After years of dealing with pain, anxiety and depression stemming from their playing days, some former pro athletes are turning to psychedelic mushrooms for relief.
Clinical research must also overcome the mushroom's image as a party drug, something hippies share out of plastic baggies in the back rows of concerts. To change that narrative, Wake and other companies say they are leaning hard into the science. This isn't thrill-seeking, they say, but legitimate medicine treating real psychiatric conditions.
Aaronson has designed clinical trial protocols for Compass Pathways, a competing for-profit company seeking to market psilocybin treatments, and has turned down other firms looking to create a footprint in the psychedelic space. She spoke slowly and deliberately, waving smoke from an urn as she urged participants to gather in a circle on the lawn of the estate. After drinking a 3- to 5-gram dose of psilocybin, which had been ground into a powder and mixed with orange juice, the athletes would slip into a dream state for the next four to six hours.
The stillness was broken when Renfrow stood up from his mat after three hours. He'd worn a sweatshirt to the ceremony with his initials, JR, emblazoned across the chest. He peeled the shirt off his body in frustration and tossed it aside.As the ceremony wound down, the athletes began sitting up and a few chatted quietly.
Researchers have discovered that classic psychedelics, like psilocybin and LSD, act on the serotonin 2A receptor, the same receptor targeted by the most common antidepressants on the market. But beyond that, the understanding of how they work to help people is, at this point, more theory or conjecture than scientific fact.
The prevailing theory of how psilocybin and other psychedelics might help treat mental health is that they tamp down activity in the brain's default mode network. It's a set of regions in the brain that are engaged when people are ruminating about something and one of the few parts that is overactive in people with depression.
"It is maybe that we're helping people get to the point of being able to accept the things they can't change and to change the things that they can," Aaronson said, echoing the Serenity Prayer, often used in 12-step recovery programs."Personal autonomy is taken away from people with depression. They don't feel like they can operate in their own best interest. They get caught in internal conflict. And I think this helps them get beyond that.
"It's OK to stop chasing the football journey," Renfrow said."I'm not going to suit up this year and that's cool with me. I'll be able to figure it out.""Football was her," Renfrow said, and he began crying."We went on all my recruiting trips. So I had to let her go with letting football go. And that was a big moment when I stood up; I had to let her go. So it was tough, but I had to do it.
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