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 veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
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 Return of a 'Problem Child'
#11137802 - 09/27/09 02:13 PM (2 years, 7 months ago) |
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LSD Returns--For Psychotherapeutics
Scientific American - October 2009 issue
 Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, lambasted the countercultural movement for marginalizing a chemical that he asserted had potential benefits as an invaluable supplement to psychotherapy and spiritual practices such as meditation. “This joy at having fathered LSD was tarnished after more than ten years of uninterrupted scientific research and medicinal use when LSD was swept up in the huge wave of an inebriant mania that began to spread over the Western world, above all the United States, at the end of the 1950s,” Hofmann groused in his 1979 memoir LSD: My Problem Child.
For just that reason, Hofmann was jubilant in the months before his death last year, at the age of 102, when he learned that the first scientific research on LSD in decades was just beginning in his native Switzerland. “He was very happy that, as he said, ‘a long wish finally became true,’ ” remarks Peter Gasser, the physician leading the clinical trial. “He said that the substance must be in the hands of medical doctors again.”
The preliminary study picks up where investigators left off. It explores the possible therapeutic effects of the drug on the intense anxiety experienced by patients with life-threatening disease, such as cancer. A number of the hundreds of studies conducted on lysergic acid diethylamide-25 from the 1940s into the 1970s (many of poor quality by contemporary standards) delved into the personal insights the drug supplied that enabled patients to reconcile themselves with their own mortality. In recent years some researchers have studied psilocybin (the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”) and MDMA (Ecstasy), among others, as possible treatments for this “existential anxiety,” but not LSD.
Gasser, head of the Swiss Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy, which he joined after his own therapist-administered LSD experience, has only recently begun to discuss his research, revealing the challenges of studying psychedelics. The $190,000 study approved by Swiss medical authorities, was almost entirely funded by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a U.S. nonprofit that sponsors research toward the goal of making psychedelics and marijuana into prescription drugs. Begun in 2008, the study intends to treat 12 patients (eight who will receive LSD and four a placebo). Finding eligible candidates has been difficult—after 18 months only five patients had been recruited, and just four had gone through the trial’s regimen of a pair of all-day sessions. “Because LSD is not a usual treatment, an oncologist will not recommend it to a patient,” Gasser laments.
The patients who received the drug found the experience aided them emotionally, and none experienced panic reactions or other untoward events. One patient, Udo Schulz, told the German weekly Der Spiegel that the therapy with LSD helped him overcome anxious feelings after being diagnosed with stomach cancer, and the experience with the drug aided his reentry into the workplace.
The trials follow a strict protocol—“all LSD treatment sessions will begin at 11 a.m.”—and the researchers are scrupulous about avoiding mistakes that, at times, occurred during older psychedelic trials, when investigators would leave subjects alone during a drug session. Both Gasser and a female co-therapist are present throughout the eight-hour sessions that take place in quiet, darkened rooms, with emergency medical equipment close at hand. Before receiving LSD, subjects have to undergo psychological testing and preliminary psychotherapy sessions.
Another group is also pursuing LSD research. The British-based Beckley Foundation is funding and collaborating on a 12-person pilot study at the University of California, Berkeley, that is assessing how the drug may foster creativity and what changes in neural activity go along with altered conscious experience induced by the chemical. Whether LSD will one day become the drug of choice for psychedelic psychotherapy remains in question because there may be better solutions. “We chose psilocybin over LSD because it is gentler and generally less intense,” says Charles S. Grob, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, who conducted a trial to test psilocybin’s effects on anxiety in terminal cancer patients. Moreover, “it is associated with fewer panic reactions and less chance of paranoia and, most important, over the past half a century psilocybin has attracted far less negative publicity and carries far less cultural baggage than LSD.”
Others assert the importance of comparative pharmacology—how does LSD differ from psilocybin?—because of the extended period of research quiescence. Just because many types of so-called SSRI antidepressants exist, “it doesn’t mean that they are all identical,” observes Roland Griffiths, a Johns Hopkins University researcher who conducts trials with psilocybin. In any case, on the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival, psychoactive substances that represented the apotheosis of the counterculture lifestyle are no longer just hippie elixirs.
* Related article: LSD's long, strange trip back into the lab
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 neopet nub
Stranger
Registered: 11/29/08
Posts: 2,408
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Re: Return of a 'Problem Child' [Re: veggie]
#11137892 - 09/27/09 02:35 PM (2 years, 7 months ago) |
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Nice! I hope that positive research develops soon
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Ego death from weed!
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Smitington
Unidentified Flying Object
Registered: 08/10/09
Posts: 1,379
Loc: Mushroom Kingdom
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Re: Return of a 'Problem Child' [Re: neopet nub]
#11138087 - 09/27/09 03:06 PM (2 years, 7 months ago) |
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it's funny how all of our modern science is leading us back to the shamanatic process. I see this research as leading to psycedelics being used in theraputic environments, under the guidance of a phycologist (shaman).
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learningtofly
Ancient Aliens
Registered: 05/21/07
Posts: 15,105
Loc: Out of this world
Last seen: 9 months, 19 days
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Re: Return of a 'Problem Child' [Re: Smitington]
#11138703 - 09/27/09 04:56 PM (2 years, 7 months ago) |
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shamanic i think is the word
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T-Rex
NY DrugResearch
Registered: 04/05/08
Posts: 1,165
Loc: STRONG ISLAND
Last seen: 4 hours, 35 minutes
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"I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly I asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask they be years of youth"
"The only thing that comes to a sleeping man is dreams"
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openmind
curious
Registered: 08/03/07
Posts: 5,906
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Re: Return of a 'Problem Child' [Re: veggie]
#11142002 - 09/28/09 05:30 AM (2 years, 7 months ago) |
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I'm curious what sorta dose they're receiving?
Quote:
....We chose psilocybin over LSD because it is gentler and generally less intense,” says Charles S. Grob, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, who conducted a trial to test psilocybin’s effects on anxiety in terminal cancer patients. Moreover, “it is associated with fewer panic reactions and less chance of paranoia.....
I found this sorta interesting....
IMO, and generally speaking for my self, LSD produces an easier and more lucid experience when compared to mushrooms....Any one else think so?
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Out of the cradle...onto dry land...
here it is standing...atoms with consciousness...matter with curiosity...Stands at the sea...wonders at wondering...I...a universe of atoms...an atom in the universe.
-Richard Feynman-
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Edited by openmind (09/28/09 05:36 AM)
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piracetam
bioanalytical chemist
Registered: 05/03/08
Posts: 4,154
Loc: TX
Last seen: 12 hours, 56 minutes
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Re: Return of a 'Problem Child' [Re: openmind]
#11142083 - 09/28/09 06:10 AM (2 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
openmind said:
I'm curious what sorta dose they're receiving?
Quote:
....We chose psilocybin over LSD because it is gentler and generally less intense,� says Charles S. Grob, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, who conducted a trial to test psilocybin�s effects on anxiety in terminal cancer patients. Moreover, �it is associated with fewer panic reactions and less chance of paranoia.....
IMO, and generally speaking for my self, LSD produces an easier and more lucid experience when compared to mushrooms....Any one else think so?
lots of people think so.
an L trip is easier to manage; granted, it's a longer ordeal, but mushrooms are closer to a DMT experience at higher doses.
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"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
In an evolving universe, who stands still moves backwards." ~R.A. Wilson
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Cognitive_Shift
@shroomery.org
Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 22,230
Loc: OhighO
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Re: Return of a 'Problem Child' [Re: piracetam]
#11142196 - 09/28/09 07:06 AM (2 years, 7 months ago) |
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The amount of psychedelic and MDMA (psychedelic in high dose, but not the same) research going on is promising
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L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
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Crack_Rocker
Cop Killer
Registered: 05/31/09
Posts: 94
Last seen: 1 year, 1 month
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Re: Return of a 'Problem Child' [Re: Smitington]
#11143698 - 09/28/09 12:27 PM (2 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Smitington said:
shamanatic
Thats utter hilariosity
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Legalize it? Fuck that I'd have to get a job!
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myco99
mycoCoder
Registered: 09/24/09
Posts: 992
Loc: USS Eldridge
Last seen: 3 days, 8 hours
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LSD for more visuals and a "speedier" trip. Shrooms for a greater body buzz and better chance at ego loss...ego loss being one of the greatest aspects of psychedelics in my opinion.
To the point of the thread, I can understand Hoffman's bitter feelings about his research being downgraded to just another recreational drug. That said, LSD's position and taboo status in modern society is a reflection of our society as a whole towards certain substances, not a specific backlash to Hoffman himself. Perhaps this new research about to commence will be the beginning of a new era of objectively evaluating all substances for positive benefits, even those used recreationally by some.
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1100011/143/0x63/99...It's like watching the mycelium grow...
WARNING: You must be 21 years of age to experience hallucinations.
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ScoutingEagle
ScoutingEagle
Registered: 09/26/06
Posts: 131
Last seen: 4 months, 2 days
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Re: Return of a 'Problem Child' [Re: myco99]
#11147158 - 09/28/09 09:14 PM (2 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
myco99 said:
LSD for more visuals and a "speedier" trip. Shrooms for a greater body buzz and better chance at ego loss...ego loss being one of the greatest aspects of psychedelics in my opinion.
To the point of the thread, I can understand Hoffman's bitter feelings about his research being downgraded to just another recreational drug. That said, LSD's position and taboo status in modern society is a reflection of our society as a whole towards certain substances, not a specific backlash to Hoffman himself. Perhaps this new research about to commence will be the beginning of a new era of objectively evaluating all substances for positive benefits, even those used recreationally by some.
WoW!!!! Very well spoken
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Living Murphy's Law... One Moment at a Time...
~ScoutingEagle
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myco99
mycoCoder
Registered: 09/24/09
Posts: 992
Loc: USS Eldridge
Last seen: 3 days, 8 hours
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Thanks
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1100011/143/0x63/99...It's like watching the mycelium grow...
WARNING: You must be 21 years of age to experience hallucinations.
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psychedelia56
Stranger
Registered: 02/23/09
Posts: 571
Last seen: 3 months, 21 days
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Re: Return of a 'Problem Child' [Re: openmind]
#11149770 - 09/29/09 10:14 AM (2 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
openmind said:
I'm curious what sorta dose they're receiving?
Quote:
....We chose psilocybin over LSD because it is gentler and generally less intense,? says Charles S. Grob, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, who conducted a trial to test psilocybin?s effects on anxiety in terminal cancer patients. Moreover, ?it is associated with fewer panic reactions and less chance of paranoia.....
I found this sorta interesting....
IMO, and generally speaking for my self, LSD produces an easier and more lucid experience when compared to mushrooms....Any one else think so?
I agree with the doctor.. at first, LSD caused me to have more lucid in-control type of trips with varied ways of thinking, but now it turns into instant ego death with tons of panic and paranoia (both of my last 2 LSD trips involved me thinking I was going to die the entire time). I think that's my fault, because I'm probably interpretting what is actually happening to me incorrectly, but regardless it causes concern.
Mushrooms on the other hand are quite gentle and peaceful. I find myself in a much more euphoric state with psilocybin - LSD causes a lot of panic and fear if I am not careful. For example my first trip on mushrooms I did 5.5 grams (a lot, I know) and the whole trip was completely OK. My friend even wanted to commit suicide and that didn't disturb the trip. On LSD this would have been different, for sure. Plus, I've always had some kind of affinity with mushrooms.. they seem to treat me well. 
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[quote]Shad0w said:
A Bong is like the "fukit" of getting high...... You are smoking out of a bong for one reason. And one reason only. To get super high out of your mind.[/quote]
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