Psychedelic treatments are speeding towards approval — but no one knows how they work
Psychedelic treatments are speeding towards approval — but no one knows how they work
Many questions remain about the formerly taboo chemicals that are being used to treat trauma and depression.
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Upvoted for the news that these treatments are speeding towards approval. However, the point that no one knows how these new treatments work seems silly, given my understanding that no one seems to know exactly how antidepressants in general work either (or at least they didn't until recently?), even ones that have been used for decades, like Prozac.
Here's a quote from an article from 2021: I've been making references on this blog for years about how we don't even know how antidepressants work
Hell there are a bunch of receptors in the brain that are called "cannabinoid receptors", because at the time of their discovery the only thing we knew about them was that they were activated by cannabis. Since then, we've developed a slightly wider understanding of their function in the body's normal operation, and yet the name still stands.
the only thing we knew about them was that they were activated by cannabis.
I probably should be sleeping. I know this because as I was reading, my eyes lost focus a bit and I read that as "activated by cannibals." Cue the confusion.
"activated by cannibals."
Kuru has entered the chat.
I mean, this is going to sound super-oversimplified but hopefully correct: we know that Tryptamines like LSD and psilocybin serve their most novel functions on 5-HT2A serotonin binding sites and there are a lot in the thalamus, which is largely responsible for routing information to other parts of the brain. That would explain a lot of people's accounts of synesthesia.
The circumstances that are necessary to promote neuroplasticity weren't clear when I was in skool, but the fastest way to get a credible answer on the internet is to be wrong about something, so I'm going to claim it was 95.6% magic.
One of the requirements for Brannigan's law is that you can't make it obvious that you're invoking it.
Fuck.
What's the equivalent to ELI5 for just... stoned people?
Literally came here to say the same exact thing
Yup. They can tell you what an SSRI does to your brain chemistry, but nobody knows why that matters.