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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 has been a long known fact, shortly after the study, or experiments were done this was being discussed among the medical community, and among the Public. I guess the newer generation will rediscover these studies but this isn't anything remotely "new" or ground breaking!
This is really ancient knowledge. Did science just get hep?
Great.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
The bible thumpers who think we should all face death kicking and screaming and in maximum pain will put an end to this research forthwith.
I'd say it was more like the first test in 24 years, I remember it being tested extensively in college.
I do remember there was often a sense of finding a higher meaning or truth, but come morning we could never remember what it was. It was maddening. So one time I borrowed a pocket dictation machine during our, uh, testing, and we thought we'd record this great insight we had.
Even though we finally went to bed with the idea that we had, at last, captured this great truth for posterity, when we listened to the tape the next day we were disappointed to find out that all we had recorded were the semi-coherent ramblings of some guys on LSD,
Were done with Psilocybin (Magic Mushrooms) on terminally ill cancer patients (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/201210/psilocybin-anxiety-and-depression-in-cancer) and also PTSD sufferers (http://guardianlv.com/2013/08/psychedelics-show-promise-for-ptsd-treatment/). Psychedelics are beautiful substances which when used correctly can give the user a profound, new outlook on life and put personal matters into better perspective. There's no doubt these drugs are exceptional in acting as what I would describe as the psychological equivalent to a disk de-fragmentation on a computer; nothing is necessarily gained or lost, just arranged and sorted back into the order which is most conducive to the operation of the hardware (or human body, in this case).
it can also puts your mind on a train of thought such that you can not break out of it unless someone is monitoring you, picks up on that and says, "dude, snap out of it." Somehow death and and LSD are a bad idea.
Being that, perhaps, the reason the thing works with terminal patients.
I had read that traumas can be overcome by carefully reviving it - slowly and shortly at first, and then slowly increasing the exposure until the anxiety drops to a manageable level, when then the patient can face the trauma and put it behind.
Perhaps that exact "train of thought" manages to do something like that.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
According to the article, the trial was for "LSD-assisted psychotherapy", so it was a combination between an acid trip and a session with a therapist. There was someone monitoring them, and they probably did have to get patients to "snap out of it" once in a while.
I can't image a worse trip than knowing your going do die and experiencing those thoughts while under the influence of LSD. For those that have never taken this drug, beyond the entertaining light, sounds and altered twisted reality and all, it can also puts your mind on a train of thought such that you can not break out of it unless someone is monitoring you, picks up on that and says, "dude, snap out of it." Somehow death and and LSD are a bad idea.
I was thinking the same thing. It's been several decades since I've dropped acid. But this could go one of two ways. I've had very few bad "trips" but I can't imagine how bad it could be if you know you are dying. And i hope they give them some valium when they come down. There's nothing worse than that strung out feeling afterwards. It's best if you can sleep through that. On the other hand, most things are pretty funny when you're tripping.
I remember when I was a teenager doing LSD and I saw the grim reaper appear. After I got over my initial shock I pointed at him and laughed. Eventually he went away but took my walls and ceiling with him. My only thought at the time was that my dad was going to be really pissed when he sees this.
A sample size of 12 is ridiculously small.
With controversial topics, you have to start somewhere, and that place is always small.
Then you maybe go on to the bigger studies.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Eventually he went away but took my walls and ceiling with him.
You mean he stole your tent?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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...
You're going to die no matter what, there's absolutely nothing anyone can do to change that, all medical science can hope to do is delay it a bit. Coming to accept that knowledge rather than letting it eat away at your peace of mind is an important part of the dying process - the sooner you do it the freer the rest of you life will be, whether that be day or decades. It's an incredibly liberating, humbling, and inspiring thing to truly accept that everything you think of as yourself will come to an end, and the only trace left in this world will be the ripples you leave in other people's lives.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
about my death?
As long as I can remember (that includes Captain Kangaroo and the Watergate Hearings), I've known I'm going to die, and it's never worried me that much.
No, I don't want to die, but it's gonna happen whether I want it to or not, so no use getting my tits in a twist about something I can't prevent.
I have never been worried about dying. Honestly, I thought most people were mostly scared to die because of religious reasons.
While I'm not suicidal, I am looking forward to seeing what happens after I die.
I'm guessing either nothing happens, and I don't exist anymore, that I wake up hooked up to some simulation, or reincarnation (which doesn't mean I'm not in a simulation, I could be in a simulation that starts you over in another life.)
Either way, I have no control over it and it's going to happen, so I'm cool with it.
Be seeing you...
natural compounds like psilocybin, DMT, and mescaline have identical effects and have been used for thousands of years.
This has been a long known fact,
Some of this was known back in the '60s and '70s. But the federal government decided to suppress it. In particular: Any drug with side-effects that were pleasant was considered a threat to the status quo of governance - a way for productive people to achieve happiness without driving industrial profit and/or part of a Communist conspiracy to rot the "Free World"'s moral fiber.
There was a period where researchers would only get new grants if the conclusions of their studies stated that the drugs - psychedelics, marijhuana, etc. - were useless for medical purposes and/or dangerous. (The papers in Science, for instance, were often pathetically hilarious. The reduced data said one thing, while the conclusion said the opposite.)
Meanwhile the government (notably with such things as the FBI's COINTELPRO program) smeared those (formerly highly respected scientists) who had been proponents of finding uses for them (especially those who had tried to use them to augment intelligence and experimented on themselves - often with bizarre results). The most prominent of these was Timothy Leary, though there were a number of others.
Somewher in there the drugs were added to various "schedules" and banned from medical use.
After a couple years of this, with any actual benefits buried in the noise, the government declared that it was "settled science" that there were no useful treatments using these drugs and stopped issuing new permits for their use in new research projects. (It's very much like research into global warming: You can't convince people on either side because the research is suspect due to the government becoming involved and pushing its horse in the race.)
Then the government declared acts related to banned-drug trafficing, possession, and use to be "serious" crimes and imposed passed mandatory minimum sentences - recreating the scenario of alcohol prohibition, funding organized crime, filling up the prisons, and lining corrupt police personell's pockets with graft money. Then it passed RICO and created the same financial incentive structure that fueled the Spanish Inquisition - driving ever-increasing anti-drug activity and blocking attempts to repeal drug bans.
And that's where it stood for decades. Negligible work on uses for the chemicals - either by organized research or private self-medication (with drugs of uncertain content and quality).
So while Moore's Law drove the computes from giant cabnets filling floors of office buildings to chips in everything under the sun, work on a nimber of categories of drugs stagnated.
The canabinoids of Marijuana, alone, have a number of apparent (but not adequately researhed) benefits:
- They appear to be a specific treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (which, itself, seems to be a result of undermeidcation for pain - also driven by the "drug war").
- Canabinoids (including at least one which does not produce a substantial "high") also appear to be a successful treatment for a debilitating form of childhood epilepsy.
- Parkinson's disease eventually kills, not directly through loss of dopamine, but by the body's attempt to compensate for it by fouling up a system that uses the recently discovered endocanabinoids as neurotransmitters. (These are the chemicals that THC and its relatives mimic, much as opioids mimic endorphins.) This ends up with loss of memory and loss of appetite, and the victim starves herself to death. Canabinoids may help alleviate this and/or prolong life, (if only by reducing the tendency to self-starvation by inducing "the munchies").
- Canabinoids have been claimed to arrest the progress of several cancers, including a brain cancer.d
- Canabinoids have long been used for reducing the nausea of chemotherapy, easing self-starvation in cancer patients. (Similarly with side-effects of anti-AIDS drug coctails.)
I could go on.
But "more research is needed" to determine which (if any) of these effects are real, turn them into practical treatments, and deploy them. And it's not going to happen smoothly and rapidly with the government continuing to interfere.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Aside from the fact that "get high" can refer to drugs besides marijuana, marijuana itself is technically classified as a mild hallucinogen. I've never understood this classification because :
(a) marijuana makes you lethargic while most hallucinogens make you more energetic,
(b) marijuana can cause visual effects but only after you've taken so much it becomes unpleasant.
(c) marijuana has a predictable effect while serious hallucinogens are much more susceptible to "set & setting".
Anyways, mescaline, the naturally occurring drug closest to LSD, has been used for religious purposes since before recorded history. Also, LSD is knowing for leaving a lasting impression. Ain't surprising that controlling the "set & setting" allows for serious psychological work.
Also, psychedelic mushrooms are useful for treating alcoholism in that you should not take alcohol when on mushrooms, so partying on a mushroom trip means a night out sans alcohol.
A medicinal dosage of LSD is an order of magnitude lower than the quantity needed for most individuals to experience hallucinogenic side effects making it far safer than THC or opiates. In addition, it deals with medical conditions such as chronic joint pain or cluster headaches which aren't very treatable otherwise (and once again, it allows the person to remain cogent). The US government stopping clinical trials half-way through in the drug craze (trials that were already showing amazing potential) was criminal.
I suppose one could try to explain, but a tiny square of blotter paper is worth about a billion words.
I've had very few bad "trips" but I can't imagine how bad it could be if you know you are dying.
Knowing you're dying can be a bad trip, no drugs required. Someone who's looped their fear until their soul is crushed isn't in much danger - they've already hit bottom.
Knowing you're going to die is a terrible burden, but it presents you the opportunity to choose the last memories your friends and family will have of you. They can remember you living your last weeks in fear and dying terrified, or you spending some time recalling the good times, and perhaps forgiving some of the bad ones. That's all the control you have left of your legacy, and you don't have much time to take advantage of it.
LSD, especially low* doses with someone to help guide can sometimes give people a new perspective. If they can relax their fixation on the fact that their time is up they may see the bigger picture - that we're all mortal, that life is a cycle, and that this is just a part of it. It may give you the opportunity to make your peace with the world. And if not, you're dead anyway. So why not?
* There's adequate margin between free-association, preconception-questioning levels and moon-howling-naked.
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?).
It's just a ploy from the anti-drug people.
After the trial, they can say: We tried LSD on 40 people and they all died.
Never heard of anyone doing anything violent under the influence of alcohol, you must be right...
or dumb.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If the person can't physically think or feel, and their neurons function are disrupted, they don't and can't particularly feel anything in a controlled way. So of course they will stop worrying about death, and their entire brains will be immobolized and incapable of defense or anything else.
They used to slip this drug to unwitting victims to turn them into schizophrenics for gods sakes. The CIA also envisioned putting it in water supplies to make the entire populace of a region defenseless, walking around like mindless zombies even at low doses.
End result: you can give a person a drug that does all sorts of damaging shit, doesn't mean its working therapeutically or right to give a person. Because they're terminal they obviously figure the brain damage wouldn't matter, since they're going to die anyway. Lets slip them into a psychotic episode to control them until they finally pass! Yay, that makes them easier to deal with!
Have you considered that she only saw the extreme edge cases? The vast majority of people who take LSD never end up in an emergency room because of it. The vast majority never end up hospitalised. She, by definition of her job, only saw the worst.
> Things going horribly wrong while on hallucinogens isn't exactly rare, and as such should really only
> be used while under supervision. They are in fact so common, that they have an official slang term,
> "bad trip".
Depends what you mean by "horribly wrong" or "bad trip". "Bad Trip" is used to describe any situation where a person has an emotional experience that they are having trouble handling. Yes, this happens. I have seen it happen. It can be loud, it can be scary, but it really turning into anything significant IS indeed rare.
In fact, if it wasn't rare, it wouldn't make the news.
Yes, its true, psychedelics can provide people with very intense emptional experiences, which are not always fun; anyone using them should be aware of and prepared for that. Anything beyond that is just unwarranted fear.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Psychedelics are dangerous. They are very effective at treating addictions, and modern society is entirely build around all the consumers running on hamster wheels for their next hit. They grant self-awareness, and that just might make the marionette see the strings they dance from. But even more dangerously they might make the puppetmasters realize those same strings also tie the hand that holds them.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.
I take it you haven't done any of these, since the effects of LSD is **NOT** identical to the effects of psilocybin mushrooms or mescaline-containing cacti. I have done all three, and all three are dramatically different from each other. For that matter, a trip from San Pedro cacti is different than a peyote trip, and a chemically-generated LSD trip is different than a morning glory seed generated LSD trip.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Morning Glorys don't contain LSD, they contain LSA, which, while being a precursor to LSD, is very different.
><));>
And - just a note - I'm prepared to assert with confidence that LSD is not identical to Psilocybin, Mescaline, DMT or any other hallucinogenic materials. Ask users of these substances and they'll tell you - they cause very different experiences, both during the "high" and the subsequent hangover ("crash", "come-off", etc.).
True, but several incidents a night at one emergency room suggests that these cases are fairly common. Thing is, LSD is not regulated, and it's hard to know exactly what you're getting. It's quite possible that, if LSD were legal and non-prescription, it would be basically harmless. Further study is needed, and not bloody likely to happen any time soon with the fanatic anti-some-drug people in the US.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes