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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.
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.
Dr prescribed phrenilin (butalbital + acetaminophen) for mine.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
...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.
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.
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.
They use ergotamine tartrate for migraines and from ergotamine you can easily derive lysergic acid.. The link is pretty clear...lysergic acid .
On top of this, I think I remember a similar study in "LSD: A Total Study" which was published a LONG time ago. I think they determined that LSD at 1/10th of a psychedelic dosage(about 10 micrograms) would perform as a great analgesic for migraines, and analesics were what Hofmann was looking for originally.
Question: Who can tell me what the "S" in LSD actually stands for?
Difficulty: No search engines... You either know this or you're guessing.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Actually, in that episode, Dr. House used psilocybin mushrooms("magic mushrooms") to alleviate the problems from the supposed cluster headaches(though it turned out to be juvenile hemochromatosis). The episode in question in s03e23, titled "The Jerk". In another episode(s02e12, titled "Distractions"), Dr. House induced a migraine headache in himself, and "short-circuited" the headache with LSD. Migraine headaches and cluster headaches are different, with cluster headaches being described as just about the worst pain a person can experience.
I actually suffer from migraines(as first diagnosed), but they have been reduced in frequency and pain through the use of fentanyl patches(though the patches were prescribed for the chronic pain I suffer, aside from the headaches). My pain clinic doctor thought I might have been experiencing cluster headaches, due to the pain, secondary symptoms, and duration, but I have never taken the time to be properly diagnosed(no insurance sucks, though I doubt I suffer from cluster headaches).
> The episode in question in s03e23, titled "The Jerk".
Shouldn't EVERY episode of House be titled "The Jerk"? Or was this referring to someone besides House?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
"Sauer." It is German for "acid." LSD is a German acronym.
We're already taking the drugs "far nastier and more dangerous than mere LSD". A lot of the time they don't work and they don't work the same across all sufferers. I'm only a episodic cluster head (a lucky one) but the side effects of the meds that work for me and can stop an attack cluster are such that I prefer to ride it out without them. More info at clusterheadaches.com
Cluster headaches are a boring pain, usually behind one eye, but can also radiate to the ear or jaw. The hallmark of the pain is hard to stand or sit still and laying down is impossible. A migraine as you probably know is a pounding pain, that movement, light and sound makes worse.
A CH will start suddenly, will last a standard amount of time depending on the person, and leave suddenly. They usually happen at the same times every day and strike while the sufferer is sleeping. I do know people who have had remission while using fentanyl patches, even though most other narcotics are a trigger due to their vascular relaxing properties.
I hope you don't have CH but if you do get worse, there are treatments that can be done without insurance like welding oxygen and LSA/LSD.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
There's nothing like 3 years of high school German and 5 years of taking LSD to round out an education.
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?
You do realize that Timothy's last name is Leary, right? He's writing based on first-hand knowledge.
#DeleteChrome
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15257686
This is not the sig you're looking for.
I bet you're glad that you were saved from the government death lists :(
They use ergotamine tartrate for migraines and from ergotamine you can easily derive lysergic acid.. The link is pretty clear...lysergic acid .
On top of this, I think I remember a similar study in "LSD: A Total Study" which was published a LONG time ago. I think they determined that LSD at 1/10th of a psychedelic dosage(about 10 micrograms) would perform as a great analgesic for migraines, and analesics were what Hofmann was looking for originally.
Question: Who can tell me what the "S" in LSD actually stands for? Difficulty: No search engines... You either know this or you're guessing.
Exactly.
Many, many migraine medicines contain ergot derivatives. Dr. Hofmann and his employer, Sandoz, probably have researched more ergotamine compounds than anyone on the planet. Sandoz also produces other, best-in-class compounds, such as Selegiline, which not only are incredibly effective against Parkinson's, early stages of Alzheimer's, but also seem to have some life-extension properties in humans and other mammals.
As for the "S" in LSD; I've never actually seen an answer for that question. LSD that we all know and love is actually the 25th isomer of d-Lysergic Acid Diethylamine. Beyond that, I am afraid I do not know. (Flies off bridge...)
Schedule 1 is political.
What therapy did you use for migraines? Pretty much nothing worked for them when I used to have them commonly. I also had cluster headaches for a while, and pretty much NOTHING worked on them. For migraines I used to use ketoprofen (when it was sold as little over the counter headache pills, something they pretty much stopped doing), and it sometimes took the edge off, marijuana also worked a bit. As for the clusters... nothing. Clusters are much, much, worse than migraines. If a migraine was a movie directed by Stephen Speilburg, then a cluster headache would be directed by Rob Zombie.
What type of, non drug, therapy do you suggest?
On topic, as a person who suffered both migraines and clusters, I wonder how much of my drug use was self-medication. When I was young I didn't care one bit for for most recreational drugs, but I loved LSD. The period which I used the most LSD (trying to stay on it for weeks at a time) was also the period where I had the worst cluster headaches. As they started waning, so did my use of LSD.
I, on a personal level, and happy with the idea of medicating things with marijuana, not because I care if its terribly effective, but because it opens the door to eventual legalization, which would lead to a bit of a saner view on drugs. It might be therapeutic, but I think most people who advocate legal medical usage have the same ulterior motives. That actually was an issue here in AZ on our medicalization bill, with the "war on drugs" crowd attacking the medical crowd because they were somewhat honest that they were using it as a door to eventual decriminalization. Obviously the argument had no effect, since I don't care. If we legalize marijuana whats the worse that happens? Our daughters start dating jazz musicians? (during the debates over the bill, I got yelled at by older senior citizens for pointing out that much of the historical reason for making marijuana illegal was racial, with most of those terrible jazz musicians trying to steal our daughters being black, and in AZ, the fact that we might want to hang out with those damn Mexicans... gasp!).
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Most grammar nazis I know assume that language never changes but it doesn't make them right.
I'm getting a cluster headache from all the *whooshes* around here
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Most grammar nazis I know assume that language never changes but it doesn't make them right.
I'm quite happy to accept most linguistic evolution, however people who say "could care less" instead of "couldn't care less" are, and always will be, fucktards.