Hello everyone,

If this post is not reliable enough, I apologize in advance and beg for mods to suppress it. I take the risk of posting because I believe that "better safe than sorry".

I'm a member of the french "Psychedelic Society" and they relayed a statement today saying that prof. David Nichols from Purdue university found a preliminary in vitro assay suggesting that when a cell is infected with coronavirus, the presence of a psychedelic ramps up the virus and more quickly/aggressively kills the cell.

so it would be a bad idea to trip these days (as you can be infected without knowing it).

I take that the Société psychédélique française would not relay unreliable information but, seeing how easy fake news spread all over, you never know...

I wanted to share it, just in case.

Be safe sisters and brothers

April fools?

Makes no sense Nichols would release such generic piece of info... "Psychedelics" ? Are we talking about 2CE, about harmalas+DMT, about LSD? Is it dose dependant? What is the proposed mechanism at work? What cells are they using? etc...

Also prob not a very good joke if so, considering the bad trips people could get if they were already tripping and read this.

My thought exactly.
I just figured that if it were true, I had to pass on the info. I'll be super sorry if it's not, but I would have been even sorrier if it had been true and I hadn't relayed it. Hope you understand my position...

if you think it's not solid enough, please remove my post until we have more informations

EDIT: I went to check the facebook page of the society: it was posted yesterday night... so it shouldn't be an april fools

This indeed.

Why use such a broad term as "psychedelics"? What mechanism would "ramp up the virus"? Why would this "more quickly/aggressively kill the cell"? These are usually VERY specific things.

It this would have come from Nichols I would have expected a much broader description and explanation.

Can you please link to where this information is coming from?


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Apparently they try to contact Nichols to get further information, but it sounds like the talks in the 60's that LSD causes braindamage.

Thank you for posting, so it seem Nichols has been shown an interesting assay.

What I also see in his text is that he is using "the presence of a psychedelic", so I wonder how generic this would be for psychedelics overall.

Looking forward to reading that assay.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Are we positive this is not a puppet account, or something of the like? What platform is this on? Is there no further conversation or context? Without clarification or follow-up, it's sliding off the far side of the Razor...for now.

Kinda bummed to see no April Fool's prank here, likely mods in their wisdom decided pransksterism could lead to more conusion, and we're all confused more than normal right now. But if this is someone's idea of one, I'm sure Trav and the gang could've come up with something better.

it's April already?

Yeah, where is that screenshot from? Do we know for sure that is Nichols? And if it is, whoever took that screenshot NEEDS to ask for more clarification, details on the tests.

This is 100% the real Nichols. The second image is someone else's comment on why this may be (cytokine storm related reasoning)

I wonder if harmalas were tested. They have strong antiviral properties

Here is the paper.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

If there is an interaction in vitro (and this is not an April fool's thing) that is very interesting.

If the cells infected with virus are rapidly destroyed it could be possible to get a positive effect on the organism, right? Kind of like killing cancer cells? The virus needs to put the infected cells to work to make more viruses after all. If quick death means premature death before a full load of new viruses are made by the infected cell it could be a good thing.

Of course, maybe the cells are dying quickly because they make new viruses faster, which would be bad.

Or something completely different may be happening, I'm just thinking out loud here.

I hope proper follow up is done and this interaction in vitro looked at if there is merit to it (and not set aside/ignored because a psychedelic is involved).

Cheers and health to all ❤️

Assuming this is real...

This is in vitro. Not in vivo. Take with a grain of salt.

Psychedelics temporary disarm the immune system. That may be why the cell was left helpless. Whether this would happen within the body is unclear.

Also, it does matter very much what psychedelic was used. DOI? 2c-e? Mescaline? Psilocybin? Ayahuasca? Iboga? Some of these have anti-viral properties, and some maybe not.

I would still trust the holistic nature of a plant-based entheogen with natural antimicrobial, antiviral properties. That's just me. You do what you want.

I still want some more information. Where are these screenshots taken from?

I am completely unaware of this. Are there sources of information you could cite that a layman could understand?

WHO has walked back their statement from a couple weeks ago about anti-inflammatories causing higher susceptibility according to this site.

Healthline

I don't know about ALL psychedelics, but i expect every drug that elevates adrenaline and noradrenaline levels (MDMA, 5-MAPB, etc) or that activates adrenaline receptors (LSD, mescaline, probably some 2C's as well), to temporarily lower immuno-response.

Adrenaline puts your body in a fight-or-flight state. All the energy in your body is being used to be able to run faster, or fight harder. When you face an enemy, or a deadly predator, being able to stand your ground, or run, is much more important than having a good immono response...after all, what good is a fully prepped-up immune system, when you're dead.

This is also the key to the wim-hof method, and why it is effective against auto-immune related illnesses. The breathing technique triggers a sudden release of adrenaline.

When your immune system is weak, using the wim-hof method is probably not a good idea.

I remember that paper.
The substance investigated in the paper, DOI, has exceptional potency both as a phenethylamine psychedelic and even more so as an inhibitor of TNF-α. With other psychedelics the effect is less but like DOI they modulate cytokines to some extent, which is where the concern lies.
There is quite a large number of cytokines so it would make sense to undertake a more precise comparison of the way their action becomes affected by psychedelics and how this relates to the cytokine effects of severe SARS-CoV-2 cases, if such data exists.

The paper also mentions that peyote activates cytokine production:
- although it would be necessary to follow up on the references for this as peyote contains a whole host of other alkaloids of quite different pharmacology so it might not be the mescaline that is responsible for this effect.
[Edited for emphasis!]

It's not necessarily meaningful to extrapolate from in vitro effects to what might happen in vivo but it is certainly, as Prof Nichols suggests, worthy of caution.


Anecdotally, taking psilocybin-containing mushrooms when coming down with a flu-like illness (about 25 years ago) was pretty unpleasant and was something never to be repeated although the effects clearly weren't fatal.

Salutations Teamleary,



What i can tell about a very light "psychedelic" such as cannabis in France is that it provided relief for asthma in the late 19th century, possibly because it stimulated pulmonary secretions and hence boosted their protective function as a result of increased mobility i presume.

Good day, have fun!!

Well we wouldn’t want all those people getting high from your weed now would we.