Scientific American: Psychedelics for Healing

[Christopher O'Brien]

[Since our How the Hippies Saved Physics thread has devolved into a moralizing debate, I've posted this thread in the hopes that we can examine this controversial topic as it relates to mainstream science and consciousness studies. Let's leave the legal issues alone for now---we can discuss them in another thread...---chris]

Psychedelic Healing?

Article HERE:
Mind-altering psychedelics are back—but this time they are being explored in labs for their therapeutic applications rather than being used illegally. Studies are looking at these hallucinogens to treat a number of otherwise intractable psychiatric disorders, including chronic depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and drug or alcohol dependency.


The past 15 years have seen a quiet resurgence of psychedelic drug research as scientists have come to recognize the long-underappreciated potential of these drugs. In the past few years, a growing number of studies using human volunteers have begun to explore the possible therapeutic benefits of drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, ibogaine and ketamine. Rest of article at the link....

 

[ALPHA ROMEO UNIFORM]

Hey if helps to assist in helping /not making it worse /those who suffer post-traumatic disorder which is heavy shit man.

 

[Anaximander]

My brother works with veterans who got hooked on drugs and he knows alot about the self-medication these guys do and what seems to work the best.

He doesn't agree with psychedelics being used for PTSD, but he does think opioids work for them - which is why many veterans become addicted. There is probably nothing more effective for dulling the physical and mental pain but opiates are so addictive that if they are ever used for therapy, the patients will have to be closely monitored. There is also marijuana, which works for many things like making people open up, see things from a different perspective, feel pleasure/have a laugh, etc - but can also negatively affect those suffering form conditions it might otherwise help treat such as PTSD (e.g. increased paranoia can be caused by marijuana, which can be devastating if someone is already having episodes of hypervigilance). Anyhow I tend to agree with my brother on this idea that cannabis can be helpful for treating ptsd.

Now why do I agree with this idea that opioids might work for therapy: I've seen and heard young veterans of Afghanistan talking openly and calmly about what they saw over there. I've seen it and heard about it.

Now these men were not sociopaths or suffering from some emotional deficit that would allow them to talk about this thing without going through the negative emotions one would normally expect to see, their brains were just overloaded with a substance that made it so they couldn't feel that pain. We are talking about a few percoset each here, not intravenous heroin. And not a bunch of addicts either, we are talking about one guy with a bad back tossing his friends a couple of pills.

Anyhow...

There was a remarkable contrast to what you'd see if you saw those same guys sitting around boozing it up. Chances are they wouldn't be talking about the war, and if they were you can bet you'd see some miserable men at that table (unless they are recalling something or someone they remember fondly, obviously). And If they were totally sober I don't think they'd be able to open up they way they did on opiates. Basically, if this group conversation was held in a therapeutic setting, the term for what occurred would be "a breakthrough".

Now I know this sort of drug has a bad rap and I'm not promoting it. It is an extremely dangerous substance, but if it was administered properly in a therapeutic environment and the guys taking it could be shielded from knowing what it was, there would probably be some progress made with a minimized risk of them developing an addiction. I don't event think that's legal, but I do think there has to be a better way than psychedelics.

These people need to think through their past experiences with a clear head, hallucinogens don't allow for that and things like ecstasy deplete the chemicals that the person is going to need just to go through life. Lord knows if they have PTSD, then they are already running low on some major brain chemicals, draining those or taking something that makes you think the universe is melting or that reality is unreliable is not the way to go. I think there is simply too much immediate collateral damage with psychedelics. These drugs might be good for spiritual experiences, but they could really do some damage to a person with a headfull of bad memories.

They I were to use military terms to compare psychedelics to opiates, I would liken the psychedelics to a bomb: it might get the target, but there is a price that will be paid on both ends and in this case you are both the pilot and the target. As to mdma, that is like eating a weeks rations in three days. What are you gonna do for the rest of the week having depleted all your reserves. Those rations are like your brain chemicals; the mdma will allow you to work through some problems - for a time - but those problems will still be there three days from now and you won't have the juice to deal with them then.

As to opiates, I would liken them to a suit of armor. But not just any suit of armor: this one is magic. It will get you through the battle, but if you leave it on too long you'll never be able to take it off. And if you do escape from the suit that kept you safe for a time, there will always be pieces of it stuck to you. You'll never be totally free from it and the desire to put that armour back on will always be there.

I for one am glad that more research is being conducted in this area. I just hope no one ends up worse off because of it.

 

[drew hempel]

http://motherboard.tv/2011/8/16/the-agony-and-the-ecstasy-the-quiet-mission-to-fight-ptsd-with-psychedelic-drugs

Ecstasy for war trauma: a flashback to earlier treatments Mind Hacks

In other words, most people with PTSD initially arrive for treatment wanting a better form of avoidance because their current methods simply aren’t working. The mental health professional has the unenviable task of explaining that treatment involves exactly the opposite and reliving the event and experiencing the anxiety will be key.
It is so key, in fact, that anti-anxiety drugs like benzodiazapines (e.g. vallium) may reduce the effectiveness of treatment because they dull the experience of stress that the person needs to adjust to.
The MDMA trial is interesting in this regard, because ecstasy is, for many, a remarkably effective anti-anxiety drug.
So how does the drug facilitate the psychotherapy? Here’s the description from the article:

MDMA’s effects typically manifest themselves 30-45 minutes after ingestion, so it doesn’t take long for rhythms to develop in Charleston. Sessions at the clinic oscillate between stretches of silent, inward focus, where the patient is left alone to process his trauma, and unfiltered dialogue with the co-therapists. “It’s a very non-directed approach,” Michael Mithoefer told me. This allows subjects to help steer the flow of their trip. They are as much the pilots of this therapy as their overseers. “Once they get the hang of it,” Mithoefer explained, “sometimes people will talk to us for a while and then say, ‘OK, time to go back inside. I’ll come report when I’m ready.’”
That said, patients understand that if no traumas emerge, the Mithoefer’s must coax them out. But they’ve never had to. The traumas always emerge, and by now there have been over 60 sessions between an initial, smaller Phase 2 study and the present trials. Horrors are bubbling up naturally, patient after patient.
​

This harks back to a more psychoanalytic or Freudian-inspired idea of trauma and treatment. The goal of the therapy is to understand the inner self while the drug is intended to help us overcome psychological defences that prevent us from seeing things as they really are. In fact, this is a central assumption of the therapy.

BBC News - Modified ecstasy

18 August 2011 Last updated at 19:39 ET Modified ecstasy 'attacks blood cancers'

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News

 

[boomerang]

Some of the pain of PTSD was explained to me by a friend who did psyche graduate work with primates and ingrained fear responses. He described experiments using real time brain imagery etc. in which monkeys were conditioned to respond to something horrible--I didn't ask what -- and then trained to ignore the triggering stimulus. But his main point was a bit depressing. Reactions to our greatest fears become wired in at such basic levels that they cannot be "erased". We simply learn routines for suppressing them using higher brain centers. So we are talking about minds that need to be altered in order to be saved. Pretty heavy duty stuff to contemplate.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

i have had lots of first-hand experience with virtually all classes of drugs. yes, i caused myself a lot of grief and saw up close the best and worst aspects of these drugs. i have always been keenly observing what was going on with myself and those around me. in the circles i used to be in i was always seen as someone too clever to be messing with drugs but i had my own reasons for doing so. i realise some people would discount everything i say because they would think any experiences i've had would taint my ability to be objective. in a way i cannot fault that way of thinking but i can say this, i've never been told anything by a doctor or psychiatrist that i had not already worked out for myself and also many health professionals have told me that my first hand knowledge and awareness of the subject in detail far outstripped their own knowledge. in fact, some health professionals mistook me for someone with a medical degree, not a user/abuser. if anyone is interested i would be happy to give my views on individual drugs and how i think they could be used and maybe more importantly how they should definitely not be used. i think psychedelics such as LSD, psylocibin and mescaline have the potential to tip even the most well balanced mind over in to psychosis. it is possible they could allow people to view things in a new, different light but the problem is there is absolutely no way to ensure that will be in a positive way. the mood of the person taking LSD when they take it is paramount i.e if the person is in any way unhappy when they take it, the trip will only build on that emotion and at the very least will be an unhappy experience to say the least, no doubt it would be actually damaging. MDMA on the other hand is incapable of giving someone a negative experience. there is no 'bad trip' and as long as there is no physical damage (which is unlikely with a standard dose) the person taking it will be able to completely open up emotionally and maybe more importantly, be able to empathise with all sides of any experience. the most hard-nosed tough guy will become an amenable, understanding person able to talk about their feelings and understand the feelings of others. opiates, apart from masking pain, do not actually get the user 'high' in the standard sense of that word. it does not lift someone one up from their initial mood. what it does do though is completely smooth out highs and lows which can lead to an indifference to mental pain. for example, someone under the influence of opiates, upone hearing of the death of a friend may find it hard to cry or feel the normal amount of emotion a non-user would feel. at the same time, that person would also not be 'lifted' by good news either. they would not experience the same elation that good news can give a non-user. it is very much a blunt 'numbing' experience. but it is always the same in that it numbs highs and lows. cannabis, i believe has huge potential - it is already recognised as one of the best drugs for increasing appetite which often suffers due to certain medical treatments (chemotherapy being the most notable). it also seems to relieve arthritis and related complaints. it is an effective muscle-relaxant and i would contend it has great soporific and anxiolytic capabilities too - that is, it's good for sleeping and relieving anxiety. it is said the lethal dose of cannabis is a one-ton block dropped onto your head. used too readily over a period of time though, it does have the potential to cause pyschosis, especially in those predisposed to mental illness. one of the drugs i believe has the greatest as yet untapped potential is ibogaine. if anyone has read anything about DMT and it's effects, then the best i can describe ibogaine as, is DMT-like but over a longer period of time. dreams can seem to last hours when in fact they maybe only 20mins long. ibogaine has the user in a semi-waking dream over a period of days, so all those 20min dreams that seem to last hours add up to what seems like WEEKS OF DREAMING over a few hours. the ibogaine trip is completely unlike that of LSD. despite what the public at large believes, LSD rarely causes outright hallucinations, that is, images and dreams completely of the users creation. LSD mostly warps and plays with visual information already there. this is not the case for ibogaine. in the course of say 6 hours ibogaine can provide what seems like 48 hours or more of a completely fabricated dream world that is totally real. it is almost indescribable in complexity and depth. i still debate with myself whether my brain, even at its most creative, could ever have conjured up the things i was shown. it is hard not to believe that ibogaine was not a gateway to another existence, another universe and especially a gateway to meet other entities that do not fall into any human-created category. i most certainly interacted with the most bizzare life-forms and it is very hard to accept they could just be the work of a mind under the influence. of course, i must accept without proof to the contrary, that the most likely explanation is that the mind can and does create these things but if so, then the mind is an even more wonderous thing than most people will ever get to appreciate!! ibobaine teaches the user things, it literally feels like it has scrubbed the brain clean in the process and seems to leave the brain in a better state than it was before with no after-effects. for some people this will be hard to accept but they may want to consider there are whole communities of humans who have used this with reverance for a long-time. they are not hippies looking to trip for the fun of it.
i defintely think it is time that society stops automatically lumping all drugs (and all drug uses) into the same narrow category, i.e that it is and should remain illegal.
there are no doubt dangers and pitfalls with the use of such drugs but that is the case as well with many accepted medicines. the important thing is to study their use without prejudice so that if any benefits are found, that do not outweigh the negatives, then their use should be allowed. if alcohol was a newly discovered drug it would be a schedule 1 drug, no if's or but's. outside of a very small amount daily, it has no medicinal effects at all and it most certainly is hugely damaging to the body when abused. heroin, whilst extremely addictive, will not cause actual bodily harm in therapeutic doses.
there is too much emotion in the public and government at large with the drug issue. it does not lend itself to unprejudiced study. i often think if we were to give all the facts to an computer with artificial intelligence, it would be able to tell us how and when we could use any drug, without any silly emotional reaction that our society seems prone to. deary me, there are too many people making decisions on a topic they actually know virtually nothing about and it's a pity that the USA is the worst culprit in the anti-drug hysteria as too many countries choose to (or are forced to) take their lead from the USA.

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

i have had lots of first-hand experience with virtually all classes of drugs. yes, i caused myself a lot of grief and saw up close the best and worst aspects of these drugs. i have always been keenly observing what w....the USA is the worst culprit in the anti-drug hysteria as too many countries choose to (or are forced to) take their lead from the USA.

Good, insightful post--I couldn't have said it much better myself. A suggestion: paragraph breaks are a good thing. They help the reader gather your thoughts...

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Good, insightful post--I couldn't have said it much better myself. A suggestion: paragraph breaks are a good thing. They help the reader gather your thoughts...

Ha ha, of course you are correct about paragraphs!! my only excuse is that whilst writing i was completely 'in the zone' (no, not a druggy one!), it was late and basically once i'd written it all i couldn't really be arsed to go fix it. i shall endeavor to be more reader-friendly next time. glad you found something worth reading in the wordsham (nice word- just made it) of my text.

 

[Randall]

Hre's something that you might find on topic ...

j.r.

 

[Anaximander]

Fixed some of that for ya - to make it easier to read:


Yes, i caused myself a lot of grief and saw up close the best and worst aspects of these drugs. i have always been keenly observing what was going on with myself and those around me. in the circles i used to be in i was always seen as someone too clever to be messing with drugs but i had my own reasons for doing so. i realise some people would discount everything i say because they would think any experiences i've had would taint my ability to be objective. in a way i cannot fault that way of thinking but i can say this, i've never been told anything by a doctor or psychiatrist that i had not already worked out for myself and also many health professionals have told me that my first hand knowledge and awareness of the subject in detail far outstripped their own knowledge.

In fact, some health professionals mistook me for someone with a medical degree, not a user/abuser. if anyone is interested i would be happy to give my views on individual drugs and how i think they could be used and maybe more importantly how they should definitely not be used. i think psychedelics such as LSD, psylocibin and mescaline have the potential to tip even the most well balanced mind over in to psychosis. it is possible they could allow people to view things in a new, different light but the problem is there is absolutely no way to ensure that will be in a positive way. the mood of the person taking LSD when they take it is paramount i.e if the person is in any way unhappy when they take it, the trip will only build on that emotion and at the very least will be an unhappy experience to say the least, no doubt it would be actually damaging.

MDMA on the other hand is incapable of giving someone a negative experience. there is no 'bad trip' and as long as there is no physical damage (which is unlikely with a standard dose) the person taking it will be able to completely open up emotionally and maybe more importantly, be able to empathise with all sides of any experience. the most hard-nosed tough guy will become an amenable, understanding person able to talk about their feelings and understand the feelings of others.

Opiates, apart from masking pain, do not actually get the user 'high' in the standard sense of that word. it does not lift someone one up from their initial mood. what it does do though is completely smooth out highs and lows which can lead to an indifference to mental pain. for example, someone under the influence of opiates, upone hearing of the death of a friend may find it hard to cry or feel the normal amount of emotion a non-user would feel. at the same time, that person would also not be 'lifted' by good news either. they would not experience the same elation that good news can give a non-user. it is very much a blunt 'numbing' experience. but it is always the same in that it numbs highs and lows.

Cannabis, i believe has huge potential - it is already recognised as one of the best drugs for increasing appetite which often suffers due to certain medical treatments (chemotherapy being the most notable). it also seems to relieve arthritis and related complaints. it is an effective muscle-relaxant and i would contend it has great soporific and anxiolytic capabilities too - that is, it's good for sleeping and relieving anxiety. it is said the lethal dose of cannabis is a one-ton block dropped onto your head. used too readily over a period of time though, it does have the potential to cause pyschosis, especially in those predisposed to mental illness.

One of the drugs i believe has the greatest as yet untapped potential is ibogaine. if anyone has read anything about DMT and it's effects, then the best i can describe ibogaine as, is DMT-like but over a longer period of time. dreams can seem to last hours when in fact they maybe only 20mins long. ibogaine has the user in a semi-waking dream over a period of days, so all those 20min dreams that seem to last hours add up to what seems like WEEKS OF DREAMING over a few hours. the ibogaine trip is completely unlike that of LSD.

Despite what the public at large believes, LSD rarely causes outright hallucinations, that is, images and dreams completely of the users creation. LSD mostly warps and plays with visual information already there. this is not the case for ibogaine. in the course of say 6 hours ibogaine can provide what seems like 48 hours or more of a completely fabricated dream world that is totally real. it is almost indescribable in complexity and depth. i still debate with myself whether my brain, even at its most creative, could ever have conjured up the things i was shown. it is hard not to believe that ibogaine was not a gateway to another existence, another universe and especially a gateway to meet other entities that do not fall into any human-created category. i most certainly interacted with the most bizzare life-forms and it is very hard to accept they could just be the work of a mind under the influence. of course, i must accept without proof to the contrary, that the most likely explanation is that the mind can and does create these things but if so, then the mind is an even more wonderous thing than most people will ever get to appreciate!! ibobaine teaches the user things, it literally feels like it has scrubbed the brain clean in the process and seems to leave the brain in a better state than it was before with no after-effects. for some people this will be hard to accept but they may want to consider there are whole communities of humans who have used this with reverance for a long-time. they are not hippies looking to trip for the fun of it.

I defintely think it is time that society stops automatically lumping all drugs (and all drug uses) into the same narrow category, i.e that it is and should remain illegal. there are no doubt dangers and pitfalls with the use of such drugs but that is the case as well with many accepted medicines. the important thing is to study their use without prejudice so that if any benefits are found, that do not outweigh the negatives, then their use should be allowed. if alcohol was a newly discovered drug it would be a schedule 1 drug, no if's or but's. outside of a very small amount daily, it has no medicinal effects at all and it most certainly is hugely damaging to the body when abused. heroin, whilst extremely addictive, will not cause actual bodily harm in therapeutic doses.

There is too much emotion in the public and government at large with the drug issue. it does not lend itself to unprejudiced study. i often think if we were to give all the facts to an computer with artificial intelligence, it would be able to tell us how and when we could use any drug, without any silly emotional reaction that our society seems prone to. deary me, there are too many people making decisions on a topic they actually know virtually nothing about and it's a pity that the USA is the worst culprit in the anti-drug hysteria as too many countries choose to (or are forced to) take their lead from the USA. "


Good stuff goggs