Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)

Here's psilocybin.

Right.

So what's really interesting is that once we add placebo control to psilocybin, it seems like it actually the effect sizes increase.

Ayahuasca, MDMA.

Here's MDD.

So this is depression.

So it seems like psilocybin is like quite effective for depression.

Here's MDMA seems to be not as effective for depression.

Ayahuasca is not effective for depression.

So this is the other point that I'm sort of making is that like when we say psychedelics are good for your mental health, which psychedelic and which problem you have with your mental health actually becomes really important.

So if you're going to, you know, the Amazon and you're doing ayahuasca because you're depressed, you may not get much benefit from that.

Whereas if you have major depressive disorder, psilocybin is sort of like the right medicine to use.

And now here's what's really cool.

So if we're talking about treatment resistant depression or recurrent major depressive disorder, this is where we start to see some cool stuff.

So the first thing is that if we're talking about simple depression, ayahuasca seems to be not very effective.

But if you have treatment resistant depression, now we're seeing larger effect sizes.

And we're seeing effect sizes as well for psilocybin.

So this is what's actually really cool about psychedelics.

And I think this is why people like myself who are psychiatrists get really excited.

So we have this entity called treatment-resistant depression.