[Closed] Scientists study possible health benefits of LSD and ecstasy

Alright mate, where you from, what you had?

Aye, a lab I worked in a few years ago was doing work with LSD on a precursor to all this.

But stay off the ketamine kids....irreversible bladder damage!

Why anyone takes Ket is beyond me.
Funny how they all want to tell you they've taken it too.

E is not good for you, kidney stones at 21.

Yayo is not good for you, ulcer and hiatus hernia before 30.

LSD is not good for you, when you realise you can't actually fly 🙁

Mister P... ??

anotherdeadhero, what sort of work out of interest, the 2-Bromo-LSD non-psychedelic version or volunteer studies using LSD ?

K

well i took my fair share of funny white bits of squared paper in the early 90's and lets just say my memory aint what it used to be!

i couldnt think of anything worse than dropping one of them these days..

By the same token anorexia nervosa, cluster headaches and chronic anxiety attacks are not good for you either. LSD and E are way tame compared to some of the compounds used where the conditions carry a higher risk of morbidity like chemotherapy. Chemo can take years off your life, but keep you alive. Taking a prescription version of LSD for anxiety could be a terrific new therapy.

Keva, I wasn't directly involved, a pHd student was doing some cell culture work using LSD. No humans involved so the compound was being used purely as an experimental tool, much like cocaine.

BlingBling... I think the article is talking about taking once or twice a year not multiple drops several times a week which will obviously cook your insides. And everyone knows they can't fly, I believe that story was originated by the American authorities back in the fifties/sixties to frighten the public away from LSD.

K

I couldn't believe some of the stories I read today about the drugs for Parkinson's disease. 1 guy started getting violent thoughts and also a compulsive spending habit so scammed fake tickets on ebay to pay for his £150k credit card etc. Another suddenly felt like collecting 1000s of indecent pictures of children. In both cases they went to court but the judges pretty much let them go as it was deemed their behaviour was caused by the drugs!

Lets hope the kids don't get hold of those....

Drugs are bad kidz. Sometimes there just ain't any other choice. Psychological distrubances with a drug designed to modify Parkinsons physiological root cause isn't exactly unexpected, in fact its indicated.

If they developed something from LSD as a pharmaceutical compound in its own right, I'd bet it'd be a CD (controlled drug) notwithstanding no psycotropic activity whatsoever. That'd purely be political, much like what drives a 'banned' substance list at the moment ... so your GP or (more likely) specialist would only be able to prescribe it for a narrow set of circumstances that the drug has a licence for and you'd only be able to get one supply at a time.

its hardly news is it?

isnt this exactly why mdma was first synthesized?
while i am happy to believe that medical use could be beneficial, it is only ever going to be following extensive testing and under closely controlled doses.

the self medication described is just the excuses drummed up by users to make them feel more acceptable in society.

dmt has great potential to break smack/crack addiction
everyone needs a door in their head.

I am writing my MSc thesis on DMT and mescaline in theraputic contexts and am meant to be doing a presentation about this at Plymouth Uni in a few weeks time.

The LSD studies are hardly new, with Stanislac Grof having written about it extensively, and also Rick Strassman having written about the first DEA-authorised clinical studies on DMT.

Some of my writings on mescaline (and San Pedro) are now in a book that has been published this month called "The Hummingbird's Journey to God".

[i]its hardly news is it?[/i]

no but it's the first time LSD has returned to the labs for over thirty odd years.

agreed, dmt used in the correct circumstances/setting has much more potential for health benefits, mental and physical.

K

the self medication described is just the excuses drummed up by users to make them feel more acceptable in society.

Oh come one, thats unfair, look at the length ME patients go to with weed. If you really wanted to get horizontal you could go round the corner for some skunk.

the self medication described is just the excuses drummed up by users to make them feel more acceptable in society.

Why [s]we [/s]erm they are allready pretty accepted in society you might want to look at usage rates amongst those under 35.

I think it is unlikely the do great good, unlikely to do great harm (except for the vulnerable and we will never know whether it was trigger or cause) bit like alcohol use really.

the single example quoted in the guardian reads..... i took lsd once, and now im a clean living individual - hardly makes a cast iron case for legal distribtion of class a drugs does it. Without knowing any facts, it appears that Anna Jones has shifted her crutch from daily alcohol to twice yearly acid - if she can make that mental jump, the next one should be easy.

Simon, do you believe the percieved benefits of ritual drug taking can also exist without 'spiritual' belief?

Like Monkeyboy, wild horses couldn't drag me back to my 90s psychedelic drug taking, althoigh at the time some of my experiences were very beneficial and helpful. Using LSD helped me to start addressing my dyslexia, for example.
However, it always felt like a roll of the dice and, knowing a few of my mates and a family member who are now on anti-psychotic drugs to combat the schizophrenia precipitated by LSD and skunk, I feel very fortunate that I haven't suffered any ill effects.

I don't think the Guardian article is attempting to make a legal case for anything.

I think Anna Jones has sucessfully managed to find an easily availible substance that has a considerably lower risk profile that the previous substances she abused. Plus twice yearly intake is hardly abuse. LSD is also handily not physically addictive, unlike the fags. It is however an unregulated illegal industry, so it would be good if the govt could get off its backward facing high horse, smell the bacon, and deal with the issue properly in order to better serve the people it is elected by.

Suggesting that becuase someone has found that taking a substance society has seen fit to vilify before properly investigating any medicinal value in a fit and proper scientific manner, in a moderate and careful manner, is tantamount to becoming a 'every class A drug under the sun' droput junkie scum is absurd, risable and offensive.

Rubbish - this proves what drugs do. Just say no kids.

Albert Hofmann by all accounts experienced the world's first LSD-induced trip whilst riding his bike home from the lab!! You couldn't make it up!

RIP Albert 😀

Judging my the photo at the bottom it didn't seem to do him any harm (or me 😉 )

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

@pook; Top class bit of film there!

[i]Simon, do you believe the percieved benefits of ritual drug taking can also exist without 'spiritual' belief?[/i]

SOOB

That is a question that can be answered a couple of ways. Strassman injected 60 participants with pure DMT in a hospital/clinical setting, with them being hooked up to monitoring equipment. Benny Shannon however recorded over 2500 ayahuasca sessions using interviews with shaman, travellers partaking in ceremonial/natural settings, and from members of the Daime Church who take it in a religious context. When you compare the visions and experiences of these two groups, you will immediate see the differences in experience that resulted.

However, although DMT in the form of ayahuasca can be seen by some as the second most halluciogenic substance so far discovered (Toe/Datura being the first), I have drunk the same amount as other people at the same time, and they have reported no visions at all whereas I was taken to the very limits of what I could handle. So the same drink, and the same amounts taken by two different people can have very different affects. There are i see a number of reasons for this

- fear holding people back from having an experience
- bodily preparedness (ayahuasca is not a one off, the visions change over time, I have my own thoughts as to why)
- motivation
- ability to "perceive/receive" via the heart organ

I am currently writing an essay on the concept of heart cognition, and although you may say that you need to be spiritual to have an experience, or maybe received benefits that otherts could judge as a placebo effect?, I would say that you have to be able to shift your perception and consciousness to the heart, and if you approach ayahuasca in a very cynical or analytical way it will be night on impossible to achieve this.

That isnt to say that you will not have visions, but the visions will be qualitatively very different indeed. I feel that I have experienced both, and part of what i will be writing about is this shift in consciousness.

Wonder who's funding it.

There's a fair amount of this sort of stuff going on it obviously has an effect so maybe it could be made into a useful drug. I remember reading about people doing some work on farely mundane things like paracetamol and aspirin. These things have been around for ages and while their intended use is well understood they have lot's of other anecdotal effects that aren't.

Ralli - very interesting that the experienced effect depends on the mindset/context/environment of the individual and is not a straight forward chemical effect. How does this extend beyond hallucinogenics and into other medications, e.g. pain killers?

my memory aint what it used to be!

But I have taken very few medications, never smoked, rarely been drunk and never taken any recreational drugs - and my memory (at 40yo) is also not what it was.

Buzz - there is now some interesting work on drugs that break down intellectual concepts thus meaning that you do not feel pain in a very different way to traditional pain killers. I am not up on that yet. There is also the seminal book "Getting Well Again" which looks at visualisation techniques and cancer which is well worth a read. Of course the whole area of placebos is of interst to me. I could go on but wont bore you....