Watts: Psilocybin therapy relies on the mind's internal homeostatic healing
Dr. Rosalind Watts · Researching Psilocybin's Effects on Depression - Dr. Rosalind Watts · Y Combinator · Mar 15, 2018 · at 36:19
Dr. Rosalind Watts discusses the clinical mechanism of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy compared to traditional cognitive behavioral therapy.
0:00 / 0:35exact quote · 35.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“With psilocybin it's completely different because the expert is themselves. They are the expert because what's happening, the healing power of this is something in the unconscious mind, their own unconscious mind is writing itself. There's a homeostatic principle at play here, I'm sure of it, so that whatever things If you think of your body as a system, your body and mind is a system, your, whatever things need dealing with, whatever problems there are in the system, forget our manual of ABCD, whatever is actually going on in this holistic system, the psilocybin helps just kind of goes there somehow.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Dr. Rosalind Watts
Watts: Antidepressant research is often short-term to serve drug manufacturers' interests
“The research into the effect of antidepressant drugs often is very short-term. It looks at them for a very short period of time without much follow-up. So because that serves the purposes of the people making these drugs.”
Watts: Psilocybin's antidepressant effects typically last two to three months
“It seems to, for most people last for about two or three months and then the depression starts to come back.”
Watts: David Nutt was fired after stating MDMA is safer than horseriding
“He was, he worked for the government he was the drug czar, so he informed them or advised them about the scientific harms of different drugs and how they should be scheduled or, you know, where they should be in the schedule of illegal drugs, and he was sacked…”
Watts: Psilocybin deactivates brain regions driving negative rumination loops
“And the key finding was that psilocybin seems to deactivate the part of your mind or brain that is responsible for ruminating, for negative thinking on a loop.”
Watts: Antidepressants are short-term fixes ignoring depression's root causes
“You know, as a short-term thing to get people through a crisis time, I think sometimes it can be really helpful, and for some people it works, but for a lot of people it's a short-term fix that doesn't really change the causes of the depression.”