Magic Mushrooms

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On "60 Minutes" tonight was an episode about research with psilocybin, the psychedelic chemical found in certain mushrooms. The volunteers for this program were people such as a lady with stage 4 cancer suffering from extreme depression and anxiety, a woman who had smoked for over 40 years, and an alcoholic. Many of the 'trips' were bad ones. They would feel the ego and 'the self' stripped away and plummeted to a reality they definitely didn't want to experience. But, when they came out of the experience their entire thought pattern had changed. These people no longer needed to smoke, no longer felt the anxiety of impending death, no longer felt the need for a drink. The experience had totally changed their way of thinking. Psilocybin binds with serotonin in the brain. They showed illustrations of a normal brain and one affected by psilocybin. The normal brain barely consisted of just a few different colored lines depicting the activity while the one effected was full of colorful lines. This form of therapy is not an established one used anywhere YET. But, having suffered from depression and anxiety most of my life I found this information exciting.