In the article “Psychedelic Healing,” Kat Arney argued the effectiveness of antidepressant therapy for people under intractable depression and propelled a treatment using a psychedelic drug called psilocybin to produce ego dissolution for an individual. Psilocybin is a drug made out of magic mushrooms found in the wild. When psilocybin is taken, it is generated in the body as psilocin, a chemical with psychoactive properties. While the therapy has not yet been proven to be effective as an antidepressant before practical experiments, Robin Carhart-Harris, Ph.D., together with a small team, decided to take on a clinical trial test for a small group of patients to see if it could relieve common treatment-resistance depression. As the test results have proven, the use of psychedelics on patients induces a boost in their responsiveness with emotions and a reduction in depression symptoms when done in a proper environment and manner.
Depression often creates a barrier within an individual’s brain that hinders them from thinking out of their griefs or is referred to as abnormal activities in the default-mode network within their brains. Simply providing medicine would not be enough for a patient to create full antidepressant effects. Harris has revealed that the correct choice of environment and physical medicine would be two crucial factors that play an important role over the duration of treating depression. A relaxing and comfortable environment is essential to boost the success rate of the treatment. Kirk, one of the volunteers for the trial test, said, “I went into this hospital room, and it was done up like a psychedelic spa.” The appropriate environment choice has further embodied how this has shortened the psychological distance between his sense of feeling and the environment. To better reinforce this distance or even reduce it, the external medicine, a psychedelic dose would be applied for the patient. According to the article, a loss of self-identity would be one of the direct effects after taking a dose, and a strong sense of interconnectedness with the world would be apparent.
Just imagine if you were in jail, the somber ray of light and the horrible atmosphere you were in, would that affect how you feel? The first condition for treating people under depression mentioned in the article is providing an appropriate environment, and I strongly agree with this statement. As what you hear, see, and experience changes at every moment, your mood and the way your brain and body function vary as well; therefore, you cannot deny that environment has no impact on your daily life. Considering how Harris recognized the importance of environment, he has made the utmost of creating a suitable environment for depressed patients. According to the description in the article, the facility is controlled in a way with beautiful music, low lighting, and nice furnishing to tentatively sedate the patients’ emotions. Out of all, “the music played a big part of the experience,” said Kirk. It is like a river regulating you through the pathway, and all your grief emerges and disappears immediately. Reading this part of the article, I felt a sense of empathy and the ability to connect it with my personal experience; for instance, music has helped me stay concentrated and warm light had made me feel personally secured.
Another condition that must be met in order for the therapy to process successfully is selecting the most effective medicine to provide one of the most substantial antidepressant effects. According to Arney’s article, psychedelic drugs were used for treating depression, and it has been proven effective; Nevertheless, I do not fully agree with this behavior as side effects, especially damages to the brain, may cause predominant impacts to some of the people after the treatment. When people are conscious of what they are doing, they often have the ability to control things more effectively; however, when they consume psychedelics, illusions may occur to different extents, and certain brain networks would break down and reform with an alternative pathway. Within these time periods, the patients are extremely sensitive and vulnerable, and if not treated properly, it would even worsen the situation, and more importantly, it is irreversible. Psychedelic patients’ brains are just similar to a newborn baby: they are weak; they are innocent; only a healthy environment can guide them through the correct pathway. After reading this section of the article, I felt that the author did not attach much attention to the adverse effects that psychedelic healing would bring us but focused more on describing the benefits of using psychedelic healing.
In conclusion, this article propelled and introduced a new method to treat depression by using psychedelic drugs. Besides, an appropriate environment would also be essential for this method of therapy to be successful. Trial results done by Robin Carhart-Harris, Ph.D., have proven that psilocybin is effective for boosting responsiveness with emotions and reducing one’s depression symptoms. This is not yet considered a “perfect treatment” for depression, as clinical-grade psilocybin is hard to obtain and the potential of it harming the brain in an unsupervised condition. Nevertheless, I believe that a more integrated treatment method for depression would appear as technology advances over time.
About Kat Arney
Katharine Luisa Arney is a British science communicator, broadcaster, author, and the founder and creative director of communications consultancy First Create the Media. She was a regular co-host of The Naked Scientists, a BBC Radio programme and podcast, and also hosted the BBC Radio 5 Live Science Show and the BBC Radio 4 series Did the Victorians Ruin the World She has written numerous articles and columns for Science, The Guardian, New Scientist the BBC and others.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kat_Arney
About Robin Carhart-Harris, Ph.D.
Head of the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Division of Brain Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London.
Soruce: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/r.carhart-harris
