When Timothy Leary (renowned psychologist) advised his generation to “turn on” by taking psychedelic drugs, he got it all wrong. The truth is, turning off parts of the brain may be the real secret to expanding your mind, a new study of hallucinogenic mushrooms finds.
(A version of this article appeared in Motley, UCC's official magazine in the Feb Issue, 2012)
The study involved 15 people who had previous experiences taking hallucinogens. These ‘lucky’ volunteers were then injected with psilocybin which is the ingredient responsible for mind trips thanks to mushrooms. The effect was immediate, peaking in just minutes and lasting for about an hour.
Some described the experience as ‘dissolving’, while another said they were ‘kneeling at the foot of God’. Their brains were scanned before and after the trips. It was shown that there were decreases in the amount of blood flowing through parts of their brains. The reduction of brain activity was seen in particular in the thalamus.
This reduction in action is not what would be expected. For years, people have thought that hallucinogens ‘turn-on’ brain activity. Even I, with my limited and naive knowledge perused that these kinds of drugs were activating other pathways in the brain. Stimulation, not depression. Stimulation would more likely explain the kaleidoscopic hallucinations often experienced by magic mushroom users.
So what is going on?
It may be suppressing core regions that help to coordinate and control the brain that has deeper, more philosophical consequences. It fits with how Aldous Huxley described the effects of mescaline — a hallucinogen that, in his words, flung wide the “doors of perception.”
So, decreased activity in certain parts of the brain may allow for a more unconstrained conscious experience, in a way lifting the ‘filters that are at play in terms of limiting our perception of reality’ according to Matthew Johnson, an experimental psychologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Scientists believe that the highly interconnected brain that we all have is essential for maintaining a person’s sense of self. So, by turning off some of these networks, it may be possible to treat certain psychological conditions by opening the brain to new ways of thinking, researchers hope.
Several studies have shown that psilocybin can change people’s attitudes for the better and may be useful for treating depression, a condition linked to too much activity in the normal network pathways of the brain.
“Chemically switching off might have very profound beneficial effects,” says Nutt, who suspects that psilocybin could also be useful for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder. “It may help people completely locked into a mindset that drives their lives.”
I have to add though that using psychedelic drugs is dangerous. Many people argue that taking mushrooms is safer than any of the other hallucinogens, and that could be the case, but one has to remember that altering your perception of reality can have lasting effects e.g persisting anxiety, psychological disturbances or even ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’.
It is seriously messing with your mind. So please, don’t use this article as an excuse to experiment. Studies like this are done to try and find ways to cure disorders in a controlled manner. Not to reason that it’s ok for drug misuse.
