he tries to cure his color blindness with hallucinogenic mushrooms

A 35-year-old American saw his color blindness improve thanks to the consumption of mushroomsmushrooms hallucinogens rich in psilocybin. He did not participate in a new protocolprotocol medical, but carried out these experiments alone at home. Fortunately, the story reached the ears of doctors at a Cleveland hospital who published the details of this case, considered unique to date, in Drug Science, Policy and Law.

Psilocybin against color blindness

Color blindness is an anomaly in the perception of colorscolors of genetic origin, the mutated gene of which is located on the X chromosome. There are several types of color blindness depending on the type of cones, the cells of theeyeeye which detect colors, dysfunctional. Our patient suffers from deuteranomaly, he perceives the three basic colors (red, green, blue) but with an alteration of the “green” cones which slightly modifies the colors they see. It is the most common form of color blindness since it is estimated that one in 20 men are affected.

The 35-year-old man has already consumed drugs on several occasions. drugsdrugs such as LSD, MDMA, hallucinogenic mushrooms, cannabiscannabis2C-B and DMTDMT. But only the psilocybinpsilocybin helped improve his color perception. Faced with this observation, with a rigorous approach, he decided to determine the quantity of mushrooms necessary for the regression of his color blindness. He decides to carry out an Ishihara test, which can diagnose color blindness, before and after his hallucinogenic “trip”.

Before taking psilocybin, the patient obtained a score of 14 out of 21, which corresponds to a mild deuteranomaly (a score of 17 and above indicates normal color perception and a score below 13 indicates a form of color blindness). . Following this, he takes five grams of dried hallucinogenic mushrooms. He took the test again twelve hours later, then several times over the next four months. On the first post-psilocybin test, he obtained a score of 15, the next day a score of 18, sufficient to consider his color perception normal, and eight days later, a maximum score of 19.

A therapeutic avenue to treat color blindness?

According to the patient, his score remained at 18 during the four months he regularly took the Ishihara test. The doctors at Cleveland Hospital in turn decided to do the test, under strict medical conditions. We are 436 days after taking hallucinogenic mushrooms. The patient obtains a score of 16, suggesting that the regression of his color blindness is lasting. But he later admitted that he had taken hallucinogenic mushrooms again, among other drugs, four months before the test, making the result difficult to analyze. Doctors conclude that taking psilocybin helped improve color perception in this mild colorblind person for at least 16 days, or possibly longer.

How can a drug act on a genetic disease like color blindness? The mystery remains. Especially since this case, reported entirely subjectively by the patient, must be considered with caution since nothing was done under conditions controlled by doctors or other health professionals. The benefit on color blindness is slight and transient, and does not justify the consumption of illegal hallucinogenic drugs whose side effects are numerous and well known: dependence, fatal overdose, ” bad trip “, syndromesyndrome withdrawal, psychological problems to name just a few.