I re=read the story about Professor Nutt and Psilocybin and had a proper think about it. I became even more convinced that he is on to a loser. He seems to be advocating several different things. One of them is that Psilocybin can access memory and therefore be of use in psychotherapy.
We really did that one to death in the 1960's. We are fully aware that psychedelics can access memory. No further research needed. Stan Grof in the Czech Republic used low dose LSD for this purpose for years. His book LSD Psychotherpy is not far off being a practice manual. Claudio Naranjo did the same thing in South America. And it wasn't just LSD. Mescaline, Psilocybin, DMT, the lot were used. It was found that the therapeutic effects went way beyond accessing repressed memories.
But things progressed even further than that. Some people found that the power of LSD,even at low dose, was more than they could handle.Enter the Phenylethylamines. People looked around for something that could access memory and perform other therapeutic processes but which lacked the major consciousness altering properties of the major psychedelics. The search was entirely successful. We acquired MDA, MMDA, and no doubt many of the other Phenylethylamines that I never got around to taking. They did all the memory reaquisition and a whole heap of other stuff too, and all without the slightest hint of consciousness alteration.
Meanwhile since the 1930's people had been using the far simpler drugs-the amphetamines and the barbiturates for exactly the same purpose. All this stuff is written up and drug assisted psychotherapy could start this afternoon without any need for research.
As for psilocybin switching off an area of the brain overactive in depression exactly what area is that. There is MRI scan evidence that a whole heap of areas are over active in depression. It's not an area its properly described as a network.And elements of that network are involved in a lot more biological functions than just depression. Trying to shut down elements of that network seems like a recipe for disaster. Luckily we don't need Professur Nutt again.There is evidence that as the existing anti-depressants start to work the functioning of the network tends to return to normal anyway.
Prefessor Nutt stands no practical chance of ever getting anywhere near a new anti-depressant anyway. Bringing a new drug to the market is a very expensive business and only the big drug companies have the resources to do it. They are very unlikely to touch psilocybin. Too many patent problems. The structure,metabolism.receptor binding properties are all well known and they are all in the Public Domain. You don't make shed loads of money out of things in the Public Domain. That requires patents. And what do you go about patenting when just about everything worth knowing about the substance is already known and public.
One completely unrelated fact that I'll mention. An old LSD manufacturer friend of mine told me that Psilicybin is actually pretty irrelevant. As soon as you swallow it the body starts to break it down into another substances psilocin. It's that that has all the effects not psilocybin. Pedantic but I do like people to define their terms properly.
