A hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms is another "reset" to the brains of people with treatment-resistant depression, raising hopes of a future treatment.

The small study gave 19 patients a single dose of the psychedelic ingredient psilocybin.

Half of the patients stopped being depressed and experienced changes in their brain activity that lasted about five weeks.

I have read in other articles and studies that the "reset" period, with lower depression scores, lasts four to eight months. I am in the 30% that medication doesn't work for mood stabilization or to relieve long depression cycles. I

have used psilocybin twice, both times lasting about five months. For the first dose, I was Not on any SSRI prescriptions; in the period between doses, I had been prescribed 10mg of Prozac (SSRI) for obsessive-compulsive issues, though.

There has been a series of small studies suggesting psilocybin could have a role in depression by acting as a lubricant for the mind that allows people to escape a cycle of depressive darkness.

Psilocybin affected two critical areas of the brain.

• The amygdala - which is heavily involved in how we process emotions such as fear and anxiety - became less active. The greater the reduction, the more significant the improvement in reported symptoms.
• The default-mode network - a collaboration of different brain regions - became more stable after taking psilocybin.

It is said that the depressed brain is being "clammed up," and the psychedelic experience "reset" it.

"I've been reset, reborn, rebooted'; my brain had been defragged and cleaned up." The same emotional feeling I got when I started ECT treatment. The "reset" for mood stabilization only lasts 30-45 days for me, though. I was warned several times by psychiatrists in the years I was on so many psychotropics never to take hallucinogens’, that I could get "stuck" in a "bad trip" in combo with all my medication.

larger studies are still needed before psilocybin and several other hallucinogens’, can be accepted as a treatment for depression.

However, there is no doubt new treatment approaches are desperately needed.

That’s all for this edition of A Broken Mind,

My next edition will discuss the therapeutic advantages of hallucinogenics for PTSD, depression, and trauma.

Editor of A Broken Mind,

Michelle Hall