Study Shows That Psilocybin Helps Treat Symptoms Of Childhood Trauma

According to studies, a majority of adults suffer from symptoms of childhood trauma.

A Palo Alto University study, some 61% of American adults have suffered at least one experience that constitutes as an “Adverse Childhood Experience”. These types of experiences vary greatly, ranging from neglect to sexual abuse, physical abuse, and emotional abuse. It can also include homelessness, racism, school or community violence, violent loss of a family member, and much more.

Even kids who are witness to some type of traumatic event face the risk of developing more mental and physical illnesses when they get older.

Many adults today are still struggling to recover from different kinds of traumatic situations that they faced as young children and teens. The symptoms that show up in adults include severe anxiety, inability to regulate emotions, panic attacks, depression, sleep issues, chronic inflammation, stress, and self-harm to name a few. Therapy certainly helps, but oftentimes it takes years of expensive therapy to truly heal – if any.

Thankfully, psychedelic medicine – psilocybin in particular – has been shown to be promising in the treatment of childhood trauma.

A recent study, published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, takes a deep dive into adverse childhood experiences and how these can present serious risks for psychological conditions, as reported by High Times. The researchers, which hailed from notable educational institutions including Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia, University of Michigan, and Athabasca University, analyzed if psilocybin could help mitigate the effects of psychological distress.

For the study, they polled 1,249 Canadian individuals who were at least 16 years old. They were asked to answer a questionnaire that evaluated conditions relating to childhood trauma. In addition, the participants were surveyed about their consumption of psilocybin, such as the last time they partook, how often, and how strong their doses were.

The results revealed that participants who consumed psilocybin within the last 3 months revealed a reduced impact of adverse childhood experiences and its effect on psychological distress. Additionally, the results were also dose-dependent; they found that participants who had greater exposure to these drugs had improved psychological well-being.

“In recent years, renewed interest in psychedelic medicine has highlighted the therapeutic potential of psilocybin for those who have experienced childhood adversity,” they wrote. “However, recreational psilocybin use remains illegal and access to approved therapeutics is difficult. Such use provides an opportunity to explore the therapeutic potential of psilocybin for psychological distress among people with adverse childhood experiences,” they discuss.

Furthermore, the authors added that “feasibility studies suggest that psilocybin has a good safety profile and low addiction potential, particularly at low doses and even among those with complex psychiatric needs.” They also emphasized the importance of using psilocybin under the care of a healthcare provider to prevent unwanted results such as bad trips.

“Taken together, these findings suggest that psilocybin therapy may be potentially acceptable and may feasibly help in supporting survivors of adverse childhood experiences with particularly strong benefits to those with more severe childhood adversity,” they wrote.

 

Psilocybin Has Strong Potential For Treating Symptoms Of Trauma

Psilocybin has a growing number of studies backing up its potential to treat symptoms of trauma, which are among the most difficult mental health conditions to manage. While medical authorities have extensive knowledge of what exactly can cause trauma, we still know very little how to treat it. The symptoms vary greatly from one person to another, so there is no standardized dose or care of any kind of medication that has been proven to treat it.

For many decades, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) have been a conventional treatment method for patients of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter that is responsible for helping us regulate our moods. The problem with these pharmaceutical drugs is that they come with horrific side effects for the patients that use them.

The good thing about psilocybin is that it also acts on the same serotonin receptors that SSRI’s do, but it also reaps numerous valuable benefits for mental health. Psilocybin works in a different mechanism especially in inducing neuroplasticity, making it simpler for patients to learn new things and even manage painful memories.

A study conducted by Stephen Ross, MD, an NYU Langone psychiatrist, focused on cancer patients who were terminally ill. He found that just one dose with psilocybin was enough to help provide relief from the emotional distress that plagued 80% of subjects for over 6 months. The patients who were given psilocybin reported a great improvement in quality of life, expressing an interest to do more external activities, having newfound energy, performed better at work, and had better relationships with family members.

According to the researchers, if psilocybin was effective in treating the psychological impact associated with being terminally ill with cancer, it could be used for treating less severe conditions that are also associated with psychological distress.

According to Dr. Ross, the findings “have the potential to transform the care of cancer patients with psychological and existential distress, but beyond that, it potentially provides a completely new model in psychiatry of a medication that works rapidly as both an antidepressant and anxiolytic and has sustained benefit for months,” he says.

“If larger clinical trials prove successful, then we could ultimately have available a safe, effective, and inexpensive medication – dispensed under strict control – to alleviate the distress that increases suicide rates among cancer patients,” he adds.

Conclusion

There is such a great amount of information out there that enables anyone to self-medicate with psilocybin. Just be sure to do your research, though it’s always recommended to do so under the care of an experienced healthcare provider.

CANNABIS AND TRAUMA HISTORY, READ ON…

CANNABIS USERS HAVE A HIGHER CHANCE OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA?

While most occupations avoid headline-grabbing gore, innocuous vocations still inflict insidious damage through airborne threats eroding lung function over years. The phantom menace of ambient workplace toxicity carries an untold toll – including risk of sudden asphyxiation when cumulative exposures trigger acute attacks.

Consider “baker’s lung” – an asthma-like inflammation that develops from inhaling airborne grain and flour particles. This chronic disease forced many passionate artisans to abandon their craft over suffocating distress.

Hair stylists face analogous respiratory risks from potent chemical fumes permeating salons daily, as do factory workers breathing manufacturing particulates. The hazardous substances differ but the outcome feels identical – airways constricting and careers crushed through no direct misstep of their own.

In most cases, safety guidelines and equipment lag behind scientific understanding of emerging environmental illnesses. Thus, regulatory cracks allow once benign-seeming jobs to turn tragic before precautions adapt. Attributing blame becomes complex when unintended aspects of simple work carry unintended negative health consequences over time.

This ongoing issue underlies the first reported death of a cannabis industry worker recently – a 27 year old woman in Massachusetts suffered fatal asthma attack allegedly induced by workplace irritant exposure after previously managing her condition fine.

While the budding cannabis production sector hardly evokes hazards on par with industrial meatpacking or mine drilling, it still breeds its own singular risks, as regulators race to understand. When prohibition gives way to mass cultivation, new variables emerge.

So today, we will explore this tragic accident within its broader context – well-meaning workers undone by latent threats in substances at first sniff seemingly harmless enough. But when health hangs in the balance of unknowns, caution takes on grave urgency.

Let us honor this woman’s memory then by scrutinizing the growing pains of an industry rushing to meet demand. If preventing the next victim means pausing enthusiasm for patient access, the tradeoff seems clear. For in the end, no reefer revolution succeeds on backs broken laboring in shadows.

First, do no harm.

This young woman’s tragic death represents a watershed moment for the nascent cannabis industry to mature its ethical priorities around worker safety. While an individual loss first and foremost, her unnecessary passing will undoubtedly save future lives through forcing regulatory awareness and accountability.

Inspectors noted the facility had not established respiratory protections for staff handling volumes of agitated cannabis dust hazardous to compromised systems. But in fairness, few viability guidelines existed around large-scale commercial cultivation when early operators raced to capitalize on legalization. But playing the devil’s advocate – it might be kind of obvious to ensure worker’s protections in an enclosed space with plant matter floating in the air.

The vast underground cannabis production knowledge understandably emphasized concealment and profitability over governance with workplace hazards an afterthought. Now that full legitimacy and scalability replaces shadowy improvisation, codifying revised best practices falls on regulators.

This expectant shift from illicit business to regulated corporate enterprise was bound to endure painful lessons given the pace of social change outpacing bureaucratic preparations.

But through those legislative growing pains, let us at least extract meaning from suffering to bless broader communities. Industry crucibles should purify, not corrupt, our integrity.

With cannabis governance still evolving conceptually, what better opportunity to embed safety-first regulatory models before harmful norms cement? Other sectors have learned similar lessons too late after normalizing harm. Cannabis need not repeat history’s errors.

This tragedy powerfully demonstrates why writing compassion into policy protects all. And if legacy operators wish to speak convincingly about ethical industry standards, addressing worker welfare makes the perfect starting point.

May this loss provide the urgent impetus to build cannabis production regulations correctly the first time as exemplary frameworks prioritizing people over profits. That outcome would make this woman’s unwarranted death not in vain, but an indispensable catalyst bettering society.

While the cannabis worker’s death has raised concerns around respiratory risks from mass cultivation, her underlying asthma represents an often minimized health crisis facing over 25 million Americans today. Asthma proves one of the nation’s most common, underestimated and deadly chronic conditions.

Over 10% of American adults suffer asthma currently, with rates highest among minorities and women. Triggers range from allergy irritants to pollution to respiratory infections. But outcomes can quickly turn fatal without proper prevention and treatment.

In fact, a shocking 39% of asthmatic adults reported experiencing attacks recently, signaling vast unmet care needs. And after decades of declines, death tolls are actually rising again, taking ten lives daily.

Behind those abstract figures lie needless everyday suffering and lost livelihoods as asthma constricts once active lives. Simple tasks turn laborious amidst terrifying bouts of breathlessness. And the condition worsens over time without tight symptom control.

Too often the social stigma around asthma invites blame, minimizing its trauma as an imagined ailment instead of recognizing its lethal reality. Yet epidemiology shows no group immune from onset as inflammation disables airways without warning.

Even physically fit individuals find themselves unexpectedly hospitalized, bedridden for weeks after sudden attacks. If the pandemic taught anything, breath stands among our most precious assumed attributes until compromised.

And marginalized groups shoulder the harshest asthma impacts, facing eroded quality of life and early death – especially Black women. These unjust outcomes demand policy attention on par with splashier diseases like COVID but of course, the treatment options aren’t always pharmaceutical – there are practical methods of working with the lungs and strengthening it. In fact, asthmatics should totally do breathwork!

Yet care infrastructure remains sorely lacking for proper asthma management beyond quick-fix inhalers and emergency interventions. Patients lack sustained access to preventative anti-inflammatory regimens, home air purifiers, allergen avoidance education and mental healthcare.

In this woman’s case, the risks tragically proved insurmountable given workplace irritant exposures. But better safety regulations alongside elevated clinical treatment could have prevented such catastrophe.

Ultimately her death illuminates twin priorities – destigmatizing asthma as easily managed while strengthening societal infrastructure supporting patients long-term. Because the occasional frightening attacks hide in plain sight chronic day-to-day ordeals for millions that our healthcare system continues neglecting at their peril, sometimes fatally.

This young woman’s sudden passing at 27 over an invisible workplace threat sparks calls to balance cannabis reform zeal with cautions of unintended consequences from breakneck policy change. But ultimately all sides share the goal of preventing such needless loss.

And from crisis wisdom crystallizes. Asthma safety protocols will now enter cultivation facility regulations to protect other vulnerable industry laborers. Her legacy thus uplifts colleagues through institutional evolution she helped initiate.

The sticky truth remains that prohibition’s end creates new dialogue around health tradeoffs from increased access and production. But reasonable guardrails arise through compassionate debate, not scare tactics demonizing the plant itself.

With cannabis, as all medicines, responsible frameworks honoring human dignity over profit must prevail. And each tragedy underlines the work remaining to place community wellbeing first amidst commercialized healthcare.

Yet as we walk this complex path together, broader perspective seems vital too – that life’s impermanence claims all fates regardless of circumstance. However graciously lived, no mortal bypasses death in the end.

So this incident should remind us as bystanders to love boldly, forgive freely, speak kindly, waste no days in grievance. For in between first breath and last, meaning weaves through bonds nurturing each other against the endless entropy.

Few depart expecting their curtain call so soon or suddenly. But in that obscurity lies wisdom to consciously cherish each transient now beyond assumed tomorrows. The thriving cannabis movement must model this mindfulness.

Honor this woman then by embedding vigilance into your protocols and presence into your days. Uplift colleagues through purposeful work culture. Allow loss to reveal life’s urgency. The rest flows through awakened hearts connected to transient blessings blooming all around if we pause to perceive them.

CANNABIS DUST IN THE AIR, READ ON…

CANNABIS DUST AND THE DEATH OF A TRIMMER WITH ASTHMA

It’s that time of year again – a season filled with sumptuous feasts, flowing drinks, and endless socializing. While the festivities bring joy, they can also take a toll on our waistlines and mental well-being.

The combination of rich foods, excess drinks, and the stress of holiday obligations can lead to a decline in physical health and an increase in stress levels.

Fortunately, there’s a solution that combines the benefits of walking and the therapeutic properties of marijuana – walks with weed. This article will explore how this simple activity can positively impact your waistline and mindset during the holiday season.

The Impact of the Holiday Season on Mental Health and Waistlines

According to statistics, 44% of women and 31% of men report increased holiday stress. The stress may stem from added family responsibilities during this time for women. The challenge is finding a balance between enjoying the festivities and maintaining both physical and mental well-being.

The Digestive Benefits of Walking

Exercise and Muscle Flexibility

The Mental Health Benefits of Walking

Marijuana and Enhanced Walking Experience

For those who use marijuana, incorporating it into a walk can elevate the experience. Choosing energizing strains with joy-inducing properties can enhance the pleasure derived from a stroll.

While walks with weed can be an excellent way to unwind, it’s crucial to prioritize safety and ensure a positive and enjoyable experience.

Choosing the Right Marijuana Strains for Walking

Not all marijuana strains are created equal when it comes to walking. Selecting strains with energizing properties to boost mood and motivation is essential. Sativa-dominant strains are known for their uplifting effects, making them suitable for enhancing the joy of a walk. Understanding the different strains and their effects is crucial for tailoring the experience to your preferences and needs.

Marijuana for Those with Difficulty Walking

Safety Considerations for Weed-infused Walks

Always carry a means of communication and inform someone of your plans, especially if walking alone. Responsible use ensures that the combination of walks and weed contributes positively to both physical and mental well-being.

Unplugging the Mind: Walking as a Mental Detox

Conclusion

WALKING THROUGH THE GARDEN OF A PSYCHONAUT!