Your Brain On Psilocybin

Hi everyone, today we're going to talk about psilocybin. The active component of what most of us refer to as "magic mushrooms" is psilocybin, which has been demonstrated to be useful in treating conditions like end-of-life anxiety. Due to its hallucinogenic properties, psilocybin alters the mind. Our degree of consciousness is altered as a result. Psychedelics, like psilocybin, altered our experience of memory, thoughts, feelings, and other aspects of our internal and external worlds. You might be shocked to hear that psilocybin is essentially serotonin. Both auditory and visual hallucinations have been linked to magic mushrooms. Even when your ears are closed, your brain will still produce vivid visuals and cause you to hear sounds. By changing your perspective of time, it can also make time seem slower, however the correct docent might lessen these effects. Fortunately, as psilocybin mushrooms are not known to cause addiction, it won't be a major problem.

However, psilocybin's primary action is actually a serotonin mimic, it does so in a very particular way because it strongly stimulates a subset of serotonin receptors, which causes neuroplasticity at the level of neural circuits, or the parts of the brain and the connections between them that support functions like perception and memory.

The actual substance that enters the brain and causes all of the altered consciousness and brain rewiring effects that we associate with psilocybin is called psilocin. Thus, knowing how psilocybin is transformed into psilocin has a significant impact on how long a psilocybin journey lasts and whether it results in a shorter or longer window for neuroplasticity.

The application of psilocybin and other psychedelics for the treatment of various mental health issues, such as depression, alcohol abuse disorder, and various addictions, as well as things like OCD and eating disorders, is becoming increasingly exciting because it has the potential to fundamentally change all of those things, not just while one is under the influence of the drug, but also afterwards and for a very long time afterwards.

So what is the function of serotonin?. Given how closely psilocybin (psilocin) and serotonin resemble one other in their active forms, it is paramount to comprehend this. You are familiar with the overall impacts of the alterations that other neurons' activity undergoes when you use serotonin because it is a neuromodulator. For example, feeling full or satisfied, or knowing that we've had enough of something or other—food, company, sex, or pleasure in general. In all of that, serotonin plays a role. Among a plethora of other factors, mood management encompasses everything from our perception of pleasure to our sense of lack thereof, including our level of motivation.

It functions in tandem with other neurotransmitters like norepinephrine, epinephrine, and dopamine. Actually, if this—which it is not—were an episode on serotonin. You would quickly come to understand how many various processes that affect our day-to-day existence are impacted by serotonin. This is one of the reasons why many antidepressant drugs that change the quantity of serotonin transmitted in the brain have adverse effects that affect mood, libido, hunger, sleep, and other aspects of life. The reason for this is the wide range of functions that serotonin performs. Furthermore, the wide variety of so-called serotonin receptors explains why serotonin is involved in so many diverse processes. The possibility that psychedelics, like psilocybin, could help treat mental health conditions for which there hasn't been much access to treatment up until now excites me much. In addition, I have a basic curiosity about the functioning and potential for change of the brain. Psilocybin is an extremely potent substance. Not only to be affected by, but also in terms of its persistent alterations