The fact that they are using a synthetic version likely means they have constructed a molecule that’s patented or otherwise IP protected. I’m always torn about this, because it means that a cheap, globally available compound (psylocibin) which was what inspired this company to begin with when the founders used it on their son will remain medically inaccessible, possibly at Schedule I in the US, while this startup’s compound may end up being covered by insurance and rake in piles of cash.
I get that it takes a lot of money to prove the efficacy of drugs. But there should be a better way to open some of these chemicals up and acknowledge the community that has worked hard, often at great personal and reputational risk, to demonstrate that these well-known drugs offer powerful options to treat a range of psychiatric illnesses.
It's just psilocybin - the formulation is protected, but it's just magic mushrooms. They're studying doses of 1mg, 10mg, and 25mg. 25mg is roughly equivalent to a beginner dose of 2.5g. They should definitely do a followup of 25, 35, and 50mg, because the higher doses are most commonly associated with the most benefits across other studies that have been done.
It's never going to be a major moneymaker - you rarely encounter people who want to continue abusing it. 1 dose is sufficient for 6 or more months of mitigated symptoms, sometimes even allowing people to entirely escape negative thought patterns and depression. Psilocybin induces new synaptic pathways, helps balance out or suppress obsessive loops, so in combination with positive reinforcement in lifestyle patterns, habits, and changing environments, a single high dose psilocybin experience can radically alter someone's mental health and outlook for the better.
The literature is fascinating - one of the safest drugs known to science, yet one of the least exploited for medical or scientific purposes. There's a whole vast wealth of good data that will come from research like this, it's exciting.
It's a myth that you need a novel molecule to get a patent on a medicine.
A company can develop a formulation of generic, off-patent compounds and get FDA approval for that patented formulation.
Even old off-patent drugs are often brought back in new, on-patent formulations that can't be sold generically until the expiration of the patents on the formulation that was approved.
So even if they used psilocybin, they would get a patent on their formulation and get FDA approval for that formulation.
Pharma, sprang up from taking wondrous compounds found in nature and isolated them or refined them into new compounds that they could patent, market, and sell to consumers.
I'd go for something targeted than something that is pedled by preachy drug dealers personally.
Can't say how many times I heard of anecdotal stories where a user just flipped personality out of the blue, it kinda steals away emotional resolution and wisdom from resolving issues if for example trauma is related to another person.
Devil's advocate suggests that a synthetic can be produced the same way every time where a cultured plant might have varying levels of the active compound in the plant. That makes it difficult to prescribe doses. As an example, suggesting a patient take 1 cap and 2 stems will be problematic for accurate dosing.
Conspirator's advocate says that bigPharma has synthesized and patented every active plant compound so that keeping the actual plants scheduled is to their benefit.
> This system, bizarre as it is, is your guarantee against the pharmaceutical companies suppressing a promising new natural medication. Your insurance company pays $300 on fish oil, and in exchange you go to sleep at night secure that no one has discovered that potatoes cure cancer but decided to cover it up to protect their bottom line. Good deal? Given the current health system, it’s better than you had any right to expect.
Potatoes aren't on Schedule 1; that makes this situation suck a little more. But probably the alternative scenario is just the treatment remaining illegal forever.
What people get wrong is that you don't just trip balls and get cured. Re-integration therapy is vital for lasting effects. Grabbing some shrooms and digging in is recreation, which is perfectly fine, but don't fool yourself or anyone else by suggesting it's for treatment.
I was a depressed teenager a long time ago and I am almost certain mushrooms made things worse.
I didn't need mushrooms. I needed therapy, friends, a social life, a sex life, goals, something to look forward to in the real world.
All I found on mushrooms at the time were horrible existential loops that just made things more hopeless. I would read about people having these peak wonderful experiences or Mckenna alien experiences and just get more depressed that even the mushrooms didn't help me.
It is almost blasphemous in this space to say what actually ended up changing my life were SSRIs. A little prozac fixed something that was just chemically wrong in my head.
What seems obvious is there is enormous variability in people's brain chemistry so the tool to fix the problem has to be quite specific for the individual.
Yes. For example, IV Ketamine can yield not only immediate relief in a chemical sense, the treatment itself results in a fully-aware, balls-tripping, metaphor and symbolism-filled, time and space-warping experience in an entirely fictional space. With thoughtful guidance prior-to and after each experience, a series of them can, for example repeat a message until you "get it," or each may deliver a component of a profoundly larger message when they are combined, weeks later. What you do with it all will determine what you get from it.
I think there's simply so much value in being able to see the same thing in so many different perspectives that you never have considered possible at all in your life before.
I believe there have been other studies that prove this for not just the synthetic. Yet we are all supposed to accept the "facts" that psilocybin (and cannabis) are considered schedule 1 illicit substances (high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use).
At that point it’s not "other studies", it’s more "tons of studies". It’s truly an exponential number of studies that had the same conclusions in the last 5-10 years.
And N=1 but I can say without any doubt that LSD (and a pretty low dose at that, 50ug at once plus some microdosing) played an immense role at recovering from burnout. It was like night and day even after such a low dose that I _knew_ I recovered.
Those are amazing and powerful but also potentially dangerous substances and it’s a crime that we don’t allow everyone to get the benefits by, if not freely legalize it, at least adding those in the medical toolbox.
> Yet we are all supposed to accept the "facts" that psilocybin (and cannabis) are considered schedule 1 illicit substances (high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use).
To be clear, this compound they're testing is also a Schedule 1 drug. COMP360 is their name for their psilocybin formulation. It's not a separate chemical, it is literally psilocybin.
Schedule 1 drugs can be used in clinical trials. Positive results in a clinical trial does not automatically remove the Schedule 1 designation. The medication is not approved yet and the clinical trial results are preliminary.
> "Researchers have called attention to the ways that the hype promoting psychedelics as miracle cures
replicates preceding claims about the efficacy of SSRIs and other antidepressants in prior decades.
As the drug historian David Herzberg articulated in conversation with UC Berkeley's The Microdose:
There’s been an enormous amount of money invested in psychedelics as people hope that they
can be the real Prozac in the same way that Prozac hoped it would be the real Valium and
Valium would be the real barbiturates, which would be the real morphine.
There’s a long history of hoping that maybe this time, it’s not so complicated;
maybe there is a simple switch to change people without having to change any [other] aspect of their [lives].
While others have noted similarities between the earlier SSRI hype and the ongoing hype for psychedelic medications,
the rhetoric of psychedelic hype is tinged with utopian and magico-religious aspirations that have no parallel
in the discourse surrounding SSRIs or other antidepressants. I argue that this utopian discourse provides insight
into the ways that global financial and tech elites are instrumentalizing psychedelics as one tool
in a broader world-building project that justifies increasing material inequality.
This elite project reveals how medicalized psychedelics can potentially undermine the very prosocial and
pro-environmental outcomes that the field's funders insist psychedelics will promote.
To understand the envisioned role of psychedelics within this elite project, this paper analyzes a different
parallel hype, revealing correspondences between the psychedelic industry hype and the concurrent
hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), including the Large Language Models (LLMs) that power ChatGPT.
The presence of these parallels is understandable when one considers their underlying affinities,
like two blooms from one plant: the same Silicon Valley and venture capital forces are investing
enormous amounts of capital to develop both as cultivars in their own image,
selecting for desired traits that further the existing socioeconomic order.
I know it will not "solve" every case of depression, however, I really wish people who don't already, would try going outside and/or exercising regularly.
Anecdotal I know, but it seems like nearly every person I know who does both are rarely if ever depressed.
While the people I've known who do struggle with depression rarely if ever leave home.
Again, I know this isn't a catch all for all cases, however, I've seen far too many people turn to meds/substances when lifestyle changes could be all that's required.
It's also a couple of things that only have positive side effects as opposed to most of the medicated approaches people take.
Do you think perhaps it is possible that you have cause and effect reversed?
When suffering from depression lifestyle changes are HARD, especially when dealing with co-morbid mental or physical illness. Conversely a healthy adult of sound mind and body shouldn’t have too much problem deciding that exercise and going outside is beneficial, then just… doing it.
There are many dimensions and possible pitfalls here. Uncertain mechanism of action, objectionable comparison arms, the high-bar goal of resistant depression that might lead to failure. This seems like a mix situation of a new type of antidepressant (like agomelatin which was of modest effect) and cannabis (which is traded as painkiller but people use it for recreation).
Looks like the paper hasn't been published yet, so there isn't really much detail, including blinding effectiveness (which is typically a problem for psychedelics).
_alternator_|10 days ago
I get that it takes a lot of money to prove the efficacy of drugs. But there should be a better way to open some of these chemicals up and acknowledge the community that has worked hard, often at great personal and reputational risk, to demonstrate that these well-known drugs offer powerful options to treat a range of psychiatric illnesses.
observationist|10 days ago
It's never going to be a major moneymaker - you rarely encounter people who want to continue abusing it. 1 dose is sufficient for 6 or more months of mitigated symptoms, sometimes even allowing people to entirely escape negative thought patterns and depression. Psilocybin induces new synaptic pathways, helps balance out or suppress obsessive loops, so in combination with positive reinforcement in lifestyle patterns, habits, and changing environments, a single high dose psilocybin experience can radically alter someone's mental health and outlook for the better.
The literature is fascinating - one of the safest drugs known to science, yet one of the least exploited for medical or scientific purposes. There's a whole vast wealth of good data that will come from research like this, it's exciting.
dekhn|10 days ago
Aurornis|10 days ago
A company can develop a formulation of generic, off-patent compounds and get FDA approval for that patented formulation.
Even old off-patent drugs are often brought back in new, on-patent formulations that can't be sold generically until the expiration of the patents on the formulation that was approved.
So even if they used psilocybin, they would get a patent on their formulation and get FDA approval for that formulation.
hermanzegerman|10 days ago
reactordev|10 days ago
Pharma, sprang up from taking wondrous compounds found in nature and isolated them or refined them into new compounds that they could patent, market, and sell to consumers.
Ibuprofen, for example, is crude oil.
vagrantstreet|9 days ago
Can't say how many times I heard of anecdotal stories where a user just flipped personality out of the blue, it kinda steals away emotional resolution and wisdom from resolving issues if for example trauma is related to another person.
gosub100|9 days ago
If I took shrooms, there is a nonzero chance I'd have a psychotic episode that could be fatal.
dylan604|10 days ago
Conspirator's advocate says that bigPharma has synthesized and patented every active plant compound so that keeping the actual plants scheduled is to their benefit.
voidmain|10 days ago
> I used to think that the alternative medicine people were overestimating how evil Big Pharma was. But now I know that’s not right.
> Now I know they’re underestimating it.
> If it were discovered tomorrow that potatoes cured cancer, then people wouldn’t “suppress” this “natural” remedy. Two years from now there would be an ultrapurified potato extract called POTAXOR™®© that was, on closer examination, physically and chemically identical to mashed potatoes. But these mashed potatoes would be mashed in a giant centrifuge by scientists with five Ph. Ds each. Any time someone got cancer, their doctor would prescribe POTAXOR™®© and charge $6,000 per dose, and the patient would get better, and the thought of just going out and eating a potato would never occur to anybody. Not to the doctor, who doesn’t want to sound like the idiot who tells her cancer patients to eat potatoes. Not to the FDA, who doesn’t know whether potatoes might be contaminated with lead or potato fungus or ketchup or God-knows-what. And certainly not to the patient. They would have to pay 60 cents for a potato at the supermarket, but if they have a good enough insurance the POTAXOR™®© is free!
> This system, bizarre as it is, is your guarantee against the pharmaceutical companies suppressing a promising new natural medication. Your insurance company pays $300 on fish oil, and in exchange you go to sleep at night secure that no one has discovered that potatoes cure cancer but decided to cover it up to protect their bottom line. Good deal? Given the current health system, it’s better than you had any right to expect.
Potatoes aren't on Schedule 1; that makes this situation suck a little more. But probably the alternative scenario is just the treatment remaining illegal forever.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/15/fish-now-by-prescripti...
zamalek|10 days ago
topocite|9 days ago
I didn't need mushrooms. I needed therapy, friends, a social life, a sex life, goals, something to look forward to in the real world.
All I found on mushrooms at the time were horrible existential loops that just made things more hopeless. I would read about people having these peak wonderful experiences or Mckenna alien experiences and just get more depressed that even the mushrooms didn't help me.
It is almost blasphemous in this space to say what actually ended up changing my life were SSRIs. A little prozac fixed something that was just chemically wrong in my head.
What seems obvious is there is enormous variability in people's brain chemistry so the tool to fix the problem has to be quite specific for the individual.
OldSchool|10 days ago
mewpmewp2|10 days ago
jesse__|10 days ago
candiddevmike|10 days ago
pjerem|10 days ago
And N=1 but I can say without any doubt that LSD (and a pretty low dose at that, 50ug at once plus some microdosing) played an immense role at recovering from burnout. It was like night and day even after such a low dose that I _knew_ I recovered.
Those are amazing and powerful but also potentially dangerous substances and it’s a crime that we don’t allow everyone to get the benefits by, if not freely legalize it, at least adding those in the medical toolbox.
reverend_gonzo|10 days ago
Aurornis|10 days ago
To be clear, this compound they're testing is also a Schedule 1 drug. COMP360 is their name for their psilocybin formulation. It's not a separate chemical, it is literally psilocybin.
Schedule 1 drugs can be used in clinical trials. Positive results in a clinical trial does not automatically remove the Schedule 1 designation. The medication is not approved yet and the clinical trial results are preliminary.
gosub100|9 days ago
nosuchthing|10 days ago
https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/7/S1/article-p22.x...
SunshineTheCat|10 days ago
Anecdotal I know, but it seems like nearly every person I know who does both are rarely if ever depressed.
While the people I've known who do struggle with depression rarely if ever leave home.
Again, I know this isn't a catch all for all cases, however, I've seen far too many people turn to meds/substances when lifestyle changes could be all that's required.
It's also a couple of things that only have positive side effects as opposed to most of the medicated approaches people take.
natpalmer1776|10 days ago
When suffering from depression lifestyle changes are HARD, especially when dealing with co-morbid mental or physical illness. Conversely a healthy adult of sound mind and body shouldn’t have too much problem deciding that exercise and going outside is beneficial, then just… doing it.
tsoukase|9 days ago
yewenjie|10 days ago
dekhn|10 days ago
dzmien|10 days ago
cpncrunch|10 days ago
Looks like the paper hasn't been published yet, so there isn't really much detail, including blinding effectiveness (which is typically a problem for psychedelics).
helterskelter|10 days ago
https://archive.ph/rIPvX
cpncrunch|10 days ago