Johns Hopkins Study Redeems Psilocybin Mushrooms

[zengrifter]

"Spiritual" effects of mushrooms last a year: study

Tue Jul 1, 2008 3:10pm EDT
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The "spiritual" effects of psilocybin from so-called sacred mushrooms last for more than a year and may offer a way to help patients with fatal diseases or addictions, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

The researchers also said their findings show there are safe ways to test psychoactive drugs on willing volunteers, if guidelines are followed.
In 2006, Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues gave psilocybin to 36 volunteers and asked them how it felt. Most reported having a "mystical" or "spiritual" experience and rated it positively.

MORE- http://www.reuters.com/article/healt...27105120080701

[zengrifter]

Its AAALLLIIIVVVE! zg

[zengrifter]

Somebody say PARADIGM SHIFT OCCURRING HERE-NOW, cape'ce? zg

--------------------
Johns Hopkins Medicine
Media Relations and Public Affairs
Media Contact: Eric Vohr
410-955-8665; evohr1@jhmi.edu

July 11, 2006

HOPKINS SCIENTISTS SHOW HALLUCINOGEN IN MUSHROOMS
CREATES UNIVERSAL “MYSTICAL” EXPERIENCE

Rigorous study hailed as landmark

Using unusually rigorous scientific conditions and measures, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that the active agent in “sacred mushrooms” can induce mystical/spiritual experiences descriptively identical to spontaneous ones people have reported for centuries.

The resulting experiences apparently prompt positive changes in behavior and attitude that last several months, at least.

The agent, a plant alkaloid called psilocybin, mimics the effect of serotonin on brain receptors-as do some other hallucinogens-but precisely where in the brain and in what manner are unknown.

An account of the study, accompanied by an editorial and four experts’ commentaries, appears online today in the journal Psychopharmacology.

Cited as “landmark” in the commentary by former National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) director, Charles Schuster, the research marks a new systematic approach to studying certain hallucinogenic compounds that, in the 1950s, showed signs of therapeutic potential or value in research into the nature of consciousness and sensory perception. “Human consciousness…is a function of the ebb and flow of neural impulses in various regions of the brain-the very substrate that drugs such as psilocybin act upon,” Schuster says.

“Understanding what mediates these effects is clearly within the realm of neuroscience and deserves investigation.”

“A vast gap exists between what we know of these drugs-mostly from descriptive anthropology-and what we believe we can understand using modern clinical pharmacology techniques,” says study leader Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor with Hopkins’ departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry and Behavioral Biology. “That gap is large because, as a reaction to the excesses of the 1960s, human research with hallucinogens has been basically frozen in time these last forty years.”

MORE- http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press.../07_11_06.html

[propagandhi]

Maybe mushrooms let us hear the earth sing.

[sagefr0g]

Watermelon yields Viagra-like effects: scientists

By Betsy Blaney, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LUBBOCK, Texas - A slice of cool, fresh watermelon is a juicy way to top off a Fourth of July cookout and one that researchers say has effects similar to Viagra - but don't necessarily expect it to keep the fireworks all night long.


http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/...048951-ap.html

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by sagefr0g

Watermelon yields Viagra-like effects: scientists

By Betsy Blaney, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LUBBOCK, Texas - A slice of cool, fresh watermelon is a juicy way to top off a Fourth of July cookout and one that researchers say has effects similar to Viagra - but don't necessarily expect it to keep the fireworks all night long.


http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/...048951-ap.html

This thread is about mystical consciousness in a shroom, not erectile enhancement in a melon. zg

[aslan]

Originally Posted by zengrifter

This thread is about mystical consciousness in a shroom, not erectile enhancement in a melon. zg

Picky, picky!

[sagefr0g]

Originally Posted by aslan

Picky, picky!

i thought an erection was a mystical spiritial experience. and even if it isn't ain't watermellon feel good food?

[aslan]

Originally Posted by sagefr0g

i thought an erection was a mystical spiritial experience. and even if it isn't ain't watermellon feel good food?

Works for me!

[zengrifter]

Originally Posted by sagefr0g

i thought an erection was a mystical spiritial experience. and even if it isn't ain't watermellon feel good food?

Sure. Wait till you've had watermelon and sex while peaking on shroomz!! zg