When final we spoke with Roland Griffiths, PhD, within the fall of 2021, psychedelic-assisted therapies have been simply beginning to enter mainstream public consciousness – as WebMD explored with Griffiths’s assist in an in-depth sequence Magic Mushrooms, MDMA, and the Promise of Psychedelic-Assisted Remedy. 

For Griffiths, a psychopharmacologist and an elder statesman of psychedelic analysis, it was a really gratifying time in each his skilled and private life. The psychedelic substances he had been finding out within the lab for two a long time have been lastly being taken significantly as medicines that might assist folks with particular psychological well being points like melancholy, nervousness, dependancy, and PTSD. His private relationships with these closest to him have been good, and his major relationship together with his life accomplice, Marla, was a supply of nice that means and sustenance. 

Then, just some months after our dialog, medical doctors recognized Griffiths with end-stage colon most cancers. He had each purpose to be resentful and indignant, as he’d been cautious about his well being and adopted medical doctors’ orders concerning screenings.

Because the analysis, Griffiths additionally established an endowed professorship at Johns Hopkins College to help world-class analysis on psychedelic substances “to advance understanding of well-being and spirituality within the service of selling human flourishing for generations to come back.”

Right here, Griffiths and his spouse, Marla Weiner, sit down with Manish Agrawal, MD, an oncologist and psychedelics researcher at Sunstone Therapies, to debate Griffiths’s analysis, his meditation observe, the psychedelic expertise, and extra. 

Sept. 22, 2023 — We people have a combined relationship with alcohol. On one hand, it helps us calm down after a aggravating day and really feel extra comfy in social conditions. However extreme use can affect your well being, elevating the danger of unsafe habits, accidents, violence, and illness. 

Now researchers are saying that curbing these damaging results begins by higher understanding alcohol’s attraction. Take a current research into alcohol’s results on males’s sexual urges. 

A few drinks doesn’t provide you with “beer goggles” that make different individuals look extra fascinating, the research discovered. However being tipsy could make you extra desirous to strategy a pretty stranger. 

An amusing discovering? Perhaps. But it surely additionally raises questions on alcohol abuse.

“Whereas these findings could seem titillating, we hope that they contribute to a extra severe goal, particularly to higher perceive why some persons are particularly delicate to alcohol’s alluring social results,” mentioned research co-author Michael Sayette, PhD, a professor of psychology on the College of Pittsburgh, the place the research was carried out. 

Within the research, the psychologists had 18 pairs of excellent pals (for a bar hangout vibe) drink vodka and cranberry drinks earlier than score photographs. The boys may chat however not talk about their scores.

The boys had been advised that after score the photographs, they’d have the ability to choose their prime 4 to probably work together with in a future research. (That meet-up was by no means meant to be actual.) On a separate event, the identical pairs of males got here into the lab and rated photographs whereas ingesting alcohol-free cranberry drinks, as a degree of comparability.

There’s nothing flawed with self-confidence, in fact. However while you be taught to depend on beer or tequila photographs for braveness — particularly, maybe, if that confidence leads to intercourse — it may set off or worsen alcohol abuse, Sayette mentioned. 

A Sobering Situation

Alcohol abuse has severe well being penalties. In keeping with an Australian research offered on the European Emergency Medication Convention in Barcelona on Tuesday, sufferers who visited the emergency room for alcohol-related causes returned 44% extra occasions over the subsequent 10 years, and have been 138% extra prone to die inside the subsequent 20 years, than sufferers whose sicknesses or accidents weren’t brought on by alcohol.

As for “beer goggles,” the small Pitt research doesn’t show it’s a fable. The boys within the research drank lower than two alcoholic drinks within the experiment. Most individuals ingesting that quantity “don’t take part in dangerous behaviors” or lose inhibitions to the purpose of needing one other at a “increased degree,” Farmer mentioned.

When Bowdring and Sayette analyzed 16 earlier research on the subject, they recognized a small however statistically important affiliation between drunkenness and sexual attraction to a different particular person. “I’m not ready to say that at this dose alcohol doesn’t have an effect on perceived bodily attractiveness, simply that we didn’t observe it on this research,” Sayette mentioned. 

Sayette mentioned they hope the research demonstrates the significance of learning bodily attraction in settings that mimic actual life. Bigger future research may embrace volunteers who all drink collectively in a room, and even take the analysis out to a bar and interview the patrons. 

It’s all a part of an effort to uncover habits and behaviors that may result in drawback ingesting. “If we will help individuals to grasp what they’re getting out of their ingesting experiences, they may have the ability to obtain their social objectives with out alcohol, whether or not it’s social bonding, or improved temper, or intimacy,” Bowdring mentioned.

Sept. 21, 2023 – It was only a routine checkup – or so she thought. However this time, Marnina Miller’s love curiosity got here alongside. The pair headed to an STD clinic in Houston, the place Miller labored, to get examined for syphilis and HIV. 

With an already compromised immune system as a consequence of an HIV prognosis 9 years in the past, it’s vital for Miller to make sure she is obvious of every other ailments. She examined adverse for syphilis. Her associate, alternatively, examined constructive for latent (or stage 3) syphilis. 

Syphilis has been on the rise within the U.S. for greater than 2 many years. From 2017 to 2021, the variety of instances shot up 75% (to 176, 713), based on the CDC. Houston – the fourth largest metropolis within the U.S. – appears to be on the epicenter. Between 2019 and 2022, there was a 128% rise in syphilis instances there, notably amongst girls and folks of shade, in accordance to the Houston Well being Division. This summer time, drugmaker Pfizer reported a widespread scarcity of the antibiotic penicillin, which is used to remedy early-stage syphilis and deal with latent syphilis. 

There are 4 phases of syphilis: main, secondary, latent, and tertiary. (See every stage’s signs right here.) Oral, anal, and vaginal intercourse are a number of the methods the illness can unfold. Some individuals who contract syphilis by no means have signs and will have the illness for years with out understanding.

Penicillin can remedy each syphilis and congenital syphilis. The antibiotic can not reverse injury carried out to your organs by way of an infection, particularly if the illness has vastly progressed earlier than remedy. 

Teriya Richmond, MD, defined what a mean take a look at day seems like. Upon arriving on the testing website, you’re going to get checked in and study in regards to the varieties of STDs you will be examined for. The CDC recommends you get examined for HIV, syphilis, hepatitis C, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. Syphilis assessments are carried out by means of blood samples. Testing for different ailments embody oral or anal swabs, and urine samples, mentioned says Richmond, a board-certified household drugs physician who makes a speciality of girls’s well being. 

Sergino Nicolas, MD, creates TikTok movies and Instagram reels to lift consciousness in regards to the outbreak. The Pittsburgh-based emergency medical physician mentioned there may be usually a “nonchalant” angle towards STDs amongst some individuals of their 20s and 30s. Being unaware of the implications of syphilis might drive that angle. “With ideas like ‘I can simply get handled,’ I believe there may be hazard in that, as a result of when you will have these infections, [irreversible] problems can happen,” he mentioned.

Public well being activists in Houston are spreading the phrase on the significance of getting examined for STDs. Kevin Anderson is the founding father of the T.R.U.T.H. Venture, a Houston-based nonprofit that educates and mobilizes LGBTQ communities of shade by means of social arts that promote sexual, psychological, and bodily well being. 

Whereas celebrating its tenth anniversary, T.R.U.T.H. Venture is creatively selling syphilis training and consciousness. The group’s current occasions have included an open-mic evening referred to as “Coronary heart and Soul,” with free STD testing on website for attendees. It additionally hosted a sex-positive evening aiming to coach attendees about STDs and safe-sex practices. Self-love, self-care, and self-awareness of your physique is without doubt one of the group’s most outstanding messages. “If one thing feels or seems totally different, love your self sufficient to be proactive in following as much as discover out what is going on on – as a result of avoidance results in outbreaks,” Anderson mentioned.

Possibly you’re nervous that you just is likely to be STD-positive. Or maybe you’re going to get examined for the primary time. Do not forget that you oversee your sexual well being and are accountable for your physique, Miller mentioned. “Don’t be scared. Deal with you.”