Letter emailed to the BBC News website on 6th of January 2011, regarding this article:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12122409
Hello,
Regarding today’s article ‘Taking the magic mushroom drug psilocybin for a trial’, I have a number of comments.
“Psilocybin is a hallucinogenic drug, so I was extremely apprehensive.
It also has a dark past. As well as being used recreationally, psilocybin and other hallucinogenic drugs were used in the 1950s and 60s as part of brain-washing experiments by the US military.”
These early paragraphs are misleading: Although taking a psychedelic drug can be a frightening task, clinical studies, particularly the recent ones, have taken a great deal of time to reassure participants of the safety of the drug within the controlled setting, and I doubt that this study would have been different. This should be mentioned in the article.
Also, the statement that psilocybin was used in US Military experiments in the 50’s and 60’s, while true, is exaggerated in the absence of context. Psilocybin was not isolated until 1958, and was first used in experiments by Leary and Alpert at Harvard University in the early 60’s. LSD was used extensively in the MKULTRA project, and psilocybin was used to a much lesser degree, and likely only after the Harvard experiments. These are two very different drugs regardless of their similarities, and this paragraph misleads the reader by omitting facts and contextual information.
“Since it is a class A drug, taking it would normally be illegal. But the former government drugs adviser, Professor David Nutt of Bristol University and a team from Imperial College believe that psilocybin is worth investigating as it may have a role to play in medicine, possibly as a treatment for severe depression.
They want to study what psilocybin does to the brains of healthy volunteers. They have permission to administer the drug within the controlled environment of a clinical trial.”
These paragraphs are structured incorrectly. It should read “…Professor David Nutt of Bristol University and a team from Imperial College have permission to administer the drug within the controlled environment of a clinical trial. They believe that psilocybin is worth investigating as it may have a role to play in medicine, possibly as a treatment for severe depression and want to study what psilocybin does to the brains of healthy volunteers.”
Moving on…
“The team were expecting psilocybin to have a profound impact, so I was put through a battery of psychological tests to check my mental stability.
Hallucinogens are very unpredictable. I would not have been allowed to take part if I had not passed the tests. But there was still the risk of a “bad trip” which is said to feel like being trapped in a nightmare.”
This is again, unbalanced and misleading. The battery of psychological tests given are more a factor in ensuring good data from the experiment. This paragraph gives the impression that there is significant risk to mental health in taking psilocybin, something which is not supported by scientific evidence, and ironically enough, a perspective in opposition to the trial’s overall purpose.
The author then brings out the old stereotypes of ‘the bad trip’. While this is definitely a reality for incorrect use of psilocybin, his own use within a controlled clinical setting does not deserve such comparisons. The author betrays a significant naiveté about tryptamine hallucinogens and their use here.
“It was beautiful, but disturbing. It was also intensely frustrating because I wanted someone to share the experience with, and I was all alone in a metal and plastic tube.”
The best paragraph without a doubt. Soon followed by the worst:
“After about ten minutes they had collected enough data, so they let me out of the scanner. Although the hallucinogenic effects of psilocybin had largely worn off I now had an uncontrollable urge to talk. . . and talk . . . and talk.”
Although the injection of psilocybin will likely shorten its action, this paragraph is very misleading. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin#Pharmacokinetics - Psilocybin does not begin to wear off after 10 minutes. This is dangerous and misleading and should be retracted from this article immediately. The fact is, what the author was actually experiencing was the difference between eyes closed, lying down and eyes open, sitting up. These are two very different experiences while under the influence of psilocybin. The effects were not beginning to wear off after 10 minutes, and this is observable in the video clip.
“This is also one of the reasons why magic mushrooms and other psychedelic drugs are so potentially dangerous. Without a sense of who and what they are, there are cases of people running into busy roads or trying to fly with fatal consequences.”
Yawn. If the author is not going to discuss the principles of set and setting he should not be writing about these anecdotal examples, nor clinical use of psilocybin.
Overall this article is a disaster. As someone who has a deep interest in psilocybin, and is well read in the subject, I am appalled that this has been published by the BBC. If the author had referenced recent research from the US regarding use of psilocybin to reduce anxiety in stage 4 cancer patients, or the research that suggests it can induce mystical experiences and lasting positive life changes, then perhaps this article would have appeared more balanced. However, it would still lack some of the contextual information which is dangerously absent here.
We are not living in the 60’s anymore. Even if the government cannot see the value in rational thought and scientific experiment when it comes to the issue of drug use, the media now has a duty to.