Compass Pathways' Phase IIb psilocybin trial shows reduced depression symptoms
As somebody who sometimes &quot;treats&quot; severe multi-decades-long depression with psychedelics, I&#x27;m not surprised that they&#x27;d have a positive impact but the news seems too unclear to my simple mind to make sense of a few things:<p>1- why is a private group on the stock market doing this, instead of public research &amp; universities? vested interests in seizing a market of illegal drugs in a legal way worry me, because it&#x27;s easy to completely forget the humans in the process when there&#x27;s billions to be made<p>2- is 1mg declared a placebo with enough proof? I&#x27;m personally not receptive at all to any kind of &quot;micro-dosing&quot; but I&#x27;ve also seen equally anecdotal comments going exactly the opposite direction and loving that. Is there a study that thoroughly compares the 1mg dose to a fake product looking similar but with no psychoactive substance?<p>3- as someone keenly aware of an &quot;afterglow&quot; that can happen on psychedelics, I also don&#x27;t see a proper discussion about (1) the potentially ephemeral nature of the benefits when taking a single dose, as well as (2) the difficulty of taking psychedelics along with pretty much any other treatment for mental health issues (SSRIs, MAOIs, anti-psychotics and so on, which all have their own counter-indications)<p>I very much love all the psychedelic experiences I&#x27;ve had in life, from simple doses to &quot;heroic&quot; and intensely crushing trips, and I&#x27;ve always tried to extract some long-term benefits from them during and post-trip, but even compared to a psychiatric treatment that doesn&#x27;t help me quite enough (doesn&#x27;t get rid of anhedonia, brain fog, suicidal ideation, etc etc), I have still come to see those trips as more of a targeted temporary relief for the soul that one should ideally leverage in the window of time post-trip - and not so much as an ongoing treatment in and of itself like what&#x27;s offered by my meds.<p>At least from my limited perspective it hasn&#x27;t been so much a treatment for a depression but a temporary relief from it, which offers a window of time to discuss anchoring constructive habits (&quot;job search for an hour every morning&quot;, &quot;clean up your house&quot;, ...) and having empathy for the self in pragmatic and measurable ways post-trip (cook yourself a meal, get a haircut, commit to physical activities again, etc). I&#x27;m not really convinced that we&#x27;ll turn those substances into long-term treatments, but I could see them becoming a &quot;shock therapy&quot; of sorts.