What happens if this doubtful fungus found on the edge of the forest turned out to be the key to a revolution in the treatment of depressions or addictions? It is the bet of New Zealand, which opens this Wednesday, June 18, the path for medical use, strictly controlled, hallucinogenic fungi.
In fact, this country is far from opening the door to total deregulation. Psilocybin products, a naturally present substance in certain fungi, remain unprecedented medications there.
“But a very experienced psychiatrist was authorized to prescribe it to patients with depression who is treatment,” said David Seymour Prime Prime Minister about this change.
Fungi that contain the now popular molecule, psilocybin, grow in our regions. In Europe and France, a dozen species have been listed. Keep in mind that they should not be consumed as it is, with an extensive history of poisoning. In France, with the exception of some special authorizations in the context of scientific studies, their therapeutic use is currently excluded.
Research decades
But what do we really know about the effects of this psychedelic molecule? As contextualized by an Inserm article, two French researchers have already reviewed in 2021 more than twenty studies published between 1990 and 2020 on the effects of several psychedelics against several psychiatric disorders. The object gives color: “A panacea?”
“The researchers conclude that these substances constitute ‘promising therapies, of rapid efficiency’, with profits that can last ‘several months after a single shot’.”
However, several limits are listed in this work. In particular the quality of studies taken into account. “Most of them focused on ten to fifty patients, while the work necessary for the authorization of a conventional medicine generally includes several thousand.”
In addition, “the analyzed clinical trials were open, and not in double blind and randomized,” the French Scientific Institute specifies. But, since then, new studies have been published. And its results, which must still be confirmed, seem equally good.
Two current tests in France
Two clinical trials are currently being carried out in France. A study focuses on “resistant depression” is led by the Ghu Paris Clinical Research Center. The other, held at the Hospital of the University of Nîmes, aims to determine whether to take this molecule can help people with alcoholism.
“One of the main aspects is that these therapeutic effects appear immediately after taking, they are immediate and the last in time, unlike the antidepressants that must be taken every day and whose efficiency is observed after several weeks,” explains BFMTV.com Lucie Berkovitch Psychiatrist and director of the French study on the effects of the molecule on resistant depression.
Clearly, in a single capture, a person who has suffered depression who has not responded to conventional treatments would show significant progression. And it is not a hallucination.
“This is an administration of these psychedelics in the hospital under medical control, after there was a preparation in psychotherapy. And the next day there is a integration session, where the patient expresses his experience” and his hallucinations, schematizes Mickaël Naasila, Director of Insertm Research.
“We must take into account that it is a supervised treatment, in a medical environment, associated with psychotherapy,” he insists.
“Revolutionary”, “miraculous”
After treatment, the results are “revolutionaries” or “miraculous” according to the experts interviewed and involved in these investigations, which agree on the particularly promising aspects of these treatments.
Psilocybin adheres to our serotonin receptors, the famous “happiness hormone.” “The molecule acts on serotonin receptors, which are called 5HT2A receptors. The activation of these receptors will cause a complete set of brain effects, the modification of the activity in certain regions,” explains Lucie Berkovitch.
For his part, the Inserm research director describes a “reconfiguration of the brain” while “the mystical experience (hallucinations, note) comes to open the mind” of people suffering from these disorders.
If these effects are promising, with strong expectations, currently current studies must confirm the “completely unusual” character of these actions, as explained by the Parisian researcher. “We want to understand what this answer is made, almost miraculous (…) we cannot say that we are cautious, but it is important to understand the ins and out.”
The works whose results could have met a little earlier if the history of American politics would not have done it several decades ago, hit the scientific research. In full effervescence in the 1950s to the 60s, research on psychedelics was net in the United States in the world under the effect of the “war on drugs” or the “war on drugs” directed by the administration of President Richard Nixon.
Source: BFM TV
