Posted by pinksharkmark (64.32.117.190) on October 06, 2001 at 16:05:49:
In Reply to: mushrooms posted by katrina on October 06, 2001 at 09:33:08:
In my opinion, and I am certainly not a physician, nor even a medical student, a small dose of psilocybin will not worsen his condition. I have personally met several wheelchair-bound people who "trip" on a regular basis with no apparent ill effects, and know by reputation of many more. It must be said, however that there are many different conditions that may leave one wheelchair-bound, so the fact that some find psilocybin to be benign does not guarantee that ALL will.
Am I correct in assuming that some of the myelin sheathing of the axons in the brainstem has been damaged or destroyed, causing a "leakage" of signals between axons of the nervous pathways that control muscular action, resulting in erratic or spontaneous response to signals originating in the brain? If this is the case, then it is a possibility that, during the several hours the psilocybin is active, his co-ordination and speech difficulties may be increased. On the other hand, they may be decreased.
In my opinion, though, psilocybin will probably do nothing for the trigeminal neuralgia. The (probable) reason psilocybin works for cluster headaches is that it normalizes the serotonin-regulating mechanism. My understanding of trigeminal neuralgia is that the pain is triggered not by a fluctuation of serotonin levels, but by the trigeminal nerve ITSELF. For whatever reason, it occasionally "spasms" and fires off wild and erratic signals. In other words, in the case of TN, the nerve itself is the root cause, while in the case of CH it is the REACTION of the nerve to fluctuating serotonin levels that is the problem.
This is a subtle, but important distinction.
I can only speak for myself, but if I were in the place of your husband, I would first try a very low dose of dried mushrooms prepared as a tea: perhaps one half a gram. If there were no negative reaction, I would then increase each succeeding dose by half a gram until it could be determined whether or not the CH was responsive to the therapy.
For the record, I would be delighted to be proven wrong when I predict that TN will not respond to psilocybin.
pinky