Wednesday, September 28, 2011

If the Aging Baby Boomers Could Leave Generation X Just One Legacy...

Alexander Zaitchik:

For now, Ross is fully focused on treating existential anxiety in people like Kossut, who lies on the couch, ready for his initiation into the psychedelic mysteries. In the research jargon, Kossut is "psychedelic naive." After swallowing the pill Ross presents -- in the cap of a ceremonial ceramic mushroom -- all he can do is close his eyes, lose himself in the preselected tabla drum and sitar music, and try to remember the advice to not fight it, to move ever deeper into the light, to let go ...

"It was absolutely incredible," remembers Kossut. "The first rush was a little scary as I realized it wasn't the placebo. That passed and next I was crossing boundaries of time and space and reality. I felt this weightlessness, this sense of being close to an unspeakable beauty that was unlike anything in my experience. For the first time since my diagnosis, I was not afraid of anything. The wall of depression that was building up day by day, the fear that I was going to die soon, that my daughter is only 8 -- all those things disappeared. I wanted to stay there. I wanted it to last longer."

It did. More than one year after his psilocybin session, Kossut reports greatly improved states of emotional and psychological well-being. "I walked out of the session happy, unafraid of death," he says. "I don't know why, but a transformation took place after being in that peaceful place. I relaxed. I started enjoying food again and was able to gain weight. The session taught me to be fully in the present. I'm optimistic. Mentally and physically, just better."

This glowing report -- based on a single dose of a naturally occurring, non-addictive, low-toxicity substance -- sounds impossible. Surely one pill can't succeed where months of traditional psychotherapy and antidepressants usually fail. According to science, that's not how drugs work. It's foreign to the model. But high success rates in ongoing concurrent studies at NYU and Johns Hopkins strongly suggest that Kossut's psilocybin-assisted psychological rebound is no fluke. So do the findings of a pilot project conducted by Dr. Charles Grob at UCLA. Between 2004 and 2008, Grob administered psilocybin to 12 cancer patients suffering fear, anxiety and depression. His data, published last year in the Archives of General Psychiatry, showed long-term diminished anxiety and improved mood in every subject. The NYU and Johns Hopkins studies build on Grob's pilot program with more subjects and higher doses. Midway through the research, their results are just as strong, signaling larger, multi-site trials to come.

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