Psychedelic brew ayahuasca's profound impact revealed in brain scans

[Judi Lynn]

Study gives most advanced picture yet of DMT compound’s effect on advanced functions such as imagination

Ian Sample Science editor
@iansample
Mon 20 Mar 2023 18.34 EDT

The brew is so potent that practitioners report not only powerful hallucinations, but near-death experiences, contact with higher-dimensional beings, and life-transforming voyages through alternative realities. Often before throwing up, or having trouble at the other end.

Now, scientists have gleaned deep insights of their own by monitoring the brain on DMT, or dimethyltryptamine, the psychedelic compound found in Psychotria viridis, the flowering shrub that is mashed up and boiled in the Amazonian drink, ayahuasca.

The recordings reveal a profound impact across the brain, particularly in areas that are highly evolved in humans and instrumental in planning, language, memory, complex decision-making and imagination. The regions from which we conjure reality become hyperconnected, with communication more chaotic, fluid and flexible.

“At the dose we use, it is incredibly potent,” said Robin Carhart-Harris, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. “People describe leaving this world and breaking through into another that is incredibly immersive and richly complex, sometimes being populated by other beings that they feel might hold special power over them, like gods.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/20/psychedelic-brew-ayahuasca-profound-impact-brain-scans-dmt

[intrepidity]

1. I can't wait until we have this kind of data about many compounds

at scale, where a coherent picture emerges. I hope I live to see it. A damn shame the War On Drugs delayed it this long, but with current tech, we should catch up quick.

[Wicked Blue]

2. It reminds me of Spice, from Dune nt

[Baked Potato]

3. Prediction: These compounds will become mainstream.

However, society will not be ready for even the smallest effects of the power of these substances.

There will come a time in which reality will be hard to define.

[Warpy]

4. Reality is already a slippery commodity for a hell of a lot of people

who have been told so many lies they believe all of them.

Friends who were fellow trippers in the 60s and 70s are either totally non religious or got scared into embracing old time religion and are zealots. That's mostly because we were experimenting with some powerful stuff without a social or ceremonial framework. It was a liberating experience for some of us, a destructive one for others.

The little work that the DEA allows has been illuminating, the various drugs having great potential for treating addictions, depression and a host of other problems, something the local tribes have been saying about mescaline for years.

I had hoped I would see the end of Nixon's mean spirited drug war, but that's not likely. This country has a hard and incredibly cruel Puritan streak in its psyche, things that help many people are withheld so that a few can be punished, and the Puritans want to watch.