Psilocybin Medical Trial: The Healing Mushrooms (Medical Documentary) | Real Stories

[Music] in 2012 a team of british researchers asked the question what would happen if we treated 20 people suffering from severe depression with magic mushrooms it took them three years to get permission to find out [Music] i've tried i think maybe six or eight different antidepressants and i've never worked maggie i can't believe how patient she's been four years ago i realized that i couldn't go in like this you know she didn't deserve that i need to find a way to change [Music] about 50 of people don't respond to antidepressants and one in six of them go on to kill themselves so we really should be exploring every other treatment available with me what i've always been desperate to do is to try and find a physical reason for feeling this way although i didn't want to take my life i didn't want to wake up i wanted to go to sleep just not have to face it again is so prevalent everyone's exposed to it [Music] we're looking at giving psilocybin to patients with quite severe treatment resistant major depression i don't think it's normal to feel the way i do the anxiety the fear the terror panic if this is living then it sucks it really does [Music] lsd was isolated by stolen huffman in a sandwich pharmaceutical company of bars in switzerland the doors swung wide open for research into the nature of the schizophrenic process and in a larger sense into the biochemistry of psychosis between 1950 and 1965 40 000 patients were prescribed a psychedelic drug for neuroses schizophrenia and psychopathy these trials resulted in over 1 000 scientific papers if you're happy now is that a beautiful experience would you say i would say yes when psychedelics became available to the wider public in the 1960s dramatic changes in attitudes and behavior followed [Music] this is one area where we cannot have budget cuts because we must wage what i have called total war against public enemy number one in the united states the problem of dangerous drugs in 1971 under pressure from president nixon the un declared that all psychedelic drugs should be classified as schedule 1. one of the difficulties in terms of schedule 1 drugs including psilocybin is that because they're in schedule 1 this has discouraged any research into the medical value of that drug and there's been virtually nothing in the way of research ever since 1960s with backing from the medical research council the team at imperial college london are conducting the first ever clinical trial of psilocybin the active ingredient of magic mushrooms this isn't a job to rush if you think that somebody could have one of the most profound experiences of their whole lives in here ready for the music yeah [Music] that was taken it was a winter of 2010 when it was really cold we had a lot of snow is that a happy time it was yeah yeah it was really nice yeah yep what's happening today going down to imperial it's actually hammersmith hospital and tomorrow is the first dosing day can you put into words how important this is that's uh that's that's a tough one [Music] well we woke up maggie got a call was it you got it there was a flood i could put your wellingtons on i put my waders on and the kids were asleep upstairs so we thought they'd probably safe we went into the kitchen for some reason we come in the background you're catching there was a trickle in the kitchen we just thought oh well there's not much just a bit of water we'll be fine then the next thing we knew that when we come back a few hours later up to the step in there how did that affect you in the knowledge of the trial coming up um well at that point i thought i'm not going to do it i can't do it but for me it's the last chance i think this is it you know i don't think there's any other medicines i've tried all these ones that's been made in a lab and none have worked you know they've all had very short term impacts and did nothing [Music] over the past 30 years i've had maybe 30 different types of medication antidepressants some of them have worked for short time some work for a bit longer but they all kind of tail off i also had ect had 23 sessions of that which i've been told worked for a period but then the effects you know wore off so i do feel like this trial is another kind of last chance to make any kind of change for me but i felt that before [Music] robin carhart harris is the trial lead and head of psychedelic research at imperial college i have suffered from clinical depression you know i've been through some dark times so i think that kind of thing helps you have sympathy for um people who suffer from mood disorders in general psychedelics are for me easily the best tool that exists to study both the mind and the brain i think it has the potential to to revolutionize depression treatment if not psychiatry professor david nutt head of neuropsychopharmacology will oversee the trial this part of the brain is called the cortex and in the cortex you do your hearing and your seeing etc but also in this part of the cortex particularly this bit here goes from the front here to the back here there's the sense of self it integrates what you can see and hear and with what you can think and feel and serotonin is an important chemical in the brain it's a fundamental neurotransmitter for regulating brain function particularly in the emotional sphere and what cytosine and other plant products do is to stimulate those receptors and by stimulating them we can mimic serotonin in the brain and sometimes perhaps do more than serotonin is doing because in some people serotonin may not be working adequately [Music] say hello um i said to iran i was nervous it was almost symbolic for me it was like walking from one life into another sometimes you dig deep to be strong because you you don't want to come across as an emotional mess i woke in the early hours and i was weeping um and i don't know where it came from it's quite difficult it's it's quite tough there are two doses the first is simply to test the volunteers tolerance to the drug and the treatment days will follow a week later each trip lasts about six hours and a psychologist and psychiatrist are always in the room the experience of taking the capsules is going to be very significant for him he's never experienced anything like this at all in his life and he's a scientist he's someone that really enjoys kind of the predictability of testing hypotheses and problems that can be solved methodically so this is a huge departure from that i can remember being in the doctors and feeling absolutely ashamed of where i was you know i worked as a scientist and as a team leader and out of the blue i was told that i had to work in a procurement department and this was pretty much my vision of hell really there was just this abyss that was in front of me and i went to see the occupational health nurse before i knew it it was in floods of tears it just just completely broken down and she said to me there's something seriously wrong here and um yeah we're what 13 years down the road now i have been thinking about it quite a lot this afternoon i'm worried that he is so different that i take a long time to catch up and he loses patience with me so yeah i'm a bit concerned i'm going to get left behind the thing oh [Music] how are you it's a little different [Laughter] oh thank you oh very powerful very powerful day and that was that was two capsules and next wednesday there's five captions what are your thoughts about next wednesday they're probably more anxious actually if i'm honest because of what came up today and that i know that could get amplified next wednesday so i think there's a battle there that's not that's not done yet he was taken back to a very very difficult memory which he didn't think was a memory it was a kind of a new experience that he was going through of having his mother on the one side his father on the other and having to choose between them and he went to be with the very calm benevolent energy of his dad um and he felt the presence of his dad there he said he actually really kind of met his dad again and felt his dad wrapped around him could feel the the knit of the cardigan that his dad used to wear so that was a really difficult but also very positive powerful experiences [Music] coventry it's a huge responsibility for you this do you get sort of scared or nervous i do i think if you're giving a incredibly powerful psychoactive drug to individuals who are especially vulnerable you have to think about negative psychological responses you have to think about anxiety you have to think about fear and potential panic let's just carry on breathing naturally and then i'd like you to imagine that you're lying down in a beautiful woodland you're in a clearing and the ground is covered with green moths soft and springy i think depression is a bit like an addict you learn to hide it from people i don't want to be near people from the arms i don't want their sympathy i don't even want their kindness and it would literally go into the bedroom close the car and put the lights off and just stay there it's a big day probably as big a day as our wedding day maybe because this could be the start of a new life fingers crossed in mental health you just have to go into an inpatient ward anywhere and realize that we need something new so john and the other patients in the trial have got what's called treatment resistant depression and which means they've tried three different types of treatment and nothing's worked i think the name treatment resistant depression is really a bad name because you can't say that john's depression is resistant to treatment it's just that we haven't found the right treatments yet how are you feeling today all right uh certainly more positive than there was before um but i definitely felt that there was something i couldn't achieve on the first dose it felt okay i could identify there was a problem but i couldn't quite i couldn't quite grasp it or tackle it you know it's not like i'm feeling euphoria or high or happiness i just don't feel rubbish you know and so if this is all it does then that's fine um but hopefully it'll do more [Music] i just really like to get to the bottom of it or have somebody help me get to the bottom of it difficult to know what to expect i sort of feel like i don't know him well enough as perhaps we should at this stage so that doesn't feel ideal um it's the low dose today essentially i i know he'll be fine physically so let's just go into it with the right attitude really and support him do you feel ready to take captions yeah [Music] mark hasn't really revealed to us why he's depressed and i don't think he knows and now the taking of this drug is about trying to understand where this is coming from what this block is [Music] i can't pinpoint a date or an event that could possibly be the cause of it over all this time i think it must be something biological [Music] i don't expect a magic wand to go wow you feel all of a sudden great and you're up for doing anything kind of what i do expect is just not to feel so cripplingly negative about everything that it infringes upon my daily life [Music] are you hopeful i am hopeful for mark because if i wasn't hopeful that would be a problem in itself i firmly believe that this drug is a root out of what can otherwise be an insoluble problem the nature of the drug effects are that they induce a kind of malleability or plasticity so like they free things up so that you can change you know i think what can be characteristic of depression is that there are things that aren't conscious you don't realize their contribution to your state yeah that'll make you no [Music] i hope you sense a relaxing and easy evening if ever you're worried about anything or you just want to ask that thing you could give me a call there are 16 ways in which drugs can do harm to you or to society there are nine ways they can harm the user and those are the blue bars and the size of the red bar will harm the drug to society so alcohol is the most harmful drug in europe and the uk and the reason for that is the size of that red bar it's not the most damaging drug to the user beyond to the right then you have heroin and crack and methamphetamine they have bigger blue bars and the drugs that the media get hysterical about they're on the right hand side they're ecstasy lsd magic mushrooms they have virtually no harm to society and considerably less harm to the user than alcohol also making these drugs illegal stops people researching them even though the u.n convention say oh we perfectly happy for you to carry on researching them you just have to comply with the regulations no one has managed to get through those regulations to do clinical trial of lsd in 50 years um what do you think does have to happen in order for decriminalization to happen in the uk like is it with a politician or is it with the research is it with the people what has to happen is we've got to have a completely public debate and you've got to hold mps up to account when they're either not discussing this or talking rubbish about it and the media too you know when people are lying about the harms of drugs you've got to challenge them all the time baroness molly miesha has spent 10 years as a crossbencher in the house of lords campaigning for the liberalization of drug laws uk governments tend to be very conservative on drug policy much more conservative than many western european countries and of course the vast majority of u.s states and that's something to do with our media i think they've been very hostile to reform in this area which is probably something to do with the conservatism of the british people so where are we now i'm going to go and pick up the capsules it's the second dose now so uh this is where things get even more interesting um it's gonna be quite high dose 25 milligrams and why are they down here adam hi matt how's it going you're right let's get the key out sure uh so the drug has to be stored securely um in order to do research with schedule 1 drugs we need a home office license so it's stored in this secure area in a locked safe that's actually bolted to the wall what exactly is this this is siteless so this is the psychoactive ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms how does that compare to sort of recreational days it's quite a high dose actually two and a half grams of mushroom material or you know hundreds a couple of hundred little liberty cap magic mushrooms so anyone you know doing that you'd consider really taking quite a high dose so yeah there's no messing about [Music] so i'm ready for the exam you can't go on living like you have done for the last 20 years because it doesn't get better it does get worse yeah when i think back to late november last year that was about as bad as it got and that was that that's that scared me but we're beyond that um i'm extremely lucky to be here very nice [Laughter] go oh oh god no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no with andy if you asked him what had been making him struggle or depressed he would say experiences with his work and not feeling good enough there but that didn't even come into the sessions at all and it was more about his early childhood experiences of suffering and pain he wants to get in here what about letting him we're here with you these kind of early childhood experiences will often be repressed people go through their whole lives without ever really facing those those demons but it's not as if the demons when they're pushed down don't cause any suffering because they're there it is so just let it be here and see what it's here to show you knowing that you're safe everyone go away just a small improvement would be lovely just for him to feel differently about things and see the world through a different pair of eyes [Music] hello how are [Music] extraordinary that's they're different from last time yes yeah yeah you knew that this was this was the big ride this is this is the one that changed change things and it's of course it has left lots and lots of questions really but those i think the answers of those will come out in a good time yeah dad was there tabra's yeah a couple of times actually a couple of times it was there where it was headed it was dangerous to me it was a dangerous path but uh no no it's all we're okay now we're okay all is resolved [Music] i could feel that he was suffering so much but i could also feel that it was really important for him to be suffering so i was kind of pleased in a weird way that he was going through it thinking yes now we're getting to the stuff you know this is what's been causing you so much suffering so we need to get it out and he was really in a battle with a large dark evil force um that he associated with his mum go away [Music] go away you're not coming in there was so much darkness and so much pain there were moments of thinking where is this going to go how's it going to be by the end of the day you know what if this doesn't get resolved there was a sense from the last session of his dad being kind of wonderful and his mum being kind of terrible and evil we're all done dead well can what sort of evolved out of today was that it really doesn't matter if there was one person doing right the other one did it wrong what actually matters at the end is resolution and love because that that is the big thing that came out for me today is that the more you hate something the more you feed it with that hate the bigger it gets and that's what's been going on i've been feeding this thing it's been consuming me and now i've got to the realization that if i stop feeding it with hate it evaporates it goes away oh yes yes yes of course it is are you out and as soon as that realization occurred because i had the representation of my father and vonnie and the boys on my chest but i didn't have a representation of mum so i took a picture and brought her in to that union really at the end and we were we were kind of one again but one hell of a battle wouldn't i wouldn't want to do it again i've been the happiest ever in my life and i've been the most terrified in my life in the same day probably in the space of half an hour so good mmm really good exhausting but really really very good and i mean well the proof is in the pudding you know today today was good it was intense it was good it was tough all the things i hoped for but we will see how andy is feeling tomorrow next week and the really key thing is in a week a month few months that's what's really [Music] important oh yeah yeah good to see you how are you doing all right yeah we're only yeah my mind's been racing about you know what could what could be it what could be this so we'll give you that lots of different sort of nightmares about that oh yeah yeah but more about um what it could be that's coming this time you know i think you should get into the room uh well ahead of time and settle down and talk to the others last week we had somebody in the study who had a particularly strong response to the sinusitis probably the strongest psychedelic experience i've ever i've ever sat with that's kind of raised raised my kind of alertness really about today it's just a reminder really never to underestimate the power really of um the psychedelic drug and the alterations in consciousness that they can induce tell us what's on your mind i don't know it just feels like you're stopped it feels like it i just wanna go home that's when i go home yeah i don't know it just this isn't i mean did you really get it today john nearly left which was quite a dilemma for us because on the one hand we wanted to keep him here and keep him safe but we also didn't want to keep him here against his will so it was difficult it's probably a little bit early for you to go is yeah i mean can you just hold on for a little bit longer i don't know sporting for homes really yeah is there anything at all there's just well when i close my eyes and try i can i try and sleep but i just go for like one above dream to the next that sort of feels like it wasn't really what i would have planned or expected i didn't even realize that's what john needed but looking back i could see it was what he needed it's like the first dose was like lulling him into it he gave him a sense of it's okay i can do this and then the second dose it's like right now the real work begins and the real work isn't experiencing some lovely feeling of love from the world the work is going on a journey in within yourself finding that nugget of pain and integrating it into your life i'm really hoping and praying that it has worked up until now and with john being ill i've been mum and dad to the kids and now it might be that i can share the lord again and it won't just be me it'll be me and john together working as a team like we used to do all those years ago two and a half did they tie you down i think a lot has been sort of experienced today okay um being um yeah it's a little rockier than last time one point but i think maybe um because of that um maybe there's there's more benefits we've had from this experience than us yeah we responded to experience but necessary does it mean you're gonna get rid of the beard no yeah a man appeared to me and said grow it till it's down to your knees at first i really didn't think it was working it wasn't until the very end when i could sit and then reflect on it that i could see what had happened all these things that happened to me when i was a kid it made me face every single one of them and nobody wants to do that but yeah so it was an extremely horrible uh afternoon the worst experience in my life sometimes do it i could hear bugs as if a bug was crawling through the ground so the images that i saw was was of this massive sort of black and red iron thing were huge spikes pointing out to it but the experience that it relates to was when some kids took my t-shirt off and threw me into this massive patchy nails and i was beat with a hawthorn branches and and the bugs that i heard were the bugs that i heard when i was on the ground afterwards crying the sharp spikes on the big black and red thing were the thorns on the branch it was almost like absolutely everything was trying its hardest to see this is the problem you know it makes me feel that um depression is uh a way we cope as a kid we build up psychological protections for ourselves around about these events right but at some point in your adult life we have to come to terms with that and deal with it um and there is no natural part of life that we have in modern society that allows that to happen counselling doesn't do antidepressants won't do it but this uh this thing does do that it takes you straight there uh exactly what robin promised it will take you to that place whatever the problem is it will take you straight to that and you have to decide there and then whether you're going to be a victim with that for the rest of your life or not it wasn't some external spiritual force or it wasn't someone's counselling technique it's your own self that does the healing in the end look at these images you can see the cortex that's the outer part of the brain here and this is a kind of spine to the cortex and this seems to be particularly implicated in in depression now what psilocybin does is to introduce a degree of chaos if you want almost like a kind of scrambling effect as a kind of resetting of the brain and it and it sort of settles into this into a healthy mode of function that's the reason for this that's that's what we're doing now really yeah it's really interesting [Music] tell us whether you would be now to walk around london again no i wouldn't have done that coming into a place like london like on oxford street and regent street where it's so mod i just wouldn't have done that i'm enjoying it you know it's nice you're not sitting thinking about yourself or thinking about anything depressing or bad or dark or deep it feels good it feels there's like a lightness you know in fact um as like a burden that's been lifted that's what it feels like if someone's just come along and they taking away everything that was weighing you down today i just really want to get it open done with basically i don't really have any hopes or predictions or ideas about what might happen or really just get on with it really yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so i feel really tired hungover massively abnormal feelings for me that i'm not sure if i've ever experienced in my adult life do you feel like it's something that you want to work on like i kind of want to work on it because i don't want to feel like this or yeah feel like this or how i felt for the majority of my life anymore there was nothing that linked back to like this is what caused your depression you know use these tools and work it out now it's like it's still a massive mystery to me and is that disappointing it's no more disappointing than every other day so [Music] i know the first christmas i had a red trike so i've got to be three and a half i think [Music] so it looks just he's so much smaller than i remember and you see the little window on the ground floor oh yeah that's why i used to sit with lynn on the stairs listening to it all kick off in the lounge going into the treatment i thought is it going to be the sort of conflict i had at work or is it going to be the family strangely i've not even thought much about what happened at work although it was momentous you know for me then it's kind of it's all automatically sort of just drifted back to to what went on in that house down there that's that's that's where that's where the damage was done just give me a minute down here this is probably the third or fourth time we've been back as a couple to see where he's lived and all he's ever done is remembered it with fondness this was where i grew up and i love this and i did this and i did this with dad and and today it's just more painful a change has occurred there's no doubt about that a change has occurred but it's not it's not the easy change that i thought it would be it's a bit as though i had ingested a really really good um therapist that's what it that's what it feels like it feels i've got on board now my own therapist okay cheers thank you so much and thanks for everything really i know it's work in progress but you know i think i think things are moving in the in the right direction i'm not sure whether it's correct or not but the way i look at it is that i've been unhappy for so long although i think that unhappiness is spilled obviously into my life and my relationships and i think there's a residue that's got to be dealt with but the other thing was this awful image that i had with the with the smothering this this this awful image that that your dad didn't want you the rejection yeah yeah is that drawing over me i could actually see the the pillow and then suddenly the realization was you know that i'm being smothered [Music] oh that feeling was real then the realization that it was dad doing it was real did you really not want me that badly all i can remember about my dad is good and that's why i think i can't ever imagine him you know wanting to dispatch me with a pillow there were lovely memories of getting up at sort of 4 30 in the morning and then going on his milk round you know these crystal clear images of those times that are really pleasant your mind will allow you to remember those things those positive memories yeah anything that is confusing or conflictual might be something that you want to keep away from your yeah your memories and your conscious mind yeah okay [Applause] often in a psychedelic dose the person will experience the same fragility vulnerability overwhelming horror as they did as a child so i think that's what happened with andy he he was stripped of his defenses as an adult and taken back to that vulnerable place what was real for andy was his fear fear of annihilation and and sense a huge sense of rejection and that that theme of rejection is something that has plagued him his whole life so that feels like it's really clinically significant bye now bye i wish that i would be able to work as his therapist and that it could be a longer course of treatment and that we could perhaps have another dosing and keep working on a process because then i really feel that huge breakthroughs could be made i hope that from this this dose there will also be a significant improvement but i think for kind of lifelong change i feel that further therapy and further dosing sessions would probably be required one of my major problems is not his depression but it's the fact that he doesn't know what he wants and he wants other people to sort of help him and to tell him sort of what to do and we've we really tried to encourage him to try and work out a little bit what he does want um from life but he you know he obviously he still you know reports feeling quite lost and so it's a delicate balancory but in the therapy i think will be all about trying to get him to have a greater sense of himself and what he wants i think school's tough for everyone you know i used to go in the library and try and read about how to act in public how to and it just felt very very alien the whole you know the whole concept of people having girlfriends people having lots of friends everyone was different but i felt very removed from everyone i went to the doctors he said go to amsterdam i was like mate i'm 14. you know you're this is you know this is 1984 you're telling me to go to amsterdam what are you expecting me to do though um because all i knew about amsterdam well kloggs and frank prostitution and drugs and it's i didn't think he was telling me to go to the ann frank museum it was i thought that's my that's my gp you know i've been told by doctors this is what it's going to be like nothing's going to change you're going to be like this and then you think you start thinking wow actually what's the [ __ ] point really you know thanks for that the place where i grew up was this little village called clearland i can still see the field and the hawthorne sort of hedge where it all took place i could i could take you straight to the very place and the thing was it didn't happen that far from her home but if i ever tried to complain about it to my mum she would just go nuts and she would give me a good hammer and then when dad come home from work he would come in even if we were sleeping he would you would get woken up and you'd be given another hammond you know that was i think when i really started having a sort of emotional problems i think as i could because when these things are experienced they can't be unexperienced can they the typical response is to try and forget them yeah and repress them perhaps the healthiest way to live with them is to live with them consciously yeah because you can't change the past there's no sense you want revenge or no sense of being really angry at those events or the people that did under just this sense of um that's who made me who i am part of what made me who i am you know it doesn't feel like there has been some kind of breakthrough yeah it does feel like that i feel enthusiastic to just go home and stagger normal things yeah you know it's like a just a desire to get up and get going now you know get up and get going [Music] [Music] john maggie and their children are sharing a single room in a hotel while their home is being renovated after the flood [Music] area all right neil you have a nice time yes thank you happy birthday thank you you're a good team yeah not too bad not too bad that's fine oh thank you it's got like a motion sensor so it it just keeps flying itself if you want it was chewbacca are you late it's seeing people at me thank you i'm not much [Music] is there the mink in the tree the black the black mine the mink in the tree is it dead first time we come up here they were running up like this way ahead of us no i had the dog with them without the dog yeah one what's up how long can we go [Music] they are goals since the depression got bad and if he was nice feels good well i feel like i think it feels good a bit weird it's not normal anymore yeah but weird sounds negative i don't think you mean that do you don't know it's weird it's just strange having john here because i've been used to life on my own for so long foreign apparently that if you take the magic mushroom you die within six days thing that you do need to remember is that there are some dangerous emotions that just like it so it's not a good idea the reason it works is because it's about your brain sort of like along here in the middle and then so when you've got depression that but it sort of becomes really bogged down on negative things all the time so what the job does is it it kind of shakes all up and then lets it resettle in a different way the first time i took it it felt quite nice the second time when i took it was a much higher dose and it wasn't the most horrible thing that i've ever experienced you know i'm imagining the nightmare that lasts for six hours and doesn't stop yeah that'd be quite scary and that's that's endangered if you just decide you want to take it for fun you don't know i was lucky that i had doctors around about me who could make sure nothing bad would happen [Music] before the treatment yeah we did have a dad but if we did see him it wouldn't be for very long be like five or ten minutes and you would have to go back into his room because you'd have a sore head since the treatment she's got much happier um but we all have to be honest um she's managed to spend time with her husband like reuben's gone to sleepovers and i've gone sleepovers and it's been mom and dad they've been having movie nights they've been sitting on the couch they've had a couch each falling asleep on the couch doing things that they used to do before they had kids before dad had depression this me my dad died again and not the grumpy old fart in the corner six months after the trial the results are presented to the media this is a celebration as well as a press conference because it's taken taken to four years to get here taken four years a year here and three of those years were kind of unnecessary they're just plowing through regulatory hurdles but we did it and so how important is today then today's the birth of a new era in the treatment of depression it's the first depression trial with the psychedelic drug so it is it's landmark stuff morning everyone welcome to the smc uh for this morning's briefing um cytocybin an option for treatment-resistant depression um to be published in last psychiatry embargo is 10 30 pm tomorrow the average duration of the illness in this sample was 18 years so many of the patients have had depression for actually most of their adult lives yet eight of the twelve were essentially depression free one week post treatment and five remain depression free three months post treatment you can see some relapse in some of the patients so let's not get carried away this isn't a magic cure even so um the effects at this stage do look promising how would you envisage this being dosed would it be kind of a one-off treatment or would it be repeated i think that's what we need to find out the key question is what to do with the people who got an initial benefit and then it starts to wane so we're thinking about trying to set up what you might call a kind of more naturalistic study so perhaps that those people could then be redosed every three months and just see if they if the effect came back i mean it might it might not depressed people have a view of the world which is that the world is a nasty hostile place and of course they're right because it is but after side of simon the depressed people tended to view the world the same way as we do which is it's better than it is and that's a great defense what would be the process for a drug like silas island to move from schedule one to schedule two what are the sort of reasons that it isn't happening yeah i i would say a major reason is because of the united nations conventions and the schedules under those conventions um that a country like the uk tends to follow and that those conventions very clearly includes silos ivan within schedule one so to to move against the un conventions you really need some strong evidence so it's a sort of chicken and leg situation if silence ibm will put into schedule two this would make it much easier for researchers to get hold of it to get a license you know the whole thing would be freed up you'd then have lots of research and and if it showed that psilocybin really helped people with depression you'd get changed but getting that research to happen while these jobs are in schedule it's very difficult [Music] do you have any regrets about doing the trial i suppose really only in what it revealed to me i think with a high dose the experiences were profound and pretty dark it introduced me to the fact that something really nasty could have happened in my childhood and you can't kind of unthink that but it kind of leaves you with the feeling of well was that the case did it you know was i was i smothered as an infant there's two sides i suppose that you say well if i'd not learned that then maybe the recovery process wouldn't wouldn't be working hasn't worked or does knowing it actually make the whole situation worse but yeah i do it again you know that's it introduces you to a possible solution for depression it was a little bit empowering it it made me think well perhaps i'm not just a like a passenger on this you know merry-go-round it might be that i can actually do something about it it could be a whole new way of accessing the the subconscious the psyche whatever whatever it is right [Music] like with john is pretty much like it was before the trail it's crap putting it bluntly i hoped that the results from the trail would last forever because it was it was so nice the kids had their dad back and to a certain extent i had my husband back and it's gone again it's just it's all gone that's my favorite one they were just all together it was a really nice day it was the fifth of march and we've not been out for a walk together since which is kind of sad yeah i feel pretty rotten to be honest i know robin said that nobody's went back as bad as they were before but um i don't think it would take much longer before i was back where i was the darkness has gradually came back the self-loathing comes back the desire to be cut off from the world comes back then what happens is he gets compounded you feel guilty that you are like that then you feel guilty that your family have to suffer through that misery doesn't like they have enjoyable surroundings somebody in a a merely a city living in a tournament flat might think this is paradise but i'll load it the only thing i want is is a room where no windows in a door you know where you're just going to shut it and spend the rest of your life there come on you got a good boy [Music] so what's this so uh shopping clone 7.5 that's for uh take at night sleeping stabilizer pan tens these are for sleeping when i don't take a supple glow and take one of those vice versa this is pryodyle 400s i'll take two of those at night that's lithium this is a mood stabilizer apparently so maybe people with bipolar disorder take that so low paramide helps stop diarrhea so i'll take about eight of those a day so do you have that because of the drugs that you're taking yeah possibly deluxe team 60 mils this is an antidepressant and metazepine 15 but i take two of these so i take 30. you know i want to get better i want to feel better i want to give to society i want to be part of society you know i understand i've got a problem and i've had it for a long time and it's just like you live you live daily and yeah try and hide yourself away as much as possible [Music] two years after the trial roz has arranged for additional reintegration therapy for andy to make sense of some of the visions he had during his high days that my father tried to expose me when i was an infant and yeah great that's that's why i've been depressed all my life so it was kind of a convenience for me to be able to blame my depression on that [Music] but in reality i think that was quite simplistic and i think you helped me well i know you helped me almost turn that on its head you've introduced a rationale that i can view the whole experience with a new pair of eyes and you know the chances of dad actually doing that pretty remote it doesn't stack up with anything because it would have been something that mum would have written in her memoirs which is what i've got you know she would have she would definitely written something there that do you realize your dad did this um it's really really good because i'm not thinking was he dead wasn't it dad you know if it was dad why did he do it because i thought he loved me kind of thing [Music] that's that that that that thought loop has has gone i can't thank you enough mark you know for what you've done it um it has been pretty much life-changing so you know i really really really appreciate it we'll be in touch andrew thank you very much okay bye bye how was that it was good yeah i think it was a good summary of what of what andrew has been going through but also a good example of how this integration process works in terms of the smothering do you think that he would experience it all differently now i think that one of the key aspects of the integration process with andrew was to take some of the pressure out of having to find the definite answer of was it a true memory or is it something that my mind just made up in the event itself what he saw is not that his father was smothering him is that that actually became a symbolical representation of his whole childhood in which it looked like his mother was trying to present his father as a bad figure [Music] there were three parts to andy's high day session the first was about feeling unwanted by his father as a baby the second was about feeling criticized and controlled by his mother as a child and the third was more about a healthy adult position of feeling compassion and love and acceptance and understanding after the hydro session andy went back to that early place of wounding feeling unwanted by his father he then with mark's help and integration has been able to progress forward and start focusing more on his feelings around his mother and the criticism and control of his childhood and we hope that with a bit of time and more work he'll be able to progress forward to that third stage he did experience which was more about the acceptance and love for himself and for his parents the wonderful thing about this treatment is that it's able to take you on this journey in the space of a day actually with the integration afterwards whereas antidepressants could never do that antidepressants don't give you any insight as to why you're depressed and once you know why you're depressed you know what it is inside then there's a possibility of processing it and actually potentially getting better psychedelic therapy is not pharmacological therapy it's not that we're going to have an experience and then the depression is going to be gone the task of breaching what we learn in the psychedelic experience into changes that actually have an influence in our physical and daily life that is the the part that it's for me extremely important and how to do that is something that we still don't really know and i think that this is where the challenges for the next years in psychotherapy come [Music] glad it's done slightly exhausted um pleased it went so well uh on the other hand a little frustrated that the fact that we can't deliver this treatment you know when people need it just being here in central london and being so busy you know they say one in ten people are suffering from depression and that's likely a few people around us right now it's a massive problem so what are the results look like andy mark and john andy and john showed quite a good initial response um especially john but then they dipped back so on average they weren't the best responders but if you take the whole group at three weeks roughly half were in remission meaning essentially they're depression free that's after on average about 18 years of depression uh six months six uh still depression free so it's quite promising really and now they're only depression free sort of two years later some people's lives have just been transformed it suggests that the treatment seems to work at least as well as conventional treatments what we want to do next is compare it against conventional treatments we need bigger trials more rigorously designed trials double-blind randomized controlled trials unfortunately that's happening now so a few teams around the world are running these studies major investments coming in as a multi-site trial across europe and the us and canada 15 different countries so for things to be you know expanding to the scale that they are right now is really exciting [Music] that is definitely one speaking to guys on the trail afterwards they said yeah probably if you'd had a stronger dose or a third dose you would have had you know a breakthrough but i don't know if i can risk going picking a load of these and sitting in my bedroom tripping my nuts off and going ah i've got no support i don't you know i don't know what i'm doing i did feel as though i failed i failed the test did it not work at all i mean obviously i experienced a major amount of weirdness but it opened up a lot of questions about my um like my illness but it never never really kind of pointed me in the right direction of any answers and maybe there aren't any answers and that's just something i've got to deal with [Music] [Music] so how's your day been in the last couple of months well in the past couple months he's not been as good as he was before but he's still the same person as he was four or five years ago before um and we just saw that same person again a few months back so it was nice but uh better if they would do it again so it would be nice to have them back again do you believe in the psylocybin oh yeah because uh i've seen what was done and it looked like a miracle really uh we never thought it would it would be little again and then he took the trial and it was great yeah it was was really good a few months after the trial dad was really good and it was really good to see him happy and the rest of us happy and i think it made him feel happy that everyone else was happy as well but i don't think it was a bad thing that we saw it like it was nice to see it but and their memories that we're all gonna keep forever asleep it's better seeing those memories than not having them [Music] every week thousands of people who could benefit from interventions with these drugs are denied access and that means they will continue with their depressions and their addictions that is outrageous there is no need to limit access of these drugs for medical research but the current regulations make it almost impossible for anyone to use them clinically in some respects it's worse than before annual or something here that will help this this frustration that i can't really make take full advantage of that who's benefiting from that well i'm not benefiting because i'm not getting treatment my children don't benefit because i'm not working and showing them what a proper father a proper person should be doing with their life to be a productive part of society other people who need help don't benefit because money's been spent on me when i could be back at work do you want me to do the palm tree at the top yeah i'm not going up there when there's a billy goat [Music]

Channel: Real Stories

Views: 701,761

Keywords: Real Stories, emotions and psychedelics, groundbreaking medical trial, hallucinogenic therapy, healing mushrooms, healing powers of mushrooms, journey to mental wellness, mental health breakthrough, mental health success stories, mental health transformation, mental health treatment, mind-altering therapy, psilocybin medical trial, psychedelic healing journey, psychedelic medicine study, psychedelic therapy trial, psychoactive medicine, the power of magic mushrooms

Id: UGN2l-XY_EE

Length: 78min 14sec (4694 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020