LSD was created in the late 1930s, and its extreme psychedelic properties were discovered just a handful of years later. Almost immediately, the vivid dream-like hallucinatory effects on the brain were of great interest to scientists, who began studying it intensely. Early on, there were promising signs of LSD as a treatment for depression, anxiety, and even alcoholism. However, most research into hallucinogens like LSD, psilocybin, and DMT was shut down in the ’60s and ’70s as the substances were outlawed. It wasn’t until fairly recently that interest in the potential medicinal effects was reignited, and the last few years have yielded some truly amazing findings. New case study reveals effect of psilocybin, or magic mushrooms, on elderly Alzheimer’s patient A recent paper published in Frontiers in Neuroscience shares a remarkable story. The authors present the case of a Japanese-American woman in her 80s who had been living with symptoms of Alzheimer’s for a decade. Over the past five years, in particular, the severity of her illness had worsened dramatically. She could only speak monosyllabically, if at all, and shows flat affect—essentially, she was barely able to interact at all, even with close loved ones. It’s a state many families are sadly familiar with. Alzheimer’s is a heartbreaking disease that not only steals so much from the person afflicted, but isolates them from friends and family. It becomes almost impossible for loved ones to connect or share in activities with a person with severe Alzheimer’s. Quite often, Alzheimer’s patients don’t even remember their own children or spouses. With little left to lose, a physician decided to try a treatment of psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms. Psilocybin mushrooms are showing promising therapeutic effects. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons Remarkable results 19 hours after taking psilocybin The woman was given five grams of a mushroom strain called Enigma, known for being extremely potent. Five grams is also considered a high dose, in general. According to PAB Counseling, five grams can result in a “complete disconnect from consensus reality,” and powerful hallucinations that can be “overwhelming, perhaps bizarre, and indescribable.” For many hours after the woman took her dose, she was in what the authors call a deep sleep. She was sweating and developed a fever. But at about the 19 hour mark, she became lucid again, and something incredible happened: She began talking. According to the published paper, she talked for hours, recalling details from her life in “autobiographical conversation.” Not only that, but the effects lasted for days. Her working memory returned. She began smiling and sustaining eye contact. Even her physical symptoms alleviated, and she was able to control her bladder, regain motor control, dress herself, and showed improved alertness for weeks after. A month later, she took another dose The woman took a smaller dose in the second supervised session, but once again experienced miraculous improvement, including “greater verbal expressivity, improved facial mimicry, spontaneous humor, emotionally valenced autobiographical imagery, and increased agility while walking.” She was even documented saying: “It is pleasant to come here” and describing a vision of surfing on a beach with her son. The presence of spontaneous humor in the woman who, before, could barely speak is pretty incredible. Alzheimer’s takes a serious toll on a person’s sense of humor, and in fact, major changes or loss of humor can be an early warning sign of cognitive decline. The gains were temporary, or as the authors call it, “transient,” but no doubt felt incredibly meaningful to her family and caregivers. Case study has major limitations, but invites some exciting questions This study was not conducted under laboratory conditions. Rather, it was performed privately and later documented as a case study. It also focuses on just a single participant, which means that others may not experience the same results. And of course, a temporary recovery of cognitive and motor abilities is not the same as a cure. But the findings have some really exciting implications for future research. For starters, it has long been thought that any kind of recovery for Alzheimer’s patients was unlikely: that those parts of their working brain were simply “gone.” Most Alzheimer’s treatments focus on retaining what abilities still remain rather than recovering anything lost. In other words, symptom management. The story of this 80-year-old woman totally alters the picture. It shows that, perhaps, those abilities are not gone at all, but are hidden or suppressed in such a way that they can be reactivated with the right treatment. Psychedelic studies have broken incredible ground in the last few years. MDMA-assisted therapy, for example, is a rapidly growing field of psychology that has shown promising results in the treatment of PTSD. A growing number of U.S. states are also exploring or legalizing psilocybin for therapeutic uses as it has shown to be one of the only effective treatments for major depression in patients that haven’t responded to other medications. And now, “magic mushrooms” might just be the breakthrough we need for Alzheimer’s, notoriously one of the most complex and challenging diseases to treat. It’s fascinating to think where we might already be without 50 years of taboo and tight restrictions around studying these psychedelics. The post A woman with Alzheimer’s hadn’t spoken in 5 years. A dose of psilocybin changed everything. appeared first on Upworthy.