Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!
|
 5-HT2A
Registered: 01/30/10
Posts: 1,634
Loc: The Prefrontal Cortex
|
 Re: Can Ritalin help people overcome drug addiction?  [Re: BlindSophist]
#12971068 - 07/29/10 09:14 AM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
There's a major risk involved with exposing mentally fragile people such as those who are serious drug addicts to a 24-hour psychedelic trip, especially when most nurses/doctors are not in the least inclined to hang around with their patients for 24 hours. I'm not going to deny that it all comes down to the bottom line, but if you can think of a way to make ibogaine treatment clinically feasible for any but the richest drug addicts then I'll be all ears.
Ummm health insurance? And doctors will do what is needed of them. If they'll perform an 18 hour surgery they'll hang around a tripping patient, or take turns. It's not hard. Additionally, "mentally fragile" is not a clinical term. Schizophrenic people are at the greatest danger when taking psychedelics, but I don't think that most drug addicts have that problem. Or would care. Live on the street, or try this difficult cure. What would you pick? Ibogaine has only been shown to be fatal to people with pre-existing heart trouble.
Quote:
IMO psychedelic treatments need to be left in the hand of clergymen. It works for ayahuasca. Why do you think it's protected by law in spite of its rapid growth in reputation among westerners? Because its advocates are religious clergy and churchgoers, not doctors. Most people have a serious and well-justified phobia about having a medical doctor wade around in the deepest darkest parts of their unconscious. Furthermore, the church environment is simply superior to a clinic for administering psychedelic drugs and undergoing mystical journeys, and priests and laymen don't need to be paid for every hour they work with a patient like doctors and nurses do. I'm not saying psychedelics should be off-limits to scientific inquiry, but scientific inquiry should focus on pure understanding of the pharmacology, not on treatment methods, which seem to be vastly more reliable and effective when left in the hands of the religious.
There are advantages to having a shaman do it, but to say they are superior to doctors is oversimplifying. Each brings his own knowledge base that is useful in different ways.
Quote:
Ritalin's efficacy in improving impulse control across the board is well-documented. This is not a far-out idea for cheap and safe treatment. I know when I started adderall my drinking plummeted, simply because I became more inclined to think through the potential consequences of my actions before grabbing that bottle of tequila on the way home.
You wanted to drink less because your pleasure center was already stimulated. Presto! Alcohol has messy pharmacology and definitely affects dopamine. But ritalin is far more drawn to those receptors. And remember there isn't anything you do that isn't for dopamine.
I am not as in favor of trading one vice for an easier one as I am for putting the original vice to sleep.
|
BlindSophist
drunken preacher
Registered: 07/11/06
Posts: 20,224
Loc: SF Bay Area
|
Re: Can Ritalin help people overcome drug addiction? [Re: 5-HT2A]
#12971825 - 07/29/10 12:03 PM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
|
|
 I love how you act like ritalin is no different than alcohol just because they both have action on the dopamine receptors. Next time I have to refill my adderall prescription, I'll remember to save myself some money and just grab some tequila instead.
And speak for yourself with regards to "vice." IMO prescription drug regimens are not a vice. I appreciate your sage wisdom though. You should write a book.
When I say "mentally fragile" I am referring to the anxiety and panic disorders common in serious addicts. Psychedelics do not mix well with mood disorders - there are a lot of folks right here on the Shroomery who have had debilitating anxiety disorders kicked off by something as comparatively mild as mushrooms.
Using psychedelics as a healing tool requires a certain modicum of creativity, lacked by many doctors who are simply good test-takers. I do not think doctors can ever be reliably effective psychedelic mediators, at least not in the world we live in today. Most doctors excel essentially at diagnosis and dosing regimens, wouldn't know how to treat a spiritual sickness like addiction if the course of therapy went beyond diagnosis and dosing regimens. For psychedelics to be an effective medical treatment would require the training of an entirely new class of doctors. The medical profession is far too conservative to do that without a REALLY good reason - for example, if it had to compete with widespread and effective psychedelic treatment in a non- or quasi-medical context. Think chiropractors.
Never mind the cost. Again. Do you think health insurance just falls out of the sky? Are you still on your parents' plan? Lots of people can't afford it, and if all health plans included provisions for ibogaine therapy then certainly NOBODY would be able to afford it. Many insurance providers actually drop addicts in order to save money.
I'm all in favor of ibogaine therapy but the idea that it could become a mainstream medical treatment under current laws and standards is ludicrous. Piracetam probably has the most reasonable expectation, that a non-psychedelic analogue may be found, though from what I've read, I doubt ibogaine would be so effective an addiction treatment without the visionary qualities.
Edited by Tchan909 (07/29/10 01:13 PM)
|
 curenado
73rd Man
Registered: 04/01/03
Posts: 2,601
Loc: North Central Arkansas
Last seen: 1 year, 3 months
|
Re: Can Ritalin help people overcome drug addiction? [Re: BlindSophist]
#13020697 - 08/08/10 06:58 AM (1 year, 9 months ago) |
|
|
<<Either way, low-dose stims improve impulse control while high-dose stims weaken it. This is pretty well-known.
No doubt low-dose cocaine administration could also be an effective treatment measure in cocaine addicts who genuinely want to get their lives together. We have already seen that this is also a very effective measure with heroin addicts.
Either way, I think both methods are probably more effective and humane than just throwing addicts into prison or demanding they go cold-turkey.>>
Theoretically that may sound half right, but it's not realistic. Snap shot studies can "demonstrate" pretty much anything.
But shroomery is full of drug experts that have never worked a day in detox and are quoting retarda-pedia (wiki! it's fun!)
This study does seem to go along with the dumb down and medicate agenda though. That's the most realistic thing it's shown so far.
Addicting people to an insurance billable drug doesn't have anything to do with curing addiction. Iboga and substances that demonstrate some factual effect that alters the syndrome in at least some people might be more solid, but this "5 studies a week on why we should take speed" lately has been really just dribbling marketing bullshit.
Just like impluse control - maybe for the first little while it looks good (fools some people - like fools) then it deteriorates and is worse than controls, like any other psychotmimetic.
But people love speed and so will come up with anything. People who sell it to them know this and seem to be able to get away with anything these days.
I see it as the industrial transition from drugs you can have on your own to drugs you must buy, with permission, from a licensed dealer masquerading as a physician. That's about all.
These folks believe US medical studies hands down though!:
Funniest part of this is that Ritalin has been around long enough for us to see it factually fuck over 2 generations of children and have ZERO long term benefits. Only works while they are high, doesn't work that well and as far as we know actually fucks them up worse later in life. So far, the only real benefits have been to drug companies, the dumb-down-and-dump agenda and really fucked up insects that have no business being parents anyway.
edit: I was looking back through and though this is not in the context it was meant, as a doctor I find this statement:
<<And doctors will do what is needed of them>>
The shortest and most chilling horror story I have ever read.
(The record has been broken, because the shrotest horror story used to be two sentences )
Edited by curenado (08/08/10 07:06 AM)
| |
|
|
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: veggie
1,596 topic views. 1 members, 45 guests and 1 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Toggle Favorite | Print Topic ]
| | |
|
|
|
Previous
Index
Next
Threaded
Edit 
Reply 
