source
A
case study in the scientific journal
Frontiers in Neuroscience shows that combating Alzheimer's with psilocybin is not a fantasy. A woman in her eighties with ten years of advanced Alzheimer's — barely able to speak, incontinent, largely immobile — regained her speech, memory, mobility, and bladder control within nineteen hours of a single high dose of psilocybin. No drug approved by the pharmaceutical industry has ever achieved such a result.
The family of the woman, an octogenarian Japanese-American, decided — outside the regular medical circuit — to administer five grams of psilocybin-containing mushrooms of the so-called Enigma strain.
The acute phase was severe: fever, extreme sweating, and a deep, sleep-like state that lasted for hours. But when she came to, she started talking spontaneously. Whole stories. Complete sentences. She recognized family members, held conversations, and was continent again for the first time in years. In the weeks that followed, she continued to improve: she dressed herself, walked independently, and responded emotionally to her surroundings.
- How psilocybin makes this possible
Epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher, who brought the case to widespread attention, explains the mechanism clearly: psilocybin stimulates the growth of dendrites — the branches of nerve cells responsible for intercellular communication in the brain. In Alzheimer's, those connections are damaged one by one. The substance appears to provide a kind of restart signal to remaining neural networks.
Hulscher discussed the study on the talk show
Ladies of Another View on
BEK TV:
Scientific research confirms that psilocybin thoroughly disrupts major brain dynamics through the activation of 5-HT2A serotonin receptors. Studies show that the so-called default network—the network that is severely affected in Alzheimer's—is temporarily reorganized. Brain scans after use show that brain regions that were no longer communicating with each other temporarily begin to do so again.
- What the pharmaceutical industry has delivered all those years
Let's be honest: the pharmaceutical industry has been pumping billions into Alzheimer's medication for decades. The result? Drugs that, at best, marginally slow decline, with a host of side effects as a bonus. Medicines like aducanumab were launched with much fanfare — and subsequently surrounded by controversy regarding their efficacy and the role of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in their approval.
A single dose of dried mushrooms did more for this woman than anything established medical science had to offer. That is not proof — it concerns a single case — but it is a slap in the face to a system that has actively suppressed, criminalized, and laughed off alternatives for years. Interest in psychedelics for medical applications is growing, partly due to research into depression, PTSD, and anxiety disorders. However, there is hardly any controlled research on advanced dementia — a stage in which patients are completely dependent and have lost their voice.
Large-scale research is the only way to confirm whether this is reproducible. This requires political will, research budgets not dependent on pharmaceutical interests, and a fair reassessment of the legal status of psilocybin. As long as these steps are not taken, patients and families remain dependent on a system that has little to offer them — while promising alternatives remain in the legal and societal shadows.
For the woman in this case study, it made the difference. For how many others could that also be the case?
Re: Caring for relatives with Alzheimer's : the modern curse of the elderly
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