Psychedelic Pharmaceuticals; Does a Psilocybin Drug Make Sense?
Psilocybin has an ancient and spiritual past that many believe to have a connection to the evolution of humankind. The chemical is a natural constituent of a fungus that often goes by the moniker “magic mushrooms,” and its effects range from anxiety relief to mystical experiences.
But now scientists have found a way to create psilocybin in a laboratory setting. And as with all artificially produced chemicals, the question arises as to whether scientists can replicate the intricacies, complexities, dynamism, and holism of organic ingredients that took nature eons to create.
With his team of researchers, Miami University professor Andrew Jones recently discovered a process to reliably produce psilocybin, which they refer to as a drug that could help treat depression.
Currently, methods of synthetically reproducing the chemical are in use but are relatively expensive. Jones said he was looking for a way to maintain “biological integrity” and reduce production costs, so he turned to metabolic engineering to increase a fungal cell’s ability to produce a compound of interest.
Follow the Money
Upon learning about these plans, those with a more naturalistic or holistic bent may ask: Why can’t mushrooms just be grown and harvested in natural conditions without the interference of scientists? Of course, the answer is rather simple: It’s all about the money.
Now that psilocybin has been recognized for its medicinal value, there’s huge profit potential in selling it. In order to carry out a business plan, there must be a way to increase yields and speed up production. Andrew Jones seems to have found a way to achieve both. He said, “Over the course of this study we improved production from only a few milligrams per liter to over a gram per liter, a nearly 500-fold increase.”
Miami University reported that Jones is pursuing the next phase of his psilocybin research by looking for ways to make E. coli bacteria a better host — the next step toward standardizing production levels that are “required by the pharmaceutical industry.”
Scientists argue that the university’s methodology isn’t a synthetic or artificial process. Instead, it’s a matter of splicing DNA. High Times magazine explained that after isolating the DNA sequence behind the production of psilocybin in mushrooms, the university’s “team did a simple copy/paste, splicing the mushroom DNA into the genome of E. coli. Then, they sat back and watched the E. coli work its mushroom magic, following the DNA’s instructions to produce psilocybin…By imbuing the humble E. coli bacterium with the psilocybin-producing power of a fungus, the researchers made the jump between two completely distinct domains of life.”
More Than Just a Recreational High
Psilocybin is naturally found in the mushroom Psilocybe cubensis, which grows wild in pastures and meadows. The mushroom is one of more than a hundred species that contain the psychoactive compounds psilocybin and psilocin. These “magic mushrooms” have long been used in Central American religious ceremonies, by ancient Japanese shamans, and by peoples across the globe.
While people use psilocybin mushrooms to produce a psychoactive effect that creates a mental and physical high, early human beings may have had a much more utilitarian and spiritual use. Some theorists, including Graham Hancock and Terence McKenna, believe mushrooms played a substantial role in the human species’ co-evolution with the planet (and all things natural).
McKenna made the case that psychedelics were instrumental in helping human beings evolve in consciousness and culture, “giving our mushroom-munching ancestors a leg up on rivals by enhancing their visual and linguistic capacities.”
Although most states in North America consider psilocybin mushrooms an illegal, controlled substance, these species of fungi are reportedly among the safest of mind-altering plants. They are non-addictive and nearly impossible (if at all possible) to overdose on, and can be home-grown. According to a substantial report by the Global Drug Survey, cited in Popular Science, people “tripping” on the mushroom are least likely to end up in the emergency room when compared to users of any other drug, including marijuana.
The Pharmacological Value of Magic Mushrooms
David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, said, “Psilocybin does in 30 seconds what antidepressants take three to four weeks to do.” A single dose of psilocybin, in addition to psychotherapy, can often resolve cases of depression and anxiety that resist standard treatment.
But anxiety is big business these days. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America reports that anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting 40 million adults in the United States who are age 18 and older — that’s 18.1 percent of the population every year. And people with an anxiety disorder are three to five times more likely to go to the doctor, and six times more likely to be hospitalized for psychiatric issues, than those who do not suffer from anxiety disorders.
Is the New Psilocybin Unnatural?
While the new way of producing psilocybin may not be called synthetic, it certainly isn’t natural. Scientists have once again inserted themselves between the natural process and the human organism. It may be said that it is pure hubris to do so, simply because the natural order involves evolution — a slow process of adaptation and mutation.
When scientists intervene in this process, then the variables leading to the possibilities of what can occur are incalculable. And the idea of holism — a fact of nature that has brought us to this point in the life of all species — is discarded by mainstream science in favor of isolating active plant constituents and/or circumventing the natural process.
Now, thanks to — or because of — Miami University’s scientific breakthrough, as with so many other artificially-created chemicals and genetically engineered plants, the psilocybin race is on. Only time will tell whether side effects may come out of the latest efforts to produce yet another heretofore natural substance outside of nature.
Consciousness Is A Big Problem For Science
Can Science Explain Consciousness?
Science has provided humanity with an incredible understanding of our physical world. But when it comes to the issue of the human mind, progress has been slow and littered with issues. Materialist science is attempting to prove that consciousness is merely a byproduct of the complex processes in the brain, and inseparable from the physical body. In simpler terms, your “mind” is the resulting process of neurons firing in your brain, nothing more and nothing less. Unfortunately, there is no actual neurological proof to support this idea, and for many who are deeply studying the question of the mind, these scientists are not looking in the right place, or using the right methods.
Alternative theories propose non-local consciousness: the idea that our brains are merely the physical conduit for the mind, not the source of its origin. These theories often explore fringe cases, such as near-death experiences, precognition, and psychic phenomena, in hopes that they can provide a more complete picture of the human mind. Of course, the majority of this evidence is not measurable to the extent that most mainstream, materialist scientists would accept. Responding to eye-witness accounts describing near-death experience, Neil DeGrasse Tyson said:
“Give me something that does not have to flow through your senses, because your senses are some of the worst data taking devices that exist, and modern science did not achieve maturity until we had instruments that either extended our senses or replaced them.”
Indeed, from the simplest microscope to the large hadron collider, it is impossible to imagine scientific progress without such instruments. But, if our senses are considered fallible as scientific instruments, what should we make of the mind we use to process and interpret this collected data? Human consciousness must be considered as unreliable as our senses, perhaps even more unreliable, as we know far less about the mind than we do about our sense organs.
This paradoxical reality is a serious issue for science: how can we study the human mind if the only tool we have at our disposal is the human mind itself?
In his book, Why Science Is Wrong, science podcaster Alex Tsakiris sums up the problem: “If my consciousness is more than my physical brain, then consciousness is the X-factor in every science experiment. It’s the asterisk in the footnotes that says, ‘We came as close as we could, but we had to leave out consciousness in order to make our numbers work.’”
Does Consciousness Exist Outside the Brain?
Part of this “consciousness problem” in scientific study is the “observer effect”: the theory that simply observing a situation or phenomenon necessarily changes that phenomenon. On a quantum level, physicists found that even passive observation of quantum phenomena can change the measured result, leading to the popular belief that a conscious mind can directly affect reality.
According to physicist John Wheeler, quantum mechanics implies that our observations of reality influence its unfolding. We live in a “participatory universe,” in which mind is as important as matter. Our belief in what is possible might actually create those possibilities, and it might reinforce the physical nature of our entire universe. If we do, in fact, co-create a shared consciousness, then our beliefs would necessarily influence our science.
Dan Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine, has argued for decades that we can not simply look inside the brain when trying to understand the mind: “I realized if someone asked me to define the coastline but insisted, is it the water or the sand, I would have to say the coast is both sand and sea,” says Siegel. “I started thinking, maybe the mind is like the coastline. Your thoughts, feelings, memories, attention, what you experience in this subjective world is part of mind.”
Those exploring the outer frontiers of consciousness study are willing to take this idea much, much further. Ervin Laszlo, PhD is one of many thinkers who proposes the idea of a cosmic consciousness, describing it as a web that connects the entire universe. This field manifests locally in the human brain, theoretically meaning that the brain is able to connect to the consciousness of the entire universe. He calls this deep dimension of consciousness the Akashic Field, borrowing the term from ancient Hindu philosophy. In support of this theory, he presents numerous case-studies of near-death experiences, after-death communication, and recollections of past lives.
Laszlo writes:
“We are beginning to see the entire universe as a holographically interlinked network of energy and information. We, and all things in the universe, are non-locally connected with each other and with all other things in ways that are unfettered by the hitherto known limitations of space and time.”
Those “known limitations of space and time” are the border walls of materialist science, and in the last century, quantum mechanics has begun to tear that wall down, one brick at a time. Quantum entanglement proves that tiny particles can communicate instantaneously in defiance of our known rules governing space and time. Many have hypothesized that if these tiny particles can remain connected outside of standard physical means, than the entire universe is inherently connected, as Laszlo and others have suggested. And while that may someday be proven true, we have barely scratched the surface when it comes to the quantum implications of the mind.
Although there is extensive evidence for non-local consciousness, it is rarely embraced by mainstream scientists because it can’t be measured using currently available technology, and that makes significant progress challenging. Accepting non-locality forces the rejection of a purely materialist worldview, and that is a huge disruption for our current scientific paradigm, which dominates consensus thinking on how we understand the world. Yet, the study of consciousness is slowly forcing materialistic science to admit it may not be able to explain everything.
As Nikola Tesla famously said, “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” The study of human consciousness could be the motivating factor pushing us towards that new frontier.
