Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy in Australia

Reflections
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Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy is now legal in Australia :yellow_heart:. I think this is wonderful, and that it’s being done so safely it seems.

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I’m curious how they solved the “that wasn’t a microdose” meme worthy dosage issue with psilocybin.

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Hmm dont know this meme. For the therapy though i think it’s trip level doses - being in a dream state while having therapy. It means you can then access all those elements of the psyche usually hidden from the conscious mind. This is my understanding.

Microdoses could be helpful too though, as that would increase plasciticity in the brain. Ssri antidepressants do this too and that’s a theory behind why they can work for depression, anxiety, ptsd etc

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And why the combination of antidepressants and therapy is what has been found to work best in general. Still, only for about 50% of people, which is a reason finding new treatments for mental health problems is like finding new habitated planets - in more than one way with this kind

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There is a lot of interesting research out on microdosing. The problem is that two mushrooms that are even the same strain can vary widely in dosage by the time they are harvested, and then drying and powdering can have widely different results on potency. That’s not even getting into the strains themselves that each have varying secondary effects. You may know for example that some wood lover strains might induce a kind of paralysis. That’s what I’m curious about if they solved that problem.

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:laughing::smiling_face_with_three_hearts::laughing:

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I expect so. It’s being done scientifically and like other drug development i think, and there are a lot of regulations around it. I dont think Australia is going to become Alice’s Wonderland

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Its very rigorous on who is allowed to prescribe too. It’s expected very few people will be able to in the near future. There are worries around this that costs will be very very high for a long long time because of this

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I think all the drugs also need to go through the Australian equivalent of the fda process so i doubt there’d be accidental use of paralysis inducing psyllosybin mushrooms