, weeping with sadness and anguish that could not be understood or stopped.

I only realized later that it was coming from a place that I had buried so deep, all the emotions from when I left Argentina 6 years earlier: the loneliness and pain of not being able to hug my friends and family in difficult moments.

I especially felt that the sadness came from realizing that I was missing parts of myself that were no longer there. Even though I was still me, it felt like I had lost or forgotten some part of my essence. But now, suddenly, I could feel them, even grasp them once again.

I couldn't understand why I let those beautiful, personal parts of myself be hidden away with so much shame or fear. My sadness and longing turned into anger.

I was angry, so angry at the pain I was feeling. Why did we have to choose to be strong, cautious, or responsible over the parts of ourselves that are beautiful and the key to our happiness?

That anger came out as more tears, and I started to shout.

I missed the artistic, funny, silly, Latin, sexy, sensitive, emotional, and vulnerable parts of myself. I just wanted to be me again, and allow myself to be held by others. I realized that I had lost myself - it was as if I was dead. All the sadness, anguish, and anger I felt was me mourning my own death.

Wanting the pain to stop, I started to punch the floor, the grass, and the earth with my bare hands. During this whole time, my boyfriend stayed close to me but didn´t interfere. He knew I was going through something very deep and emotional but instinctively allowed me to go through my process.

Having someone you deeply trust is very important when doing psychedelics. When you know that you are safe, you can really allow yourself to experience it fully without trying to control or hide anything.

After the emotions calmed down, I was exhausted. We went for a walk and as the visual effects of the truffles started to fade, we came across a playground. It was quite late so it was empty, so I went down the slide.

I felt like a 4 year old again, with little Lu giggling happily, even though it was still mixed with the sadness and longing.​

After the emotions calmed down, I was exhausted. We went for a walk and as the visual effects of the truffles started to fade, we came across a playground. It was quite late so it was empty, so I went down the slide.

I felt like a 4 year old again, with little Lu giggling happily, even though it was still mixed with the sadness and longing.

For the rest of the night, I remained contemplative, feeling very raw, yet peaceful. I felt a clear and calm acceptance.

I managed to fall asleep for a few hours, but woke the next morning still in a strong emotional state, feeling the raw feelings from before.

Beautiful sun rays were coming through the window, and without thinking too much I started to move.

Ever since I was little, I had always danced without technique in my room. It was a way of feeling myself and letting emotions transform and move through my body.

I moved and caressed my natural, naked body, without judgment or rules, fully absorbed in the moment. Transmuting as a chrysalis, sometimes from one part of myself to another, and sometimes completely detached, feeling completely free.

Without planning anything in particular, I took the camera, put it in front of me, and just kept exploring my movements and the light.

When I felt that the movements I needed to do were complete, I stayed still and silent with my hands on the heart, and meditated for some time.

I felt the most serene happiness, and deepest appreciation and gratitude for my entire being.

There was no judgment towards myself, for my personality, my body, my past, my experiences, my background. Just pure acceptance and forgiveness. Without realizing it, psychedelics had helped me dig deeper, release, and connect back in a way I could have never expected.

Luciana's personal story is the first of a series of stories of women from all parts of the globe, with different ethnicities, lifestyles, and backgrounds. WOOP will be sharing these stories, also anonymously when requested.

If you would like to reach out to Luciana, feel free to contact her on Instagram.

ILLUSTRATIONS by JESSIKA LAGARDE

Wonderland #1 Luciana Comas Bitz Pt I | WOOP

Finding Wonderland - a series of women's personal stories to destigmatize and normalize the use of psychedelics.

www.womenonpsychedelics.org

 

[mr peabody]

Is MDMA the key to treating women with PTSD?

by Kelley McMillan - Aug 17, 2015

On a bright, sunny morning in June 2012, 36-year-old massage therapist Roxxann Murphy and her husband, David, 34, were driving to Oklahoma City's Myriad Botanical Gardens with their 18-month-old daughter, Romy. Almost as soon as David?blond and handsome, with light-blue eyes?turned their Honda Fit onto the highway, they saw a man waving wildly for assistance on the right side of the road. Eager to help, David slowed down and parked the car. It turned out to be a domestic disturbance between the man and his female companion; after making sure the couple was OK, David began walking back toward Murphy, the flat plains framing his athletic build.

Suddenly, a car swerved from the highway at 70 miles per hour, striking David and another man who had stopped to help. Murphy recalls watching the stranger fly through the air upside down. He's not going to survive, she thought. Then she saw David's body roll to a stop in the grass that lined the highway. "David! David!" she screamed, before grabbing Romy from her car seat and running to his side. He was unconscious by the time she reached him, with blood seeping from a deep gash in his forehead and nose. She knelt beside him, gently stroking his head and body with one arm while breast-feeding Romy in the other, the only thing that would soothe her crying daughter. Sunlight streamed down and small crickets hopped over David's body as Murphy begged him not to leave her. An hour later, they were still waiting for an ambulance to arrive. "I felt him dying," Murphy says. Soon, he was gone.

Immediately after the accident, Murphy began having flashbacks. She jumped at noises. She hallucinated that shadowy, hulking men stood by her bed. She lost 25 pounds and rarely slept; when she did, she dreamed of blood, gore, and body parts. Her waking hours were spent in a zombielike state. Mostly, she fantasized about bashing her brain with a hammer; but she had to stick around for Romy, which made her resentful.

So a few weeks after David's death, she began seeing a cognitive behavioral therapist at the University of Oklahoma. He diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a condition characterized by flashbacks, feelings of hopelessness, and emotional numbing that affects 8 million U.S. adults (81 percent of them women) and can occur when someone experiences a traumatic event like military combat or sexual assault. But even with weekly therapy, Murphy was still suicidal two years after the accident. Desperate for something that would keep her alive for her daughter, she sought out alternative PTSD treatments online, and finally, as a last-ditch effort, took a weeklong trip to Boulder, Colorado, to join a progressive clinical trial that would eventually save her life: a psychotherapy session catalyzed by the hallucinogen MDMA.

Better known by its street names, Molly or Ecstasy, and long viewed as a party drug, 3,4-methylenedioxy- methamphetamine, or MDMA, is currently being studied as a treatment for chronic, treatment-resistant PTSD in four FDA-approved, phase-two clinical studies: in Boulder; Charleston, South Carolina; Vancouver, British Columbia; and Beer Yaakov, Israel (international studies can be used in the FDA-approval process). Over the course of about five months, the trials' 98 subjects, including 54 women, ingest between 75 and 188 milligrams of MDMA during three- to five-day psychotherapy sessions (comparable to a street dose), supplemented by about 20 hours of non-drug-enhanced talk therapy with mental-health professionals. Lauded for its ability to break down emotional barriers, enhance communication skills, and promote deep introspection, the drug acts not as a medication, but as a catalyst to psychotherapy, many times achieving in a few sessions what might take years in traditional therapeutic settings.

Results from an earlier phase-two study in Charleston completed in 2008 (there are three stages for a medication to get FDA approval) showed great promise: After just two sessions of MDMA- assisted psychotherapy, 83 percent of participants no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis, compared with only 25 percent who were cured from talk therapy alone. If these current trials are successful, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy may become a prescription treatment for PTSD and radically change how we treat a wide range of psychiatric illnesses, like autism, anxiety, and anorexia.

Though it's frequently associated with war veterans, PTSD is common in civilian women; one in 10 women will experience it in their lifetime, owing, in part, to the fact that women are more likely to suffer sexual trauma, the type of incident that most frequently leads to the disorder. Standard treatments for PTSD include antidepressants and talk therapy, but their efficacy is mediocre at best: In clinical trials, these therapies were ineffective for about 25 to 50 percent of patients.

About two years after David's death, Murphy sat in the bright, airy office of therapist Marcela Ot'alora, the Boulder study's lead investigator, preparing to embark on her first MDMA-assisted psychotherapy session. She was nervous to take the hallucinogen in front of a therapist, especially one she didn't know. Rhythmic drumming played on the stereo in the background. Lit candles adorned a table where Murphy placed a photo of her and David kissing in a field of goldenrod.

Twenty minutes after Murphy swallowed her capsule of MDMA, the drug took hold. Murphy envisioned herself rocketing through the earth's atmosphere toward space, where she came upon David, illuminated like a zodiac drawing among the stars. They spoke about the mundane?her travel hiccups getting from Oklahoma to Boulder?and the profound. She updated him on his family, shared her worries about Romy's future, and expressed anger with him for leaving her to raise their daughter alone. He nodded knowingly and assured her with his big Aw, shucks smile. Then Murphy asked him a question: "How big are you?" David threw open his arms, which unfurled into wings that stretched across the entirety of the universe. After two years of terror and grief, Murphy finally felt peace.

MDMA-assisted psychotherapy may seem like a novel treatment born of the medical-marijuana age. But this new round of research is, in fact, revisiting old ground. Before it was co-opted by club-goers, MDMA was used by therapists during similar intensive, daylong therapy sessions in the late 1970s and early '80s. California therapist and pioneer of the psychedelic psychotherapy movement Leo Zeff coined it "penicillin for the soul." In 1985, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) classified it as a schedule I substance, along with heroin and LSD?a designation given to "drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse."

That kicked off years of bad publicity for MDMA, including inaccurate claims that MDMA causes Parkinson's disease and holes in the brain, and permanently damages serotonin reserves. In reality, no studies have shown that clinical usage?that is, taking pure MDMA in moderate doses under medical supervision a limited number of times?leads to long- term cognitive damage, according to Matthew Johnson, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine. MDMA has been administered in various studies to more than 1,113 subjects, with only one report of a serious, drug-related adverse event, which ended once the drug wore off. (A subject was admitted to the hospital with an irregular heartbeat and was released the next day.)

Recreational and pharmaceutical MDMA barely resemble each other, however. While the terms MDMA, Ecstasy, and Molly are used interchangeably, Molly or Ecstasy bought on the street is often misrepresented or cut with dangerous adulterants, like methamphetamine, and rarely contains actual MDMA. (Only 9 percent of the Molly the DEA collected in New York state in 2013 contained the pure form of the drug.) And using even pure MDMA in a nonmedical setting, like a club, can be risky: The drug increases blood pressure and heart rate and can cause hyperthermia, or overheating, which can lead to liver, kidney, muscle, and heart failure.

Ranging in age from 23 to 66, the 54 women in the six phase-two studies are mothers, teachers, professional athletes, military veterans, police officers, psychotherapists, and office managers. They have survived combat, rape, physical and sexual torture, and more. Each has taken the DSM-IV Clinician- Administered PTSD scale, or CAPS test, the standard for diagnosing the disorder. (The maximum score is 136; anything above 60 is considered severe PTSD. The average score among the studies' participants is 82.) For these women, participation is oftentimes their final attempt to reclaim their lives.

Rachel Hope, a 43-year-old writer from Los Angeles, endured a troubled childhood: At 4 years old, she was physically and sexually abused, then hit by a truck at age 11, which left her partially paralyzed for a year and requiring four surgeries and years of physical therapy. As a result of the various traumas, Hope suffered from debilitating, treatment-resistant PTSD, which manifested as extreme irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), acute anxiety, night terrors, panic attacks, and insomnia, among other symptoms, and left her malnourished and unable to maintain romantic relationships or to work outside the home. "It was a monstrous existence," she says. At one point, she was on 15 medications before enrolling in the Charleston study in 2005. "I was dying," she says of her choice to join the study. "I had nothing to lose."

Brenda, a 38-year-old teacher from the Denver area, who was physically and sexually tortured by her father from ages 3 to 12, was so clinically depressed from PTSD that she was left suicidal and unable to teach her elementary school classes. (She asked not to use her last name to protect her family and career.) She tried 11 medications and was in weekly therapy for 15 years before enrolling in a study. "I entered the Boulder study with a CAPS score of 87, on meds," she says. "That's bullshit. That's me doing everything I'm supposed to do, everything that these therapists are taught to do in school, and it's not helping." She was wary of using a so-called party drug to treat her condition, but she was was desperate. "I was really in a fight for my life," Brenda says. "The fear of the stigma associated with using MDMA was far less than the fear of continuing to feel the PTSD symptoms for the rest of my life."

The sessions are not high-flying, blissed-out psychedelic drug trips, but intense feelings of "connection," or love for oneself and others, do pervade the experience. "My husband and I have been married 17 years, and it was the first time I understood how much he must love me and how I deserve that love," explains Brenda, who says MDMA opened up a world of new emotions for her. "I was able to feel. I think that's the biggest takeaway. While on the MDMA, I had access to feelings that I hadn't ever had access to before." The drug, which lasts three to six hours, produces an objective state in which one is able to revisit difficult emotions and experiences, and able to do so without being overwhelmed by them. "I was terrified a lot of the time. I was reliving it," says Murphy, who regularly went back to the scene of the trauma. "I actually saw all of the accident, but it didn't overwhelm me because I was outside of it somehow."

This sense of peace is typical of the MDMA sessions. "Instead of feeling hyperaroused or overstimulated, I felt a tremendous calm and had reduced anxiety," says Hope. Despite the enhanced sensory perception that is a hallmark of the psychedelic experience (things like light appearing more crystalline, the sensation of air currents wafting over skin), participants are extremely focused on the task at hand: healing. "Even though MDMA is a psychedelic, I didn't feel like I was tripping," says Hope. "I didn't feel fucked up. I felt really empowered, like I could direct my mind where I needed to."

There's a chemical explanation for all of this. MDMA triggers a massive release of serotonin, a neurotransmitter critical to mood regulation; dopamine, which modulates emotional response; and oxytocin, the hormone of bonding, trust, and intimacy. "Patients are awake, alert, connected. They want to talk. They want to explore. They feel calm enough and their fear is extinguished enough that they can actually process the trauma," says psychiatrist Dr. Julie Holland, author of Ecstasy: The Complete Guide: A Comprehensive Look at the Risks and Benefits of MDMA. "You basically couldn't design a molecule that is better for therapy than MDMA."

MRI brain scans suggest that one way MDMA works is by decreasing activity in the amygdala, the brain's fear center, while increasing activity in the prefrontal cortex, regions associated with memory and higher functioning. In the PTSD brain, activities in these areas are out of balance. Researchers believe MDMA's effects on the amygdala and prefrontal cortex allow people to understand a trauma without being overwhelmed by negative emotions. "It's almost like anesthesia for surgery," says Holland. "It allows you to dig and get to the malignant thing that needs to be pulled out and examined. It takes years in psychotherapy to dig around the trauma and start to get to it. This is a way for people to process the core issue in order to move forward."

Accessing traumatic memories allows patients to re-remember them, a process called memory reconsolidation, in which memories can be changed if they are reactivated and updated with new information. "You're actually manipulating that memory, and when it gets stored again, what's stored again is a little different than what you pulled out," says Johnson. This is key for people with PTSD, whose brains haven't properly worked through trauma. "I felt as if I was literally reprogramming my brain and confronting all of the fixed thought patterns and belief structures that were keeping the PTSD in place, that were making me relive the past over and over again. I was able to file those memories in the past," says Hope.

From June through October 2014, Murphy underwent three 8-hour MDMA treatments. After her first session, her sleep improved. After her second, she stopped wanting to kill herself; her flashbacks began to subside. "It felt like burdens were lifted off my shoulders," Murphy says. By the end of her participation in the study, her CAPS score had fallen from 114 to 37, meaning she no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis. "It saved me," she says of the treatment. "It delivered me back to my good life and delivered my daughter her mother."

Brenda also credits MDMA-assisted psychotherapy with saving her life. "I spent 35 years suicidal, and I'm not anymore, because of the MDMA and two really skilled therapists," she says. She is now off all her medications and teaching full-time again for the first time in seven years. "I'm the healthiest I've ever been, because I have so much clarity." And more than 10 years after enrolling in the first study in Charleston, Hope says she is still cured of PTSD and has not suffered IBS, flashbacks, or night terrors since her first MDMA session.

Whereas psychiatric medications such as Zoloft try to address so-called biological imbalances, they act as a temporary Band-Aid to suffering, say researchers. MDMA may heal it altogether. And MDMA may be safer than psychiatric medications, in part because you don't have to take it every day. "If used carefully, it could be safer simply because your side effects are time-limited," says Johnson. Zoloft and Paxil, traditional treatments for PTSD, can cause weight gain, sexual dysfunction, and suicidal thoughts, whereas a single dose of medical-grade MDMA may only cause increases in heart rate and blood pressure during the session, and fatigue, loss of appetite, and low mood for a day or so afterward. For people like Murphy, Brenda, and Hope, the insights and emotional shifts gleaned from their MDMA sessions have profoundly changed their lives. Brenda says, "It's really like stepping outside into a whole new world and breathing fresh air."

MDMA research has helped pave the way for psychiatry's current psychedelic resurgence. Scientists at Johns Hopkins, Imperial College London, and the University of New Mexico are studying LSD and psilocybin, the psychoactive compound in magic mushrooms, as antidotes to addiction, anxiety, depression, and more. In the future, MDMA researchers hope to see the no-longer-experimental treatment administered by specially trained and licensed therapists in mental health clinics around the globe.

But Bertha Madras, Ph.D., a professor of psychobiology at Harvard Medical School, fears that legalizing MDMA for medical use is just the first step in decriminalizing serious drugs in the United States. "The illicit hallucinogens MDMA, LSD, and psilocybin are the next wave of drugs being promoted as 'medicines,' with the long-term view of normalizing their use for psychoactive purposes," she says. "At present, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of MDMA for therapeutic purposes." Dr. Joseph Lee, medical director of Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation Youth Continuum, a rehab facility in Minnesota, believes MDMA may have therapeutic properties but worries about the greater ramifications of legalizing MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. "My concern is that somehow this conversation about researching MDMA for PTSD will bleed into people justifying recreational use or minimizing misuse. We've seen that happen with prescription drugs," says Lee. He also cautions against overuse of MDMA. "We routinely see kids every year who used too much MDMA or for whatever reason had a side effect from the MDMA and needed to be psychiatrically hospitalized before coming to treatment," he says, touching on another concern of MDMA? that it may trigger latent psychiatric issues. (Prospective participants for the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy trials are screened for any psychological issues?like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia?that may be of concern.)

One of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of developing MDMA into an FDA-approved medication is funding. The process is a $20 million endeavor and one that relies completely on the fundraising efforts of MAPS, a nonprofit research and educational organization that studies and develops therapeutic applications for psychedelic drugs partly because pharmaceutical companies have little interest in developing a drug administered only a few times. In 2016, MAPS will move MDMA-assisted psychotherapy one step closer to legalization when it begins phase-three clinical trials, which will involve more than 400 participants and last five years. If those trials are successful, psychiatrists may be prescribing the treatment by 2021.

In the meantime, MDMA has caught the attention of those at the highest levels of the military; 22 veterans per day commit suicide. The National Center for PTSD, in the Department of Veterans Affairs, has been consulting with MAPS concerning an upcoming study, which will look at MDMA-assisted couples therapy involving veterans and top VA-affiliated psychologists, and will begin at the end of this year. Based on the results, Rick Doblin, MAPS founder and executive director, is hopeful the Department of Defense may fund further studies and allow MAPS to work with active-duty soldiers.

Today, Murphy lives with Romy on a quiet street in Norman, Oklahoma, and is thriving. In June, she traveled to Northern California, where she lived with David for two years, to scatter his ashes at Muir Woods, a stretch of lush redwood forest near the Pacific that they frequented and loved. She brought along her new boyfriend, who, coincidentally, is also named David; they met after Murphy's second MDMA-assisted psychotherapy session. They are talking about a life together, something she never could have imagined before the experimental treatment. For the first time in years, she is hopeful about what lies ahead. "I'm able to make a life for us now, and he's right here with me," she says of her late husband. "I feel blessed that I ever got to be with him in the first place." Some days, when she's out in her yard with Romy, a bird will fly by and Murphy will reach up to the sky and say, "Daddy's birds." Her daughter smiles, knowing her father is close by, and, at long last, so does Murphy. "It's still sad," she says. "But I can access those memories, and see him in my daughter, and I rejoice in it."

https://www.marieclaire.com/health-fitness/news/a15553/mdma-ecstasy-drug-ptsd-treatment/​

 

[mr peabody]

How Women Inspired the Psychedelic Revolution

by Kelsey Ramsden | Green Entrepreneur | 30 Mar 2021

Despite the barriers for women throughout the development of psychedelic research, they have contributed greatly to the psychedelics industry, and they're fueling its renaissance.

In her talk "The Call to Courage," Brené Brown explained the fastest way to get a curious neighbor seated next to her on an airplane to lose interest in her and to look the other way. She simply had to tell him/her what she did for a living. Brown studies shame–shame–the word alone enough to stifle a seatmate's curiosity. Shame is one of those uncomfortable topics best left taboo–why not just discuss the weather?

I find myself in a similar position when I drop the word psychedelics. Pair it with "mental health," and it's a double whammy. While this field of work is guaranteed to elicit an emotion–curiosity first and foremost, the truth is, not everyone pursues their curiosity. Many do indeed turn the other way. And hence, the world of psychedelics exists, for many, as a colorful and trippy world for the existential hippie.

But what if you flip the order of the conversation from, "Hi there, I'm Kelsey Ramsden, CEO of MindCure Heath, a mental health company investigating therapeutic uses for psychedelic drugs," to "I'm Kelsey Ramsden, two-time winner of Canada's Top Female Entrepreneur." The average interlocutor no longer turns the other way. Rather, I've gained their respect. Labels, awards, and publicly recognized honors are like a warm blanket. I'm suddenly safe. In my mind, I've just built a platform on which to throw a curveball–more on that later.

Labels aside, I want to pay homage to said platform like the one I've built stands upon the shoulders of many women before me. Women who have accomplished incredible work and research in psychedelics, women who were vilified in much more severe ways than risking an airplane seatmate to turn the other way. And what better time to talk about women pioneers of psychedelics than during International Women's Month?

Women's contributions to psychedelic medicine

Let's go way back. I'm talking about Adam and Eve. Our girl Eve was described in a book review by Patricia C. Morningstar, Ph.D., as "the first drug user, abuser, and law defier, since eating the forbidden fruit … approximating the effects of a sacred drug plant that temporarily produces feelings of cosmic perspective." In other words, she consumed a controlled substance to alter her cognition and then was punished for it.

Did we fall so far from the tree?

Eve was curious, brave, a survivalist. Indeed, a necessity to make it in the early days. Survivalism aside, for many cultures, past and present, psychedelics have been used to induce a kind of rebirth. When we start to acknowledge such powerful uses for psychedelic substances, it's hard to fathom the stigma that overtook psychedelics over the past 60 years.

The early years of psychedelic research saw similar experiences, with psychedelics becoming the new forbidden fruit. Eve's apple brought knowledge and suffering, whereas psychedelics offered deeper knowledge and healing — an end to suffering. Still, research halted in the 1970s.

Well, let's call it a hiatus. Eve, as a woman taking the first steps into a mind-altering substance, is not alone. The accomplishments of our predecessors are not wasted. Their legacy lives on with the women leading the renaissance of psychedelic research.

We'll get to those women in my next piece because, first, I want to talk about what was holding them back.

The barriers for women in psychedelic research

Let's first point out the obvious: Women faced the challenge of gender discrimination that discouraged their presence in education, career options, and other spheres dominated by men.

For example, Researchers looked at LSD as a potential treatment for alcoholism. But since gender segregation prevented women from attending pubs even into the 1970s, men developed alcoholism more rapidly. This resulted in men owning the space of LSD-assisted therapy for alcoholism.

Additionally, women in "child-bearing years" were discouraged and excluded from participating in clinical trials for fear of risking their bodies' reproductive abilities. You know the drill, send 'em back home where they can clean and produce offspring.

Of course, these reasons hint at the societal context and misconception that positioned women as lesser beings who were just not smart enough for life sciences (a.k.a., "men's work"). Many women involved in research co-authored their findings with men or worked behind the scenes, hiding their names and sacrificing deserved credit to improve the study of psychedelic substances.

In our current psychedelic renaissance, we're looking to them.

Behind the scenes: the wives of psychedelia, a framework for guides and sitters

Remember when the majority of homes were single-family income because women were at home? Of course, you do, because it wasn't that long ago. Historian Erica Dyck, Ph.D., explains in an interview how this arrangement allowed for men and women to contribute to the husband's role. Dr. Dyck claims that "Women were almost always involved in the counseling sessions, recruitment, etc., but are very rarely identified in the published work. The legacy of that history continues to distort our understanding of who does the work, and what kind of work is valued."

Wives provided feedback, took notes, and even participated in psychedelic experiences. Laura and Ellen Huxley, Mary Agnew, and Rose Hoffer comforted their husbands, participated in critical reflections, and set the framework for hallucinogenic guides and sitters. While these roles were behind the scenes, they were crucial nonetheless.

The price of risk: Maria Sabina

We can't celebrate the benefits of psilocybin without keeping the memory of Maria Sabina alive. Everything we know about magic mushrooms, we owe to her. And yet hers is a tale of a witch hunt akin to those in Salem.

Maria Sabina, knowing the precarious line she straddled, was reluctant to share her knowledge of magic mushrooms with Valentina and Robert Gordon Wasson in 1955. They later presented it in 1957 via Robert Wasson's Life Magazine photo essay "Seeking the Magic Mushrooms" and Tina's This Week interview, "I Ate the Sacred Mushrooms."

The good news? Sabina's openness brought psilocybin and psilocin into the spotlight. Albert Hoffman, the father-slash-actual discoverer of LSD, turned his attention to these substances for further studies.

The bad news? Despite the Wassons' use of the pseudonym Eva Mendez to protect her identity, Westerners found Sabina, abused her practices, and, according to Sabina, spoiled the mushrooms' powers. Sabina was arrested and imprisoned, her home burned, and her son murdered — all for sharing the "velada" purification ritual with foreigners. See what I mean about Salem?

And yet, if not for Maria Sabina, you likely wouldn't be reading this article, let alone getting to know psilocybin. She was an Eve in her own right–curious that her pseudonym was Eva.

There's no doubt Maria would have made plenty of people on the airplane uncomfortable were she to start talking about her work. It's the disruptors that are the issuers of change, and there are plenty more women to celebrate. Stay tuned for part two of this series, where I'll shed light on more women pioneers of psychedelics.

How Women Inspired the Psychedelic Revolution

Despite the barriers for women throughout the development of psychedelic research, they have contributed greatly to the psychedelics industry, and they're fueling its renaissance.

www.greenentrepreneur.com

 

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Study suggests acetaminophen in pregnancy linked to higher risk of ADHD, autism

by National Institutes of Health | Medical Xpress | Oct 30 2019

Exposure to acetaminophen in the womb may increase a child's risk for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder, suggests a study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. The study was conducted by Xiaobing Wang, M.D., of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and colleagues. It appears in JAMA Psychiatry.

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is marked by a pattern of hyperactivity and impulsive behavior. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental disorder that affects how a person behaves, interacts with others and learns.

Researchers analyzed data from the Boston Birth Cohort, a long-term study of factors influencing pregnancy and child development. They collected umbilical cord blood from 996 births and measured the amount of acetaminophen and two of its byproducts in each sample. By the time the children were an average of 9 years, 26% had been diagnosed with ADHD only, 7% with ASD only and 4% with ADHD and ASD. The researchers classified the amount of acetaminophen and its byproducts in the samples into thirds, from lowest to highest. Compared to the lowest third, the middle third of exposure was associated with about 2.26 times the risk for ADHD. The highest third of exposure was associated with 3 times the risk. Similarly, ASD risk was higher for those in the middle third, and highest third.

The authors conclude that their results support earlier studies linking acetaminophen exposure in the womb with ADHD and ASD and underscore the need for additional research. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration urges careful consideration before using any pain-relieving medication during pregnancy.

Study suggests acetaminophen in pregnancy linked to higher risk of ADHD, autism

Exposure to acetaminophen in the womb may increase a child's risk for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder, suggests a study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. The study was conducted by Xiaobing Wang...

medicalxpress.com

 

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My story of MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy for PTSD

by Rachel Kaplan | Psychedelic Frontier

As I sit in a field of tall green grasses, feeling the earth beneath me and listening to the songs of meadowlarks, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for not only being alive but for finally wanting to be alive. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for often feeling a sense of peace in my self and feeling connected with myself, with others and the world. These are all new experiences for me that I never believed where possible until now, after being a participant in the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy study in Boulder.

This last year, after integrating the healing that happened in my MDMA-assisted psychotherapy sessions, has been a drastic contrast to the rest of my life. For the majority of my life I prayed to die and fought suicidal urges as I struggled with complex PTSD. This PTSD was born out of chronic severe childhood abuse. Since then, my life has been a journey of searching for healing. I started going to therapy 21 years ago, and since then I have tried every healing modality that I could think of, such as bodywork, energy work, medications, residential treatment and more. Many of these modalities were beneficial but none of them significantly reduced my trauma symptoms. I was still terrified most of the time. I would have flashbacks that would leave me debilitated, having nightmares, dissociated, and self-harming, and I fought to keep myself alive each day. I had some of the best therapists, but I was so terrified from childhood trauma that my system would not let down its guard enough to let anything from the outside affect it. I was desperate for healing, and felt trapped by my level of fear.

It was this desperation to heal that lead me to enroll in the Boulder MDMA-assisted psychotherapy study. I was terrified to take a medicine that would put me in an altered state, but it was more terrifying not to try it, because I knew that if I did not find a way to heal then I would not have the will to keep living.

When I would go to therapy to try to talk about the memories, I would immediately become numb, and leave my body. In some cases, I would black out and end up curled in a ball, screaming. The MDMA session was the first time that I was able to stay present, explore, and process what had happened to me. This changed everything.

In my first MDMA-assisted psychotherapy session I was surprised that the MDMA helped me see the world as it was, instead of seeing it through my lens of terror. I thought that the MDMA would alter my perception of reality, but instead it helped me see if more clearly. As I sat with my two incredible therapists in my MDMA sessions it was the first time that I could really let in love, first time that I felt completely safe, respected and fully seen. I was blessed to have two therapists who were authentic, truly cared, and felt love for me. The MDMA allowed me to hone in on the real feelings of care that they had. For the first time in my life, I felt safe enough to let their love and respect into the core of my being. I had the felt experience of being completely vulnerable and seen while at the same time being loved, safe, and respected. This planted the seed in me that it is actually safe to let in love and be seen by other trusted people as well as to let in my own love towards myself. This in itself has transformed how I am in relationships with other people and how I am in relationship with myself. The first couple MDMA-assisted psychotherapy sessions organically ended up being about understanding safety from the inside out, and learning that it was safe to connect to others. After the safety was deepened, I naturally began to process traumatic memories.

For the majority of my life, I had suppressed my memories of trauma and only understood fragments of it through my flashbacks and body memories. I hated myself for having such horrible memories and believed that I was psychotic and just making the memories up. I did this because it was easier to blame myself then to face the pain that these horrible things actually happened. This left me in a state of hating and not trusting myself, which only added to feelings of shame and depression. When I would go to therapy to try to talk about the memories, I would immediately become numb, and leave my body. In some cases, I would black out and end up curled in a ball, screaming. The MDMA session was the first time that I was able to stay present, explore, and process what had happened to me. This changed everything.

A life-changing moment happened at the beginning of my third MDMA session. There was this horrible feeling of darkness that I felt, and I was afraid to look at it. Part of my intention for this session was to see that darkness clearly, because I knew that it was something that needed healing. After I took the medicine, my therapist gently held my hand. I felt the relaxed support of the MDMA, the safety of the room, and the respect and care of my therapists, and I allowed myself to see what was behind the darkness. What revealed itself was another level of trauma that I had suppressed. As I explained the images that I was seeing to my therapist, she gently put her hand on my arm with so much kindness and named the category of abuse that it was. As I continued to remember horrific things, I was also keenly aware of the safety, love, presence, and respect of my therapists. For the first time, I was able to look at and feel the pain of those memories. As I did this the love and respect that I felt from my therapists was able to touch the darkest memories of my life where I had felt so alone and terrified. It was as if their love entered into those memories and helped the child part of me know that I was loveable and innocent, no matter what had happened to me. Now whenever I think of those horrible things, I am also reminded of the goodness in that room.

That moment will stay with me forever. It gives me faith when I see the horrible pain that happens in the world. I know in my bones the goodness that is possible in people. Being able to fully look and feel my memories enabled me to come back to trusting myself. After a lifetime of thinking that I was psychotic for having such memories, I could finally accept the truth that my mind and body had been trying to tell me my whole life. I could finally honor the truth of what happened to me, and stop fighting against it, fighting against myself. This enabled me to find a sense of peace in myself and inner empowerment in knowing and trusting my truth.

After the MDMA sessions, the integration of the work was often turbulent, since so much healing and change had happened in the last eight hours. After my sessions I often felt emotional waves of deep grief, anger, and fear of being in the world in a different way, as I assimilated new information and explored new ways of living more authentically with myself and others.

So much happened in those sessions that the full integration took me years during which the healing that I did in those sessions built on itself. Before being in the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy study, I lived in my own bubble of fear and was too terrified to recognize that my current life was safe. Like many trauma survivors, I instinctually shut down the part of my brain that integrates sensory input from the outside world. Therefore, decades after the abuse, I still could not see the goodness or safety in my life. I saw everything as dangerous and even life-threatening, no matter what. This only reinforced being stuck in my world of terror. After being in the study, this changed. I started to be able to sense what was actually happening, and I continued to have experiences where I could see that the world might actually be safe, and people might actually have good intentions.

Something extraordinary happened. After a lifetime of being numb and dissociated as a way to cope with pain, I started to feel good physical sensations again. The feeling of the warmth of the sun on my face and the feeling of the cool rushing creek was incredible.

A powerful example of this happened a few months after I had completed the study. I was in my house and suddenly had the most horrible pain in my stomach, which left me on the floor, throwing up, afraid that I was going to pass out from the pain. To make a long story short, I ended up have an emergency open abdominal surgery to remove a grapefruit-sized ovarian cyst, and was in the hospital for a week. I was surrounded by people that I did not know, put under anesthesia, and woke up unable to move, with staples from my pelvic bone to past my belly button. What I was most aware of was that these doctors, nurses, and strangers were fighting to save my life—to keep me safe—and they did not even know me. When I was at my most vulnerable these strangers cared for every part of me. Maybe it was not just my therapists in the study that had such good intentions: maybe the majority of people do? If I had had this surgery before I was in the study, it would have severely re-traumatized me, as I would have felt like all the people around me wanted to hurt me. Instead, the surgery turned into part of my healing. Experiences like this, although not as intense, continued to happen where I could see that there was actually goodness and safety in people.

As I continued to integrate the sessions and heal, something else extraordinary happened. After a lifetime of being numb and dissociated as a way to cope with pain, I started to feel good physical sensations again. The feeling of the warmth of the sun on my face and the feeling of the cool rushing creek was incredible. It reminded me that I was alive, and for the first time I was profoundly grateful to be alive. I can’t even express how deeply grateful I am to be able to feel the world again. I am reminded every day of the gift of feeling sensations as a way to resource and feel connected to others and the world. Three years after completing the study, I am now amazed every day when I realize that I feel a sense of peace in myself. I often wake up with a love for myself, other people, and this earth.

Of course, things are not perfect. I still struggle with a lot of anxiety. I feel devastated by what happened to me and the pain that happens in the world, but I also fully experience the extraordinary love, goodness, and beauty in the world. I am finally able to do things that I have dreamed of forever, like finishing graduate school with a degree in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology and a focus in Wilderness Therapy, going out into the backcountry for a month to do a training to become a rite-of-passage guide, and doing a somatic trauma training to learn how to help others heal from the effects of trauma. After going through this journey, what I want the most is to guide and support other people in their healing. I am not sure exactly how this will look yet, and I am giving myself time to listen to myself and explore the best avenue for me to support others. Even though I am able to do so many more things that I could not previously do, it is the ability to be present and connected in my life that is the greatest gift.

There are no words for the gratitude that I feel. Thank you to everyone who has been part of my healing and to MAPS and its many donors for making this work possible. It is my greatest hope that I can now take what I have been through, and help support others who are in pain. It is also my hope that my story can bring at least a little hope to those in pain, who still believe it is not possible to heal. I know the agony of that place well, and I now know in the core of my being that healing from anything is possible.

Rachael Kaplan is a massage therapist in Boulder, Colorado who is pursuing her passion for wilderness therapy and other healing arts. She can be reached at [email protected].

*From the article here :

Coming Back to Life - Psychedelic Frontier

Rachel Kaplan saw the world through a lens of terror and trauma -- until the day she took MDMA in a therapeutic setting. Her experience changed everything.

psychedelicfrontier.com

 

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Interview with Zoe Helene, Founder of Cosmic Sister

PSYCHEDELIC SPOTLIGHT | 22 Oct 2021

https://psychedelic-spotight.simplecast.com/episodes/zoe-helene-cosmic-sister

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Episode Summary​

In this episode of the Psychedelic Spotlight podcast, we catch up with psychedelic feminist Zoe Helene. She is an artist, environmentalist, and cultural activist best known for women’s empowerment and working with sacred psychedelic plants and fungi. She is the founder of Cosmic Sister, an environmental feminist collective advocating for the widespread education of psychedelic feminism and women-centered visibility in the space.

In our conversation, we discuss some of Zoe’s formative experiences in the creative arts which led her down the path of plant medicine advocacy, core feminist issues and how psychedelics play a role in furthering women’s movements, why an emphasis on equity and representation within the budding psychedelic industry is crucial and still has a long way to go, and so much more.

*To learn more about Zoe and Cosmic Sister, visit the website: ZoeHelene.com

Interview with Zoe Helene, Founder of Cosmic Sister | Psychedelic Spotlight

Zoe is an artist, environmentalist, and cultural activist best known for women's empowerment and working with sacred psychedelic plants and fungi. She is the founder of Cosmic Sister, an environmental feminist collective advocating for the widespread education of psychedelic feminism and...

psychedelicspotlight.com

 

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Moms on mushrooms: Inside the psychedelic parenting trend

by Kiki Dyon | PSYCHEDELIC SPOTLIGHT | 9 Sep 2021

They’re not quite hippies, and they’re not quite 20-year-olds on the search for existential assurance. Nope. They’re moms, and they’re coming out of the psychedelic closet to share how microdosing has helped them become better parents.​

Save the shiitake and bench the white button mushrooms; modern moms are turning to a more colorful alternative to enhance their personal wellness, and their parenting.

Between carpools and cooking and work and holding it all together, how does a mom get her hands on psilocybin? Even more intriguing: how does she decide that psilocybin is the secret ingredient to becoming a super-powered parent?

Some are blaming Michael Pollan and his 2018 cult classic How to Change Your Mind. “Only a science nerd could have led me to the darkside,” says Christina Rivera Cogswell in her Huffpost Personal piece, where she credits microdosing with helping her “look deeply into the eyes of [her] own extinction.” With gut-punching guilt for the world she’s leaving her children –- one irrevocably doomed by drought, overpopulation, wildfires, pandemics, greed, and global warming –– Cogswell pursued microdosing to induce a more positive and grounded outlook on modern times.

But is there anything really dark about a little Psilocybe cyanescens alongside a morning coffee? The hivemind is now shifting toward a long-awaited conclusion: no.​

Psychedelic parenting is trending​

Though Cogswell’s story may seem like a shocking overshare to the uninitiated, she is hardly alone. With the decriminalization of mushrooms finally gaining traction, “Plant Parenthood” or “Psychedelic Parenting” is becoming a more accepted and chronicled practice.

Jake, a Western New York physical therapist and fellow psychedelic parent, echoes an epiphany for Psychedelic Spotlight. “Intergenerational trauma can feel impossible to defeat. Microdosing has not only improved my outlook on my own past but has helped me feel more optimistic about my children’s futures.”

Parents who microdose assert that small amounts of psychedelics –– not enough to trip but enough to, theoretically, alter the mind –- help them deal with the depression and anxiety that come with raising a family. Microdosing may also help mothers connect deeper with their children and approach parenting from a more sympathetic lens.

One Oakland mother, Natalie, even credits microdosing psilocybin with saving her life. In an interview for Insider, Natalie explains that she turned to microdosing psychedelic mushrooms after postpartum intensified her depression.

“I had a lot of rage where I wanted to hurt my baby. Sometimes she wouldn’t stop crying, and I just had so much anger inside of me that I was afraid for her, which caused me to want to kill myself because I was afraid that I was going to hurt my kid,” she revealed.

Her new morning routine includes a 100 mg magic mushroom pill from a dispensary in Oakland, meditation, and gently waking up her daughter.

Since October, Natalie has microdosed every other day for a month, followed by a two-month break — a practice she credits with transforming her. With the support of psilocybin, she can take on motherhood with a sense of calm and a grounded presence.

Three other mothers who microdose corroborated her point, telling Insider that small amounts of psilocybin have helped with postpartum struggles and parenting at large.

An escalating body of research proposes that psilocybin has benefits for depression, anxiety, and trauma. Pace and priorities famously change under the influence of psilocybin. Take a heroic dose, and you may experience an altered sense of reality and have a mystical awakening; microdose and the changes in perception will be much smaller but still substantial.

The most desirable changes in perception for microdosing moms? Eradicated mental fog and enhanced senses of calm and creativity.​

Too good to be true?​

These mothers aren’t stretching the truth either. Science has a solid answer for why psilocybin, even in small amounts, has this effect on people: psychedelics work on the part of the brain known as the parahippocampal retrosplenial cortical network, which is believed to have a hand in controlling our sense of self, or ego.

Michael D. McGee, the chief medical officer at The Haven at Pismo, an addiction treatment center, puts it in pedestrian terms for Allure, “When you take psychedelics, you loosen up and reduce the egoic experiences of identity and self, and it allows people to feel more connected, not only to themselves but to people and to the environment.”

When most think of mushrooms, they think of hippies or experimental college students searching for the answers to the universe, but the effects psilocybin has on parenting may be the most profound of all.

In another Insider article, a mother named Nina, whose last name was withheld to protect her identity, shared that microdosing helped her break the harmful cycle of transgenerational trauma. “I realized how much I was reliving my childhood trauma through my own child,” she said, “it was affecting my mothering skills. I wanted the cycle of trauma to end with me.”

Parenting has long been the most important job on the planet. Now, with existential uncertainties abounding and the end of the world a seemingly in-reach and terrifying reality, it’s more complicated than ever. Any method that works to maintain optimism and break bad thought cycles is a welcome antidote to the aberrations of modern parenting –- even if it’s not completely legal.​

Looking ahead​

Even though clinical trials of MDMA and ketamine are proliferating throughout the research community and a number of states have now either legalized or decriminalized psilocybin, it will probably be years before usage of those drugs in recreational settings comes with standardized dosages or certifiable knowledge of how parents can achieve certain benefits of psilocybin. But for those parents who have already figured out how to safely and blissfully self-administer shrooms –– experience is the only proof that matters.

https://psychedelicspotlight.com/moms-on-mushrooms-inside-psychedelic-parenting-microdosing-trend/​

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Trauma, PTSD and Psychedelics

by Donca Vianu | Women On Psychedelics | 3 Nov 2021

The word “trauma” has entered the mainstream vocabulary. It is frequently used in many contexts and occurs in many different situations. The common factor: the unpleasantness and the disruption they cause.

Just as “depression” can be anything from Monday morning blues, a persistent gloomy mood, or having serious thoughts of self-harm, trauma can also come from any situation: being ditched by a lover, sustaining physical injuries from a fall, enduring a nasty boss daily, surviving a painful divorce, sexual abuse, domestic violence, witnessing death.

In the professional psychological literature, traumatic experiences are the ones in which the fabric of your existence is torn apart, and you feel powerless in a bottomless pit.

“I have fallen into an abyss. I live in a world so curious, so strange. Of the dream that was my life, this is my nightmare”, wrote Camille Claudel, who was committed in a psychiatric asylum for the last 30 years of her life, despite being mentally sane.

I do not use the word “powerless” without reason. The two main features of a traumatic event are violence and powerlessness in the face of it. Here are some examples of one-time events which can be traumatic:​

1. Natural disasters like earthquakes, which in a couple of seconds, reduces your home to a pile of rubble, kill your family members and friends, as well as devastate the surroundings.​
2. Assaults by other humans to your body. Physical violence with or without weapons to cause harm, a murder attempt, rape.​
3. Being in life-threatening situations such as a serious car accident, falling from a great height, being trapped in a building on fire, drowning in the ocean.​

These are seen as simple acute traumas, which, if not addressed, can lead to serious disabilities. Let me share two case studies of acute trauma that went unaddressed.

I had a patient who was a police officer who was on duty at a bank robbery. She had a gun held to her head for about two minutes, which she perceived as a couple of hours. Twenty years later, she was hospitalized for psychosis, and in our work together, we uncovered its roots in her terrifying experience of the bank robbery.

Another patient of mine was an experienced rescue boat captain. One night while on duty, he and his team had to aid another ship transporting goods to safety during a storm. They were swept up in dangerous waters for hours, with both ships in danger of capsizing. He somehow managed to bring his boat to safety, but they lost the other ship.

A few years later, he developed a serious form of ulcerative colitis, inflammation, and sores along the lining of the large intestine. He was referred to me for depressive symptoms, and when I started to work with him, we traced everything back to that harrowing brush with death.

Both patients suppressed all memories of the traumatic incident, which then found expression in other ways. The one-time menacing and disruptive events cause what is called a simple acute trauma; but when the threats and disruption occur many times or over a prolonged period of time, then it becomes a complex trauma.

Other than simple and complex traumas, we also have collective traumas transmitted over decades, or even centuries, from one generation to the next. These often involve not only physical violence and massacres but also assaults on the culture and the very identity of the victims. They shape the collective mindsets of both the victims and the perpetrators and perpetuate the destructive cycles that arise out of the collective traumas.

It is important to distinguish between people who have undergone violence and powerlessness as children or as adults.

Traumatized Adults: think of soldiers and civilians involved in wars; victims of severe persecution or blatant genocide. According to statistics, today there are 65 million registered refugees spread all over all continents.

Traumatized Children: they are the ones who flee war, persecution, famine, climate disasters with their families, or alone and have experienced neglect, deprivation, abuse.

Why make a distinction between a child undergoing violence and powerlessness and an adult exposed to the same? Because these experiences will form the personality of the child, whereas the personality of an adult is already formed. Trauma affects them very differently.

The consequences of simple and complex trauma can be grouped under the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). People who suffer from PTSD can experience any of the following: Nightmares, horrendous memories intruding in neutral and even pleasant present situations, incongruous behavior, loss of memory, irrational fears, anxiety, hopelessness, apathy alternating with frenzy, despair, dread, depression, anger, rage, violent behavior, loss of sociability, emotional numbness, psychotic breakdown, psychosomatic illnesses.

Depending on the severity of their condition, one can become an emotional, physical, social, cripple.

Healing from trauma

So can someone recover from trauma? Yes, if treated soon after it happens. But if too much time has elapsed, it is much more difficult for those with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is one of my sub-specialties, and I have treated hundreds of people suffering from it. The principle may sound simple, but it necessitates skills and experience learned over a long time: it consists of alternatively re-living the traumatic situation, and covering it up. Pressing one time the gas pedal and pressing another time the brakes, and knowing when to press which.​

1. Bring up or recall the traumatic experience​
2. Re-living the traumatic situation​
3. Integrate​

The wound, the hurt of a trauma is in the mind. The mind has the amazing ability to expand. An expanded mind can experience itself from a higher and more neutral vantage point, from what is called a meta-level. From this meta-level, the mind has the capacity to heal the hurt.

Instead of “mind”, I can also use the term “consciousness.” Consciousness has the capacity to expand, experience its own content from a meta-level, and just by doing this, heal its wounds. Not all in one go, but bit by bit, over time. Consciousness has the capacity to heal consciousness.

In this process, it is crucial to bring up the traumatic experience, re-live it, integrate it into the mind /consciousness of the personality as a whole. This has to be alternated with covering up the traumatic experience, to give the body-mind system the opportunity to rest and let the integration occur. Without covering up the traumatic experience, you would be traumatized again, instead of being healed. Unfortunately, I saw this happening many times.

So when is a trauma healed?

Every trauma carries in its core a potential for the personality to grow, to find more inner peace, more inner freedom, to create a more meaningful life, and to live with more joy.

By processing a traumatic experience, whether it is simple, complex, or collective, we extract its quintessence, which is wisdom. In other words, we extract a deep, lived-through, embodied understanding of what it means to be human and to live on the earthly plane of existence. When this happens, the emotional burden can be discarded, what stays is the gained wisdom.

Psychedelics for healing trauma

Psychedelics are nowadays intensely researched for the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in war veterans. So far the research is promising, especially with MDMA.

Yet the positive results are after treatment in controlled clinical trials, to which few people have access. Also, many people suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder not due to war, but to early childhood abuse and other traumas. Many take psychedelics on their own, or underground, with less experienced guides. The users and the guides consider the psychedelic often a magic bullet, which it is not.

Although psychedelics do seem magical, helping to heal different afflictions, without Western science understanding well “how,” the truth is that psychedelics can heal trauma, and can also be very disruptive.

Please watch the videos on my Youtube channel to see examples of healing trauma with psychedelics from my clients.

Donca Vianu is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. She offers individual counseling and guidance for integration processes. You can follow her work through her Youtube channel and watch the video versions of this article here and here.

Trauma, PTSD and Psychedelics

Every trauma carries in its core a potential for the personality to grow, to find more inner peace, more inner freedom, to create a more meaningful life, and to live with more joy.

www.womenonpsychedelics.org

 

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Can psychedelics help reduce anxiety in women?

by Jessika Lagarde | Women On Psychedelics | 6 May 2021

According to studies, anxiety is twice as common in women. And the number does not depend on social class, ethnicity, or geographic location: the issue here is gender.

The beginning of 2020 was a time in which my anxiety levels rose far higher than I could manage to control. Due to the constant scenario of uncertainties, I often found myself in a state of restlessness, accompanying a lack of focus, overeating, and a really bad quality of sleep. I was anxious all the time.

And not surprisingly, the fact that I was feeling anxious would make me even more anxious. This anxiety then generated psychosomatic symptoms in my body that varied from gastritis and headaches to muscle pain on my entire right side. My mind was making my body sick and it took me a long time to acknowledge this as a coping mechanism that needed to be addressed.

Unfortunately, that was not just my reality, but of many women across the globe even before the COVID-19 pandemic started.

Women: The relation between anxiety and gender

In political discussions, at work, or in the family, it is common for women to be called crazy, emotional, or impulsive. Taking the topic of women's mental health seriously is rare, especially without it falling into sexism.

In 2016, the University of Cambridge analyzed more than a thousand published articles and researches conducted on anxiety and depression since 1999. The results they found were alarming, although not surprising: anxiety disorder is twice more common in women than it is in men. This number is independent of any other issue, such as social class, ethnicity, and location on the globe.

Psychological problems like depression, bipolarity, and anxiety are not uncommon around our world today, especially after the current global COVID-19 crisis. In fact, according to the WHO, these problems affect 1 in every 3 people in the world today. And the number reaches 4% of the global population when considering anxiety disorders only. Among women, 42% suffer from the disorder, while for men, the number drops to 29%.

The WHO defines anxiety disorder as a constant feeling of worry, disability, and fear. Physically, a person may experience nausea, tachycardia, and sleep problems, and when they have an attack, they may not even be able to leave the house or carry on with simple daily tasks. These symptoms help us to explain why it is important to take gender into account when analyzing anxiety disorder. According to the study of the University, they appear in women, because we are constantly on alert.

But why are we constantly on alert?

To give you an idea, here are some shocking statistics. According to the WHO, one in five women will be raped in her lifetime. Also, of the 50 million people who live in conflict situations around our world, 80% are women and children. Victims of domestic violence, sexual harassment on the streets, at home, at work, and on public transport are also mostly women.

In addition, there is also a lot of pressure created by the multiple roles imposed on women - such as motherhood, for example - and the lack of support from the family if they finally decide to start any sort of psychological treatment. Often, women do not even have the autonomy or the chance to understand that what they are feeling is an anxiety disorder.

We are in great need of having more open discussions around women’s mental health. These conversations are important because such conditions are still ignored, even when the object of study is not gender. It is estimated that, worldwide, only two out of five people suffering from mental disorders while presenting such coping mechanisms seek psychological help.

The potential of psychedelics for treating anxiety

Earlier this year, I had a light psilocybin journey at home with the intention to reconnect with my body. It felt rock-heavy as I entered into a deep state of relaxation I had never before known. As I dove deeper within my mind, I could feel every part of myself and how each one of these components connects to another. That feeling of interconnectedness continued to unfold for the next three hours and, for once, I could fully understand how, by taking care of my mind, I would also be taking care of my body.

In our day-to-day life, we are struggling to keep up with today’s demands: staying on top of our to-do lists, being perfect in all the roles we embody, proving ourselves personally and professionally, and keeping up with societal standards to fit in. All of these can be major sources of anxiety and depression and it’s no wonder that we are all trying to reconnect to more meaningful experiences that alleviate stress. And that’s perhaps why recently, thousands of women across the globe are self-medicating with micro or macro doses of psilocybin mushrooms or LSD.

But what does the research say about the potential of psychedelics for treating anxiety? A 2017 study done in Switzerland, researched the efficacy of LSD in reducing anxiety in patients with or without life-threatening illness. The results were stunning, showing that there was a decrease in anxiety symptoms at 2, 8, and 16 weeks with LSD- compared to placebo-assisted psychotherapy.

According to researchers, psilocybin may also be a valuable tool for improving the efficacy of psychotherapy and, in turn, alleviating these symptoms. The exact mechanisms of how that works are still unknown to experts, but they believe the drug can make the brain more flexible and receptive to new ideas and thought patterns.

Furthermore, previous research suggests that the drug targets the default mode network (DMN) in the brain. The DMN is triggered as we participate in self-reflection and mind wandering and aids in the formation of our sense of self and coherent narrative identity. This network becomes hyperactive in people with anxiety and depression and is linked to rumination, concern, and rigid thought. Psilocybin tends to sharply alter operation in this network, allowing people to have a more holistic view of their behavior and lives.

Besides that, there’s also the possibility that a macrodose experience engages the root cause of anxiety in a completely different way than microdosing. That can happen because a psychedelic experience has the potential to change your perspective on anxiety and trauma.

It's important to note that high-quality research on the effects of microdosing to treat anxiety is still scarce. And even in some reports, anxiety was listed as a side effect of microdosing psychedelics, something that can also happen with macrodoses.

The journey within

So far I have had several journeys that have helped reduce my anxiety while having changed my relationship with it. By putting me in a state of being rather than doing, these experiences have taught me how to be more present in the here and now. They have taught me how to connect with my body, rather than letting my mind run in spirals. And for women, who are constantly worried about everything and everyone, this return inward has the potential of being extremely therapeutical.

After a journey, spiraling thoughts of self-doubt become irrelevant and some things look so small in comparison to having perceived the world in a whole new way. The best results when making use of these substances are seen by also carrying out integration work, mindfulness techniques, and lifestyle changes. Especially when addressing mental health issues that have been a constant in your life.

The truth is that psychedelics haven’t fixed everything, but rather have reminded me how to listen to my innate body wisdom. The body has its own ways of knowing, separate and distinct from that of the mind. The mind thinks while the body feels. And although these compounds have helped me reconnect with my body, I know these are not magic pills that will make me wake up the next day anxiety-free.

Nowadays when I feel the anxiety taking over again, I lie on the couch and it doesn’t hit me that bad anymore. And it doesn’t take me long to realize that the most precious gift psychedelics have given me was to learn how to be… gentler with myself.

Jessika Lagarde is a storyteller, Earth and climate activist, and Women On Psychedelics Co-founder. Her personal healing work with psychedelics has made her more aware not only of the crisis of our planet but also of the mental crisis humanity is in. All of her work is informed in taking action in a way that serves the Earth and our human collective, in hopes of mobilizing inner healing towards outer action.

Can Psychedelics Help Reduce Anxiety in Women?

According to studies, anxiety is twice as common in women. And the number does not depend on social class, ethnicity, or geographic location: the issue here is gender. According to researchers, psilocybin may also be a valuable tool for improving the efficacy of psychotherapy and, in turn...

www.womenonpsychedelics.org

 

[mr peabody]

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How MDMA made me a better mom: Parenting my sons while reparenting myself​

by Micah Stover | WOMEN ON PSYCHEDELICS | 12 Oct 2021

When I was five or six, I was told the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I recall with visceral effect my inner child squirming and wincing as the story unfolded. Starting first with a woman made from the body of a man. Then placed in a beautiful, lush garden to be in his service.

Inside the garden, a serpent, slithered around the branches of the trees. He was with the man and woman, watching them, studying their behaviors.

After some time, the serpent zeroed his focus in on the woman while the man was hunting for food. He lured the woman by tempting her with succulent fruits. The woman had been told to avoid the fruit, to enjoy only certain things and leave the rest behind. For some of the fruits, despite looking appealing and tasting delicious, could have lasting negative effect.

The woman couldn’t contain her curiosity, and the serpent was good at manipulating. He assured her it would be fine, no permanent damage done, so the woman tried a bite.

I remember relating to her feelings of curiosity. I could almost taste the explosion of flavor when she bit into the apple and my little mouth watered.

The woman knew she was being tested, but she couldn’t resist. Momentary satisfaction gave way to immediate regret. In the end, it seemed she lost everything for this fleeting experience and taste of sweetness. She and her beloved became burdened and eventually were banished from Eden.

“But why would there be such delicious fruit if she can’t even enjoy it?” I asked.

“You’re missing the point of the story,” my Sunday School teacher snipped with frustration.

In the absence of a cohesive explanation, the five-year-old girl filled in the gaps. This was the moral of the story as she internalized it: Eve was weak. She was punished for this weakness. She lacked self-control over her body and her mind. She lost love and safety because of this lack of control. She succumbed to the serpent and became a kind of prisoner as a result. Eve could not trust her instincts or herself. She was a problem and a disruptor. Because of this, she was sentenced to pay a price for her weakness and disobedience.

This price was paid in blood and pain each month and would culminate in the ultimate suffering of giving birth should she decide someday to become a mother. That journey of bringing her baby into the world would be agonizing, and that would be her own fault. If only she’d had self-control, her life could have been very different.

This was the story told to me of my own inherent, tragic flaws. This is the story that set a trajectory of thirty years of relentless and self-deprecating attempts at controlling my body and my mind.

It is a wonder given this backdrop that I ever wanted to become a mother. It wasn’t always the case but overtime the curiosity about what that journey might be like consumed me. Perhaps the way Eve’s curiosity consumed her. The restless lure for what could be possible, the longing to know the depths of that kind of love. Perhaps the little girl in me who went straight from baby into severity wanted an opportunity to do it over again, a childhood by proxy.

Only not unlike the fate of Eve in the garden, once I became pregnant, I felt immediately tormented and terrified. My body raged with hormones out of control. Fear engulfed me. If I could not even control myself – how would I possibly control another?

MDMA made me a better mother than I ever could have been otherwise primarily because it helped me know mothering has absolutely nothing to do with control. But, rather, everything to do with unconditional love.

You see there is a tiny, yet significant part of the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala manages our response to fear evoking stimuli. When that terrifying story of Eve was presented to me as a child, the amygdala inside my still developing brain recoiled in fear and got stuck. It pulled like a tortoise in a shell and made an unconscious yet convicted choice to remain retracted where things felt safe. I stayed like this comfortably and uncomfortably in a state of alert for decades until my children were born, emerging like catalysts, demanding my expansion.

When the MDMA peeled back the layers, I saw that young girl version of me in a new light. I felt her feelings as my own but also with a different kind of healthy detachment that had not been accessible before. I saw her terror. I felt her frightened, but strong. Confused and on guard. She appeared as if sitting in bunker underground.

Strapped to her shoulders was a tiny little backpack, and inside the backpack was a robust alarm system. That alarm system went off any time she experienced strong feelings of curiosity or desire. In other words, it went off a lot, as curiosity and desire are the primary emotions and experiences which govern the landscape of childhood.

In her little body and brain, this alarm system sent an electric shock whenever she felt anything deemed inappropriate, which was basically everything. After time, all those shocks left her partially numb while also aching with a dull, consistent physical pain.

Now, I affectionately call her my “Alarm Girl.” We are becoming friends. Following her lead, I’m remembering how to be curious and wild and free. She still carries her backpack just in case, but she’s not frozen or hiding in a bunker anymore.

She used to be scared she didn’t know how to play, which meant I was scared I might disappoint my sons with my intensity, with all the fear bottled up inside. But my sons have helped all of me remember play is innate to being human. There is no wrong way to play. Only the absence of play is wrong.

So, when I tell you MDMA helped me be a better mom, this is a little window into how and what I mean, a little pathway into the world of neuroplasticity and changing the brain. Scientists talk about it in big, fancy terms and words. For me, it was actually quite simple and far less scary and painful than everything else I’d done before.

Heaven forbid, we break the rules. Especially as mothers.

Before the medicine work, I parented from an intellectual place, as my heart was almost entirely contained by my amygdala. I pushed myself to be perfect for my children. The intent was pure.

The execution is where things got tricky.

I still catch myself out on that ledge of relentless striving sometimes. But these days, when that happens, I’m able to access another part of myself MDMA helped me to discover – the “Good Enough” part, the no more saying I’m sorry part, the healed and healing part.

MDMA reminded me I was worthy of love not by earning it, but simply by being. She gave permission to let the real, vulnerable, messy parts come forward. She encouraged me to break rules with intention and integrity. To stand in my truth and my agency.

These medicines and this path to healing is not about checking out or escaping reality. It’s all about arriving, arriving in a new, more enlightened space where we can actually model what it means to truly repair. To have wonderful, constructive conflict and keep our hearts open.

My “Good Enough” part reminds me what my kids and my own inner child need most is my attention, my affection, my broken self disassembled and reassembled again and again, an artifact of resilience, marvel and hope. A solid, imperfect being they can hold onto.

About the Author: Raised by evangelicals on a farm in rural Tennessee, Micah Stover is now far from home in Mexico where she resides with her family and works as an integrative support therapist with trauma survivors. Micah is currently writing and revising a memoir, chronicling the path to healing intergenerational trauma and PTSD with MDMA, psilocybin and guided psychotherapy. To learn more about her work, check her Website or Instagram.

*From the article here :

How MDMA Made Me A Better Mom: Parenting My Sons While Reparenting Myself

MDMA made me a better mother than I ever could have been otherwise primarily because it helped me remember and understand that mothering has absolutely nothing to do with control. But, rather, everything to do with unconditional love.

www.womenonpsychedelics.org

 

[mr peabody]

Cannabis use during pregnancy linked with higher levels of anxiety in children*

by Julia Ries | HEALTHLINE | 16 Nov 2021​

• Using cannabis during pregnancy is linked to having children with higher levels of stress and anxiety, according to a new study. ​
• There’s an established linkTrusted Source between maternal cannabis use and neuro-developmental issues, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), in children. ​
• Many unknowns about maternal cannabis use persist, and doctors continue to advise against cannabis use during pregnancy due to the potential harms to the fetus. ​

Cannabis use during pregnancy may be linked to children with levels of anxiety, stress, and hyperactivity, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science Monday.

Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the City University of New York sampled pregnant women’s placentas. The researchers found changes in immune system genes, which may explain why the children had greater anxiety later in life.

There’s an established linkTrusted Source between maternal cannabis use and neuro-developmental issues, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), in children.

Although there are many unknowns about the impact cannabis has on the developing fetus, doctors continue to advise against maternal cannabis use due to the potential short-term and long-term harms.

“It surely contributes to our growing knowledge of the risks associated with cannabis use during pregnancy, and further supports the take-home message to women that, at present, our understanding leads us to recommend not using cannabis during pregnancy and breastfeeding,” said Dr. Jordan Tishler, an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the president of the Association of Cannabinoid Specialists.

Children whose parents used cannabis while pregnant had greater anxiety

The research team studied placental gene expression and early childhood behaviors in 322 mother-child pairs.

When the children were 6 years old, the researchers measured the children’s heart function via electrocardiogram recordings and hormone levels via hair samples.

The children’s behavioral and emotional functioning was also evaluated via surveys.

The research team found that kids whose mothers used cannabis during their pregnancy had higher levels of anxiety, aggression, hyperactivity, and stress.
These children also had abnormalities in their heart rate, which have been associated with greater stress sensitivity.

Sampling of the placenta revealed that maternal cannabis use was linked to irregularities with immunity-related genes, which could explain why their children had greater anxiety, according to the researchers.

According to Dr. Scott Krakower, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, New York, maternal cannabis use has previously been linked to worsening disorders and neurodevelopment issues, like ADHD, in children later in life.

“This study reinforced it… and they used hormones and placentas to show that there were changes in the overall immune cascade, which could lead to worsening anxiety and hyperactivity,” Krakower said.

Maternal cannabis use and fetal development

Cannabis is one of the most common drugs used during pregnancy, and maternal cannabis use has been on the rise given the increased legalization.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists estimates cannabis use during pregnancy ranges between 2 and 5 percent. That estimate increases to 15 to 28 percent among young, urban, socially disadvantaged women.

Many people believe it’s safer to use cannabis than smoke tobacco during pregnancy. But animal models have shown that the active chemicals in cannabis can cross the placenta.

Though scientists are still learning about the link between cannabis use during pregnancy and its impact on fetal development, findings suggest that fetal exposure to cannabinoids can negatively affect brain development.

Previous studies have linked maternal cannabis use to decreased attention spanTrusted Source and behavioral problemsTrusted Source in the children.

Cannabis products are not tightly regulated, so it’s hard to know the exact potency of what someone is ingesting, which could be dangerous to both the child and mother.

There have been reports of cannabis leading to psychosis and worsening psychotic symptoms and mood symptoms.

“If the mother is doing well, then the baby is going to do well. But if the mother’s mental health is not doing great or there’s ingestion of other substances and stuff, the outcome of the baby may not be as good as you want it to be,” Krakower said.

Anxiety and cannabis use

Krakower says there’s a strong correlation between anxiety and cannabis use. However, it’s unclear why cannabis users have more anxiety.

“That is either because, A, you’re more anxious and you’re more likely to use marijuana, or B, using marijuana is possibly worsening the anxiety over the long run,” Krakower said.

If the mother has anxiety in the first place, there’s a chance they could pass it on to their children as well.

“Would the kid have had anxiety anyway? I’m not sure,” said Krakower but pointed out that but it seems likely there may be a change in “neuroendocrine access.”

There may be other factors contributing to the children’s mental health, which the study did not account for.

“There is also no accounting for life events between pregnancy and the beginning of the study — such as trauma or even simply being raised in a household where parental, guardian, sibling anxiety is part of daily life,” Tishler said.

More studies following mothers and their children from conception to adulthood are needed to better understand the short-term and long-term impacts of maternal cannabis use.​

The bottom line​

New research suggests maternal cannabis use is associated with higher levels of anxiety, stress, and hyperactivity in children later in life.

Researchers suspect this is because cannabis can trigger changes in genes involved with immune functioning, contributing to anxiety.

Though many unknowns about maternal marijuana use persist, doctors continue to advise against cannabis use during pregnancy due to the potential harms to the fetus.

Written by Julia Ries on November 16, 2021 — Fact checked by Dana K. Cassell

*From the article here :

Cannabis Use in Pregnancy Linked to Having Child with Anxiety

New research suggests maternal cannabis use is associated with higher levels of anxiety, stress, hyperactivity in children later in life.

www.healthline.com

 

[mr peabody]

Can MDMA increase sexual desire in women?*

by Nicolle Hodges | DoubleBlind | 4 Dec 2021

o speak of desire, one must be attuned to nuance. It is simplistic to say that desire is about getting what one wants; rather, it’s the invigorating feeling of wanting. Half of American women report intimate problems due to lack of sexual desire, and low sexual desire is self-reported by approximately 40 percent of women. Mind Cure Health—a women-lead public, psychedelic company—is seeking to drastically change those numbers. President and CEO, Kelsey Ramsden’s approach is to reconcile desire’s elusiveness with evidence of MDMA’s efficacy in a therapeutic context.

Mind Cure has spent the past six months designing the Desire Project, which uses MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to evaluate female-related sexual disorders that are not being adequately addressed or treated with medications currently on the market. It’s the first time psychedelics are being clinically explored to specifically address lack of female sexual desire and orgasm, or what is known as Female Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (“fHSDD”), affecting over 9.5 million premenopausal women in the U.S. alone.

While Viagra—the basis for today’s $3 billion erectile dysfunction industry—physically resolves male sexual dysfunction by aiding blood flow to the penis, “what we know about women is that desire tends to be very related to our minds,” says Ramsden. The mind, however, is a complex terrain riddled with potholes of subjectivity, cultural conditioning, upbringing, and trauma. Mind Cure is looking to the success of MDMA in helping people heal from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by interacting with neurotransmitters that influence social bonding and feelings of safety, as well as hormones such as cortisol, prolactin, DHEA, vasopressin, and oxytocin (loosely thought of as “the love hormone”).

“No one has put the two together before,” says Ramsden on the link between MDMA and easing fear factors for women—which play a large role in causing female-related sexual disorders.

“Designing a drug and a paradigm that works clinically is great, but it’s even better to make it work in the world,” she says. Mind Cure has plans to train therapists on female sexual dysfunction, and treat patients across the United States. Mind Cure’s protocol in utilizing MDMA will be similar to that of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS),-the pioneer of clinical studies on MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD.

Ramsden wants to be clear that their work isn’t to medicate women in order to sexualize them or put orgasms on a pedestal as the marker of a successful program. “In fact, in the container of therapy, you’re not with your partner, you’re with your therapists, doing your work for you, on you,” she says. “There is a whole body of work prior to orgasm that’s important. I want to explore the idea that all women of different shapes, sizes, ages, and roots should have, by virtue of our fully expressed human experience, access to desire.”

When a significant amount of the population is disconnected from their sexual energy, you don’t have to directly experience a lack of desire to be affected by it peripherally. The story that culture feeds women when they’re experiencing low libido is often direct and external: They’re working too hard, the children need attention, or they’re getting older. Essentially, women are desirous until a “certain point” in the narrative arc, says Ramsden. The stories that women believe to be true about what’s available to them will influence the meaning they assign to the events in their lives. Subtle forms of reinforcement coarse women into believing that their dampened sexual desire—which affects how they see themselves and the world—is the norm. The stat about 40 percent of women self-reporting low sexual desire? Ramsden believes it’s much higher—but most women just deal with it. MDMA’s ability to inspire powerful emotional experiences and a strong connection with inner feelings sounds like a promising path.

Dr. Sherry Walling, a clinical psychologist working on Project Desire, says that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy supports the breaking down of assumptions and patterns and offers the ability to see that there might be another way to respond. “When people glimpse the possibility of a new story or reaction, it opens the world up again in places where trauma has closed it.”

MDMA, which sits somewhere between psychedelic and stimulant, is actually an entactogen—a word coined by pharmacologist David Nichols that can be loosely translated from Greek to mean “producing touching within.” Walling emphasizes that MDMA at therapeutic doses isn’t about orgasm, but about an increased sense of empathy. Fittingly, the word “empathy” is one that the philosopher Theodor Lipps described as “inseeing”—a kind of “wondrous voyage from the surface of a thing to its heart, wherein perception leads to an emotional connection.”

No one is arguing that sex on MDMA isn’t fun. But if it’s going to truly be beneficial to women’s well-being, its potential uses need to involve the conversation about desire and the cultural factors that prohibit it. Otherwise, sexual healing will only ever feel superficial.

The word desire, borrowed in the 1200s from the Old French verb desirrer, means “to wish for.” It can be traced even further back to its Latin roots, meaning “demand,” “express,” or the literarily poetic, “to await what the stars will bring.” Desire is what orients us to bravely set out in pursuit of fulfillment—be it sexual, emotional, or mental. “It’s different for everyone,” she says. “You know yours, I know mine.” But losing it feels similar, like losing your way. For this reason, Walling questions why pleasure isn’t a core part of what we are demanding from our lives. “We know that sexual health is part of mental health,” she says. “Philosophically, self-love and connection to others are powerful components of being human. Practically, if you have the capacity to experience pleasure and joy, that’s the opposite of apathy or lack of emotional reactivity that goes along with something like depression or anxiety.”

Mind Cure is proposing the pursuit of the full range of human experience as a new definition for what it means to be well. “I see a future where women who experience a lack of desire have access; period,” says Ramsden. “The speed with which the system responds to us will dictate that future. It feels like the revolution is on.”

Five years ago, Ramsden’s grandmother passed away at the age of 97. At her funeral, there was a photo of her on the beach at 30-years-old wearing a “boxy-not-sexy” swimsuit. “And yet, it was seductive,” she recalls, “in the kind of way that I could really see her.“ That is the moment she keeps coming back to. “All women in all cultures, if they choose, should be able to have a picture taken like that.”

*From the article here :

Can MDMA Increase Women's Sexual Desire?

Mind Cure's Groundbreaking Initiative Addresses Female Sexual Dysfunction with MDMA

doubleblindmag.com

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