Depression is challenging to manage, especially since many antidepressants can take weeks to work and simply fail for nearly one-third of sufferers. New research presented in April at the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference in Oakland, California, suggests psychedelic drugs can help people battling depression and other psychiatric disorders that defy conventional therapies.
Dráulio Barros de Araújo, a neuroscientist at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil, presented new findings from a study that used ayahuasca — a hallucinogenic brew of bark and leaves that groups indigenous to the Amazon use in healing ceremonies — to help treat depression. (The study hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet but is available here.)
In a 2015 pilot study, Araújo and his team showed that one dose of ayahuasca (between roughly four to seven ounces) quickly alleviated depression in six Brazilian volunteers without serious side effects. Encouraged by these results, he repeated the ...
