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First LSD Test In 40 Years Reveal Drug Helps Terminal Patients Prepare For Death
EwanPalmer writes "The first controlled LSD study in more than 40 years reveals the drug could be used to help people with terminal illnesses deal better with death. The study, published in the Journal of nervous and Mental Disease, showed that 12 people who agreed to take the banned hallucinogenic drug during therapy sessions felt 'significant reductions in anxiety' about their lives ending."
This is really ancient knowledge. Did science just get hep? Great.
It's more about science getting approval. LSD is one of those compounds that is next to impossible for researchers to get access to and test in humans. For reasons I don't care enough about keeping kids off drugs or something to fully understand, some drugs are so wicked and dangerous and illegal that it is necessary to prevent any research (even about how dangerous they are; but definitely nothing suggesting that they aren't as dangerous as previously believed), even under hardass conditions, on terminal patients, and so forth. As quoth noted toxicologist and psycho-pharmacologist Jacqui Smith: "You cannot compare the harms of an illegal activity with a legal one." Why? Because one is illegal, of course!
I wouldn't really call this 'ancient knowledge' (if the first synthesis was in 1938, it probably isn't shamanic lore); but it was certainly an active area of scientific interest pre-ban. That somebody would want another crack at it isn't even remotely news. That they managed to fill out the paperwork, on the other hand...
They seem to have similar effects, but these things are notoriously hard to study objectively, so anecdotal evidence is not enough to establish that they have identical effects (and it would be really weird if they did. How should such different molecules get identical pharmacokinetics and pharmarkodynamics?).
From what I know of LSD (not having tried it) most of the bad effects are due to impure product, substituted product (i.e. it wasn't LSD) or wildly improper dosage.
Unsurprisingly, this is what happens when ANYthing is illegal and therefore all usage is uncontrolled. Look at alcohol during prohibition. It was frequently tainted with methanol, ethelyne glycol and god knows what else. Many people went crazy, committed horrible, violent, harmful acts or died suddenly because they drank tainted product. The major harm from illegal drugs stems from the very fact that they are illegal.
If drug purity and content were controlled and dosage information were freely available, the reduction in harm from these drugs would drop significantly. People who are going to do drugs are going to do them if they are legal or illegal. But if they were legal and controlled, people would know what they were getting, they would know how much they could do and they would be more likely to seek help if they had problems without fear of jail time. And far fewer people would commit crimes to get their next fix.
Yes, there would still be abusers and harm done, just like we still have chronic alcoholics, but the harm to the general public would be much less.
So no matter what your grandma said about LSD abusers there are far more reasons to legalize and have some control over drugs than to leave them in the murky shadows of the underworld.