Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

LSD Alleviates 'Suicide Headaches'

Posted by timothy on from the why-do-you-say-even dept.

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.

3 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. Barbiturates work too by gstrickler · · Score: 3, Informative

    Dr prescribed phrenilin (butalbital + acetaminophen) for mine.

    --
    make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
  2. Re:Back to its roots by sg_oneill · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yep. LSD is synthesized and is structurally similar to Ergotamine, which is a treatment for migranes. Hoffman was studying derivatives from ergotamine, one can safely presume he was trying to work out what about ergotamines structure causes the migrane relief, either to create a better drug, or to avoid some of the nastier side effects of ergotamine which unfortunately can be pretty savage.

    --
    Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
  3. Re:House, MD. by yarnosh · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Sauer." It is German for "acid." LSD is a German acronym.