What a trip.
After a decade of cognitive and functional decline, an 80-year-old patient with advanced Alzheimer’s disease showed remarkable signs of recovery.
All it took was a single dose of an experimental hallucinogen to get her speaking more than she had in years — and that’s just the top of the list of her improvements.
Alzheimer’s, which affects millions of Americans, gradually destroys memory, thinking skills and the capacity to perform basic tasks.
The degenerative disease is generally regarded as a phase of irreversible decline, marked by the patient’s loss of autonomy, communication, continence, mobility and social interaction.
Current treatment strategies are mostly supportive, and functional recovery is considered highly unlikely.
Psilocybin, the psychedelic component of magic mushrooms, has previously been touted as an effective treatment for depression, anxiety, addiction, and PTSD — but now researchers say it has the potential to be used in Alzheimer’s intervention as well.
In this case study, published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, researchers focused on an 80-year-old Japanese American woman with Alzheimer’s. She had declined over the previous decade and was reduced to urinary incontinence, speaking in single syllables, and dependence on caregivers for mobility support and daily living.
She was then given a 5g dose of magic mushrooms.
During the initial phase, she was agitated, sweated profusely and entered a prolonged sleep state that suggested unconsciousness. But around hour 19, she began speaking in full autobiographical sentences, recalling life events she had been unable to articulate for years.
In the days and weeks that followed, more incredible changes emerged. She regained urinary continence, even in the evenings, and began dressing herself. She was able to make and maintain eye contact, remember social interactions, emotionally respond to others, and hold lucid conversations.
At a one-month follow-up, the patient remained continent and reported a positive emotional experience, telling those around: “It is pleasant to come here.”
A subsequent 3g dose of psilocybin was given to the patient, and was followed by increased verbal expression, humor and greater walking agility.
Miraculous as the mushrooms may seem, the study authors note that the patient’s improvements were temporary and psilocybin did not reverse the disease, as her neurodegeneration remained.
They did not specify exactly how long the improvements lasted.
However, the research does demonstrate that some function believed to be irrevocably lost to late-stage dementia may not be gone but merely inaccessible — and that a mushroom trip has the potential to recover them, albeit briefly.
The authors note that the study’s primary limitation is the one-patient model.
It’s been previously established that the compounds in psilocybin allow new brain connections to form, and shrooms activate the brain’s serotonin receptors, which control things like cognition, mood, and perception
Previous research found that psilocybin could alleviate depression for at least five years after just one dose.
The positive effects of magic mushrooms have prompted proud users across the country to take mood-boosting micro-doses — or a fraction of what a standard dose would be — to get through the day.
But the psychedelic party drug-turned-wellness-secret also has its well-known pitfalls, notably the possibility of a bad trip, which can include vivid, often frightening, hallucinations.
Magic mushrooms can make the user see, hear, or feel things that aren’t real, which can be distressing and cause accidents. At worst, they can induce psychosis, and those who have a history of mental disorders like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia are more at risk.
