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LSD Alleviates 'Suicide Headaches'
sciencehabit writes "Patients suffering from the agony of cluster headaches will take anything to dull the pain, even LSD, it turns out. Results from a pilot study reveal that six patients treated with 2-bromo-LSD, a nonhallucinogenic analog of LSD, showed a significant reduction in cluster headaches per day; some were free of the attacks for weeks or months. And some of these patients are still reporting significant relief more than a year after they were treated with the compound." I'm told, by people with reason to know, that the hallucinogenic variety has the same effect on cluster headaches.
Saw it on House, so it must be true!
This is not a viral sig. Copy it at your peril.
alexander shulgin
Yes, I can tell you from personal experience that LSD does indeed (at least for me) help knock back "cluster" headaches. The only real problem for me was the ensuing giant insects.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
i don't get why they call them fingers.. I mean, I've never seen them fing. Oh wait, there they go.
This story begs for a rewite... could we at least have a hyperlink for science habit? Anybody check his user number? Timothy claims he has unknown sources... or hiding his own job-disqualifying problems?
Dr prescribed phrenilin (butalbital + acetaminophen) for mine.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
From descriptions of the condition, it would seem to me that drugs substantially nastier and more dangerous than mere LSD would likely be quite well accepted if they demonstrated efficacy. Not being Schedule I would certainly be a convenient feature of the new compound; but even standard LSD would seem to be considerably less disabling(and rather more pleasant) than the alternative...
I believe Hoffman was developing a headache cure when he stumbled upon LSD. Once he tried batch 25, he sort of digressed, understandably.
Salvia Divinorum is an amazing compound too. Personality transcending, in lesser amounts simply anti-depressant, breaks through everyday fears and anxieties, not personality-distoriting in lesser quantities. Definitely a plant that should be widely cultivated, examined, and discussed among the psychonautic consciousness-expanding netliterati. The survival of the human mind may depend on it.
-- thinkyhead software and media
...have long been used to treat migraines long before the so-called "triptans". Not surprising that LSD would work on cluster headaches (even though they are a slightly different pathology). Yes, a drug that vasoconstrict cant alleviate the pain brought on by vasodilation.
But I'm pretty sure I forgot about any sensations of my body when my bedroom stretched out and became a rollercoaster.
do() || do_not();
I do not suffer from cluster headaches and can't imagine that I'd want to. If they're difficult to alleviate then I honestly feel sorry for those people and can understand doing whatever it takes to alleviate them or find comfort. Even though I do not suffer from cluster headaches I do think I can empathise with those that do, in a kind of tangential way. I take Venlafaxine (Effexor) 300mg per day. This drug is not addictive apparently (semantic smoke and mirrors I reckon because I cannot cease taking it). Anyway, I do take my dose. The problem is that I have "electric shocks" even if I miss the dose by an hour or so. I also get the "electric shocks" towards the end of every day and the basically incapacitate me. I've seen MANY doctors who don't even believe that they exist. I've even had one psychiatrist suggest that I am schizophrenic and that the "electric shocks" are some kind of delusion. I am not schizophrenic, by the way, and the "electric shocks" are not imagined. The medical profession really starts to need listening to their patients! These shocks that I am talking about are not, currently, measurable so therefore they do not exist according to most "doctors" and psychologists and psychiatrists and researchers that I've spoken to. At the same time the cannot suggest a way to get off the "non-addictive" drug they put me on. Can't get withdrawal symptoms from a non-addictive drug so they label it "discontinuation syndrome". Semantic bullshit in other words.
Anyway, the above relates to TFA because I can't see the medical profession accepting this treatment. Perhaps they don't even believe it exists.
Gosh! For a few seconds I got a dyslexia attack and thought that the Church of the LDS was now falling in line with the tele-evangelists.
Furthermore, it didn't seem so surprising to me that "patients suffering from the agony of cluster headaches will take anything to dull the pain," even turn to religion. Only the next sentence clued me in.
I thought this had been known for quite a while? I remember seeing something about it in a documentary once. On a related note, I cannot see any logical reason why LSD should be illegal.
Has anyone else been experiencing more/stronger headaches lately? I've been having a lot more lately, and it seems I've notice other people with them as well (more than usual).
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
Halucination menas les inhibition. It allows associaitions to change within the brain so the activity becomes more balanced. That stops headaches.
This is not news, it has been known for a long time and has been published in PubMed for years now. It even got an episode on House "The Jerk".
Nor regarding the shrooms.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
I heard that they did the same thing a long time ago.
Don't panic, it's organic!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15257686
This is not the sig you're looking for.
ie we moved the patient to Prozac first and then gradually detitrated her from the Prozac , this reduces the discontinuation syndrome to a whisper in her case..
Discontinuation syndrome is tolerated as it encourages patients to take their meds.. assholes!!!
the psychiatrists know of this effect when they prescribe Effexor.. fucking bastards
Tricyclics and SSRIs both exhibit this effect to a greater or lesser degree ,
AC
Can't trust statistics anymore, because the same companies that sell the pharmaceutical periphernalia are the one's controlling the polls.
When you re-calibrate your pain thresh-hold using drugs, the cause of the migraine is still there. What is causing that sharp throbbing pain? Why mask the pain and go about your daily life like nothing is wrong with you? So many want free medical, but it turns out that they don't know what is making them ill in these ways: they justify that free medical should accompany their right to be alive and making all these bad lifestyle decisions that cause these so-called "mysterious" health problems.
You just can't seem to troubleshoot any of these illnesses in the United States anymore, because there is so-much bullshit going around that it's easier to dispense pain-killers and watch everyone fall apart. Americans want free education too, so here's one for starters: don't drink the tap water, don't give birth in hospitals, eat only green herbal food that you hydroponically grow yourself in your domicile, monitor your bodily PH level (saliva=blood=spinal) to be certain it doesn't dip under 7 (cancer 7), avoid dairy, avoid USDA anima flesh, avoid processed sugars, avoid processed grains, avoid processed salts.
What have you got to lose other than a normal diet, but a checklist to troublshoot what could be inducing all the illness?
LSD have been used since the 60s. Its side-effects are well-known and they aren't so worrying compared to most of the other drugs available for treating migraines.
2-Bromo-LSD is a new substance, its side-effects aren't well-known, so if I had migraines, I'd stick to LSD.
The worse that you could get from LSD was a difficult experience that are frightening but they can also be enlightening.
This has been known for a very long time. Seriously?
Nice rant. Might have made more sense if you hadn't chosen to troll about a condition the causes of which are unknown. Triggers != Causes.
2/10. Try harder next time.
My mother-in-law is coming to visit. Pass the acid. And the coke. And the smack. And the booze. And the acid.
Fuck you, man. Go back to your oppressed, corporate right wing prison, man. We don't need you here. Wow, look at that glowing bus stop...
1. If 2-bromo-LSD and regular LSD have similar effects, shouldn't there be a very large number of sufferers who have had success with LSD, and wouldn't this have generated a previous study?
2. If they're called "suicide" headaches, are there documented cases of them causing suicide? (The Wikipedia article didn't list any, though the condition sounds horrific enough to cause it.)
3. Did anybody else think of the Star Trek TNG episode where Riker gets a headache, and Crusher mentions something about headaches being very abnormal in that time period? Am I remembering it right?
Some of the best most thought-provoking and introspective experiences of my life were on LSD. Nothing bad to say about the stuff.
Side effects may include clown vomit and monkey rain.
I used to be involved in the legal magic mushroom trade here in the UK, wherein we had a few clients and an employee who swore by the medicinal effects of psilocybin-containing mushrooms to combat cluster headaches. One small dose would seemingly be enough to alleviate symptoms for weeks afterwards.
So now the US government has to take LSD off Schedule 1 on the controlled substances list. Mind you they should have taken it off in the 1960's when it was shown to be usable in the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction. They should have taken cannabis off schedule 1 ages ago as well when medical uses for that were acknowledged in some states. But they don't, so cocaine, opium, and methamphetamine users get less jail time than cannabis users. That seems fair.
Anyone need further evidence that the war on drugs is not about health, safety or the public good?
Other than the use of the brominated non-psychoactive analog of LSD to combat the headaches, the potential of the ergot derived drugs in helping with both migrane and cluster headaches is nothing new and has been explored in the literature (a lot of common migrane drugs out there are related to LSD). The thing that would actually be news would be if the DEA rescheduled LSD to make experimentation easier (getting a schedule 1 DEA license for research is next to impossible (schedule 1 by definition has no legitimate medical use), and even though not active at the doses they're giving for the headaches, I'm willing to wager a high enough would. The identical molecular scaffold and effects would push it under the analog drug laws, making the derivatives illegal without a license to world. Multiple components in hallucinogenic mushrooms have also been rumored (possibly confirmed, I haven't looked through pub med) to help substantially with migraine pain with one dose eliminating pain for 6-12 months. The mechanism is speculated to be something to do with certain 5-hydroxytyrptophan receptors (both LSD and certain alkaloids from mushroom have a base structure of tyrptamine IIRC)
It has already been proven decades ago that magic mushrooms and LSD relieve cluster headaches. Good Day.
Giant insects aside, I'm sure it's more effective than trepanning.
I've heard about moving to Prozac for this too. Might be something to try.
"some of these patients are still reporting significant relief more than a year after they were treated with the compound."
So, the drug is still significantly messing with your brain for more than a year after treatment. But no reason to discuss or worry about that....
Truly, I wish someone somewhere would write unbiased assessments of the physical and psychological impacts of drugs. Everyone is always trying to push, sell, or ban.
Real science in the field is completely undermined by everyone pushing their stinking agendas. It isn't that we aren't technically capable of real pharmaceutical science, it is that human greed, emotion, ignorance, and stupidity prevail.
LSD alleviates reality so I can imagine it would help with almost anything. ...well I could see it going both ways, making whatever is wrong better or making whatever is wrong a hell which there are no adequate adjectives to describe (not kidding). heh
I had to look twice to make sure it wasn't our resident chiro-quack, but it didn't mention subluxations once. I need to actually do some work I think.
Don't blame me for redundant posts. I can't type very fast. Hence the user ID.
Has anyone else noticed that many substances declared as illegal by the US government have been found to have very valuable medical benefits? Alcohol was once prohibited and now you'd be hard-pressed to find a cardiologist who wouldn't suggest a glass or 2 every day for heart health. LSD, cannabis, and even shrooms are very low in toxicity and don't destroy your liver and/or kidneys like most prescription pain meds will.
Puking causes a gigantic histamine release, which in turn, causes massive vasodilatation. Then Aleve (Naproxen Sodium) works as an anti-inflammatory, which suppresses histamines.
This is kind of odd. I wonder why the histamine cycling is helping. But I would suspect that is what is happening.
One of the main potential explanation about how migraine work has to do with Vascular spasms. It's rather well known and described in the scientific literature.
Anything which can affect vascular constriction might help fight the migraine.
- Caffeine is a good example (beta-mimetic, cause peripheral blood vessel constriction)
- In fact serotonin might play a role in migraine. It's a vaso-active chemical. And it's targeted by several drugs : the whole family of tryptans, or LSD like mentioned here, or commercial derivate of it (like ergotamines).
Next time, you can try either masturbating until climax (I assume you are not in any kind of a mood for actual sex while having these headaches!)
Sex is also well known and described in the literature as a way to fight migraine. Probably due to the massive cocktail of monoamine chemicals released into the brain during sexual activities.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Except this time it's not plain vanilla LSD like done for ages. It's 2-bromo- LSD. I smell a new drug being commercialised very soon.
Some pharma company going through the same usual stuff : ...
1. Take a public domain drung known to work
2. change the structure somewhat up until the point where the new structure is patentable.
3.
4. Profit !
(3 = usually it actually involves testing the new molecule as in TFA).
There's some commercial company mentioned in the Abstract. It might indeed be the case.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I thought this what already a known thing about LDS/LSA, perhaps this is just another type of headache they have found it helps? D.H.E. 45 is a medication that pretty much stops headaches dead (while your having one), it is an ergot alkaloid and ergot is a precursor to LSD/A
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
Meanwhile, suicide alleviates LSD headaches
LSD, Oxycontin, sudafed, cocaine, some of the drugs that use to be prescribed, or used on a routine basis, until the "drug culture" found out that by tweaking them, melting them into a liquid, smoking them in a pipe, you could get "high". Prescribed CORRECTLY, they could cure a lot of symptoms. Yes, some are highly addictive, but they did have benefits years ago.
Massive amounts of caffeine are often effective for me. I take Excedrin Migraine (mostly caffeine) and then chew coffee beans or drink several cans of soda. If I can do this immediately when the aura starts, pretty often I'll avoid the headache. Still end up just a bit "off" for days though.
i don't suffer them myself but meet lots of people who do, I work for an oxygen supplier. The people I supply use o2 on flows between 6 and 15 Lpm usually with a 100% or non rebreather mask. Most of them find it better than the pain killers as long as they can get on the 02 quick enough. It doesn't however seem to have an effect in terms of reducing the frequency of attack though just the duration.
What are they talking about? Everybody knows that there no headaches from a SUCCESSFUL suicide. In fact, there are not any complaints about anything from that person.
A few years ago when I did the research the only drug I found that was demonstrated to treat cluster headaches was psilocybin, the primary active ingredient in "magic mushrooms". I believe the research was done in Canada, needless to say. Since then I have used it a number of times by taking a sub-psychoactive dose, around 0.5 - 0.75 grams of dried material, and it does work extremely well without blasting one into outer space. When you've got a headache that really tempts you to drill holes to let the demons out it's definitely worth a try if you can lay your hands on some.
I took Effexor for about a year before switching to Wellbutrin. While I was kicking the Effexor, I noticed a buzzing, roaring noise in my head, like the sound of a power boat when you're underwater. This was six years ago and I still experience this phantom sound intermittently to this day. Effexor = bad medicine.
I was busted selling LSD by a cop who suffered from cluster headaches. Even back then (more than 20 years ago), it was well known that LSD was a possible treatment. The headaches would send him straight to the floor.
I think the universe was punishing the guy for failing to pay attention.
Hi,
Always try (and keep trying) different approaches to address symptoms and your underlying conditions. People have become so reliant on pharma that they almost always neglect other approaches such as nutritional-based healing, acupuncture, herbal remedies, chiropractic, etc.
I have seen people get phenomenal results from these approaches, and even if you only get a 10% boost in your immune system, it can be a noticeable positive change.
Good luck!
I'm a migraneur; I keep a pocket full of 25mg imitrex at all times. (If you hear some guy went down swinging when the TSA tried to take his prescriptions away, that'll be me - nobody's taking the stuff away while I'm alive and conscious).
25mg is very weak, but it lets me manage my dosages depending on headache severity. If the doctors have their way, they will give you 50mg or more - possibly much more! - for bad migraines. Using the 25mg pills I can take two at aura onset, then take another every fifteen minutes until I reach an effective dose, then take two or three more every two hours following. In practice, this means I can take half as much imitrex for a mild migraine, and I don't have to take double the dose for a nasty one.
You can tell how bad someone gets migraines by how obsessively they hoard their pills.
I used to get migranes all the time. I'm not sure if "cluster headaches" falls into this category, but after tripping the first time on LSD in high school I never had them again. I also didn't turn into a mumbling and nonsensical piece of shit afterwards either. I'm glad drugs like LSD are beginning to be seen in medical experiments. After they were banned in the 60s many experts became upset because of the positive results the drug was showing in trials, regardless of it's prominence as a recreational drug.
We've known for years that psilocybin and LSD could do that with a single dose for several years now, but our legislatures would much prefer that people other than them suffer in unspeakable agony that alter their precious drug laws.
It's good that there is research into a non-hallucinogenic that can help them, but thousands will die (more than the death toll of 9-11) while they put this through the relevant drug trials. I'm guessing it'll cost far far more than the equally effective street drugs.
Didn't we see this on House a few years ago?
Oh wow, that's funny, 'cause I did the same thing!
I have used at least a half dozen antidepressants over the last 15 years and Effexor had by far the worst withdrawal symptoms.
The "brain zaps" that you describe are horrible, plus expect to get wild mood swings, crying jags, etc. when you withdraw.
I managed to taper off the hard way... I emptied out a bunch of Effexor capsules and made an entire series of gradually reducing-dosage capsules, because just halving the dose and then halving again was intolerable. Even when I reduced the dosage little by little over the course of a month I still had problems.
What I've heard is that you can start ramping up Prozac during Effexor withdrawal, basically replacing your Effexor prescription with Prozac, and that will help prevent the Effexor withdrawal symptoms. Then you can later taper off Prozac more easily, because Prozac does not have the severe withdrawal syndrome that Effexor does. But in order to do that you're going to need to find a psychiatrist who knows enough about antidepressants to know that the brain shocks are real and are a serious issue.
Good luck!
What are the other side effects of LSD, besides that?
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
hey fucktard, listen up!
the complete phrase is "I could care less, but it's not worth the effort." later shortened to "I couldn't care less." both are valid, one just assumes you're familiar with the phrase. i'm going to adopt your high standards and declare that anyone that doesn't know that is, and always will be, a fucktard.
another phrase you are probably embarrassing yourself by saying:
"the road to hell is paved with good intentions." samuel johnson's actual quote is simply, "hell is paved with good intentions." some fucktard added the "road to" part.
also, all you grammar nazis should report the following to your fuhrer:
1. irregardless means the same thing as regardless (and yes, it is a word)
2. inflammable means the same thing as flammable
3. you will never catch them all, because you are the type of person whose brain throws a blue screen of death when the syntax used requires the listener to evaluate the meaning, or in other words, listen. basically you are about as intelligent a human being as a computer that chokes on a missing semicolon. you are fit only for taking orders, and you can't even do that right failing any kind of mental acuity at all.
DIAF, kthxbai
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
I have seen several articles lately (Example) suggesting the Viagra is useful in some people for fighting migraine and similar headaches. I don't know if old age or biofeedback was my solution, but I'm sure before I found relief I would have tried almost anything.
LSD and Psilocybin have been known for decades to be the most effective treatments for cluster headaches as well as migraines. You may be familiar with previous headache drugs like Imitrex. This family of drugs are in fact all analogs of the aforementioned hallucinogens.
Now if the motherfuckers would just let us take the effective form, rather than a shitty derivative that I immediately develop resistance to, I could avoid spending 72 hours each month in horrible pain, vomiting away my teeth and cardiovascular health.
Even ergotamine derivatives used for migraine are 'structurally similar' to LSD.
Prof(Miss) A Mani CU, ASL, AMS, ISRS, CLC, CMS, IEEE HomePage: http://www.logicamani.in Blog: http://logicamani.blogs
dr. albert hoffman, the creator of LSD, took it until he died at 90+ years of age. he took the hallucinogenic type of LSD. that moron doper was many orders of magnitude more brilliant than you will ever be.
.... In fact, most users choose to decrease or stop using LSD as time passes. People can still become psychologically addicted to LSD, in the same way that they can become addicted to any other substance or activity that fulfills a psychological need for them. ....
"I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjunction with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonderchild." - Dr. Albert Hoffman
"Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained as a fundamental understanding from all of my LSD experiments: what one commonly takes as "the reality," including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous — that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego." - Dr. Albert Hoffman
quantum physics is coming closer and closer to proving him right.
and one final slam for you: LSD is hardly considered an addictive drug; users of LSD are not addicted to it physically. and people can be psychologically addicted to anything, even water, so that argument doesn't hold...water.
"Although one of the most potent of the hallucinogenic drugs, LSD is - unlike PCP, for example - not physically addictive.
Treatment for psychological addiction to LSD will differ from treatment for physical drug addiction because there is no withdrawal period. Rather, it will bear similarities to treatment for other addictions to substances, activities, or experiences that are not, in and of themselves, addictive. Behavioral-cognitive therapy is often employed." -- http://www.lsdaddiction.us/content/lsd-addiction-and-tolerance.html
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT