[2 articles]
Long Wait for Legalization of LSD Over
http://www.voxy.co.nz/technology/long-wait-legalization-lsd-over/209/32989
11 December, 2009
Dallas Boyd
When LSD was synthesized in 1943, many scientists and academics
advocated it's therapeutic and healing properties. When the infamous
Dr. Timothy Leary started experimenting with LSD and getting off his
pickle in the 1960's, it perhaps defined the way we think of - and
fear - the drug today. Amid rising stigmatization and upon being
declared as an illegal substance, many Universities (such as Harvard)
were forced to abandon studies of the drug years ago. But not anymore...
Leary became such a cultural icon that his Wikipedia entry even puts
60s legends like Forrest Gump to shame. President Richard Nixon
reportedly called him "the most dangerous man in America." His
campaign slogan "Come together, join the party" is rumoured to have
inspired John Lennon to write "Come Together." He was photographed at
Lennon and Yoko's bed-in when "Give Peace a Chance" was recorded. He
is said to have spent time locked in a prison cell adjacent to
Charles Manson. He was friends with the notorious Watergate burglar,
appeared in an early Johnny Depp movie, and is Winona Ryder's godfather.
Yet as succinctly argued by Owsley Stanley, "Leary was a fool. Drunk
with 'celebrity-hood' and his own ego, he became a media clown-and
was arguably the single most damaging actor involved in the
destruction of the evanescent social movement of the '60's. Tim, with
his very public exhortations to the kids to 'tune in, turn on and
drop out,' is the inspiration for all the current draconian US drug
laws against psychedelics."
Despite ideas that Leary's far-out image and methods hurt the
scientific advancement and acceptance of LSD, today the drug is
apparently, "experiencing a renaissance in research interest after
decades of stigmatization from the medical and scientific communities."
The Food and Drug Administration of the U.S.A. has recently approved
research involving LSD in order to treat "end-of-life anxiety" for
people experiencing terminal illnesses. Ironically, upon realization
that he was dying of an incurable cancer, Leary also "treated"
himself with LSD while recording the process of his death in order to
provide new insights into death and dying… However he also "treated"
himself with nitrous oxide, cigarettes, signature "Leary Biscuits"
(crackers with cheese and a small marijuana bud, briefly microwaved),
heroin and morphine.
Currently, the Harvard McLean Hospital is researching the affects of
LSD on the brain in regard to headaches. ("Get brain surgery or take
a tab of LSD?") [See below.]
Despite the difficulties involved with obtaining permission and
resources needed to study this drug, the ball is undeniably rolling
once again, as highlighted in the San Francisco Chronicle article,
"LSD's Long, Strange Trip Back into the Lab."
So what does this mean for science, medicine, hippies, and rebels? At
this stage, no one really knows. Due to it's illegalization, LSD has
been around for a long time without anyone really knowing anything about it.
But take some words of wisdom from scientist Stanislav Grof, who was
one of the last scientists to abandon hallucinogenic research in the
1970's: "I thought psychiatry and psychology really lost a major
opportunity because of the abuse that happened with unsupervised
research. These are fascinating substances - and they're very, very
powerful, so they should be used with great precaution."
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The Psychotherapy Movement: Acid's Long Trip Back to Clinical Research
http://media.www.mcgilltribune.com/media/storage/paper234/news/2009/09/29/Features/The-Psychotherapy.Movement.Acids.Long.Trip.Back.To.Clinical.Research-3786192.shtml
Carolyn Gregoire
Published: 9/29/09
After nearly 25 years of suffering from debilitating cluster
headaches - commonly referred to as "suicide headaches" because of
their length and intensity - Bob Wold was faced with a difficult -
and unusual - decision: get brain surgery or take a tab of LSD.
Six years ago, his clusters became nearly unbearable. Wold was
scheduled for several surgeries when he learned that acid, though
controversial, was a known cure for clusters. After a year of
research, he decided to give LSD a try, and took a small dose -
roughly a quarter of what is used for recreational purposes.
"When I took it, basically the only thing that I felt was that it
took the pain away almost immediately, within half an hour," says
Wold. "It was something completely different from any other
medication I had tried - it just totally cleared my head. I felt a
little bit of a buzz for about four or five hours, but I didn't see
elephants or anything like that - no hallucinations at all."
Taking at most two or three doses a year at the beginning of a
headache cycle, Wold has found profound relief - unhindered by the
drug's other effects - from using small amounts of the
consciousness-expanding tryptamine. Driven by his own success with
LSD treatment, Wold founded ClusterBusters, a non-profit advocacy
organization dedicated to researching the use of psychedelic
substances to treat cluster headaches. The group is now funding
research by Dr. John Halpern at Havard's McLean Hospital, who has
been administering modified LSD molecules to headache patients.
ClusterBusters is part of a global movement of progressive scientists
and researchers who have set out to harness the positive therapeutic
benefits of psychedelic drugs. While Wold's organization focuses on
cluster- headache treatment, research funded by the Multidisciplinary
Association for Psychedelic Research (MAPS) is pioneering a whole new
branch of psychotherapy which uses psychedelics to treat mental
ailments such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and
post-traumatic stress disorder. After a 40-year hiatus, the doors of
psychedelic research are finally being reopened.
The psychedelic renaissance
On September 26, 2008, the American Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) approved research using LSD-assisted psychotherapy for
end-of-life anxiety in terminally ill patients. With FDA approval,
data from clinical trials currently taking place in Switzerland is
now accepted and used in the United States. The first legal dose of
LSD in nearly four decades was administered by Swiss doctor Peter
Glasser last May in a study funded by MAPS.
The decision marks a milestone in the campaign for the legalization
of psychotherapy, as LSD is the latest psychedelic drug to be
approved for research purposes on human subjects. Research involving
less potent psychedelics, such as MDMA (also known as ecstasy),
ketamine, and psilocybin - the hallucinogen found in magic mushrooms
- has been underway for years.
"This is the first study with human subjects using LSD in more than
35 years, since they shut down all the research with LSD and human
subjects in the 1960s," says Randolph Hencken, Director of
Communications for MAPS. "The most remarkable thing about this trial
is that we've been able to overcome the stigma associated with LSD
and get back to research … We say that we're in a 'psychedelic-
research renaissance' because there are more studies using
psychedelics on human subjects now than there have been in 40 years."
So far, the results of the studies in Switzerland and at Harvard have
been positive, and the number of studies on psychedelic substances is
multiplying. Two Vancouver psychologists, backed by MAPS, received an
exemption from Canadian narcotics laws to administer MDMA to PTSD
patients. Research on the effects of LSD on the brain is also
underway at the University of California, Berkeley and the California
Pacific Medical Center.
"We're doing this research for serious illnesses - obsessive
compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and a lot of
other things - and seeing really good results," says Wold. "Some
people are willing to put their name, their reputation, and their
profession on the line to research this stuff and I think that it's
finally doing some good."
Harnessing the therapeutic and healing power of LSD was the lifelong
dream of Dr. Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who synthesized the
chemical in 1943. Though Hofmann died last April at the age of 102,
he was able to witness the roots of a psychotherapy revolution in his
last years.
Hofmann's problem child
Hofmann synthesized the chemical compound lysergic acid diethylamide
from the ergot fungus, a grain fungus that grows on rye. Soon after,
on a day that acid enthusiasts would forever after refer to as
"Bicycle Day," Hofmann purposely ingested the sizable amount of 250
micrograms of LSD (a threshold dose is 20 micrograms, making it the
most potent drug in existence), and as he biked home, he began to
experience intense shifts in perception and a profoundly altered
state of consciousness.
"What stimulated Hofmann was to see whether or not you could harness
the energy of naturally occurring lysergic acid. So he came up with a
very close derivative, which is lysergic acid diethylamide," says
Joseph Schwarcz, a professor in the Chemistry Department at McGill
who lectures on the historical development of LSD in the World of
Drugs course.
Over the course of his lifetime, Hofmann took hundreds of doses of
LSD, and was well aware of both its benefits and dangers. In his
autobiographic account LSD: My Problem Child, Hofmann chronicles the
drug's degradation from researched chemical with enormous healing
potential, to the oft-abused recreational drug and counterculture
emblem that it became in the 1960s. Hofmann advocated therapeutic and
psychiatric use of the chemical that made him "aware of the wonder of
creation," and he was deeply troubled by its rampant misuse. When LSD
was declared a Schedule I drug and prohibited in mid-60s, it was
driven from psychotherapy research labs to the black market.
Thirty-six years in the dark
The lack of medical research since the 1960s is mainly due to the
drug's illegality.
"People, governments, scientists all became scared to do research
with psychedelics … All the research started going underground at
that point. Drug prohibition and fear were the big roadblocks," says Hencken.
Wold agrees that the difficulty of finding Schedule I researchers who
can work with a Schedule I substance has been a major hindrance to
research. In addition, both Wold and Hencken cite the stigma against
LSD as a result of its recreational abuse as a main obstacle in
securing funding and public support for psychotherapy research.
"A lot of researchers and doctors just don't want to be associated
with it at all because of the fact that it's illegal, and a lot of
people are reluctant to donate money for funding because they don't
want to be seen as donating money to work with illegal drugs," says
Wold. "It's been a long, slow road."
As the most potent and arguably the most misunderstood psychedelic
drug, LSD has, to its detriment, long been associated with the youth
movement, rebellion, and counterculture. Acid's return as a focus of
psychotherapy research after a four-decade adjournment is part of a
broader cultural current of 60s nostalgia, which has taken the forms
of remarketing The Beatles, Gap's wildly successful 1969 Jeans ad
campaign, and the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock.
The veil of fear and mystery that has surrounded LSD since the 60s
is, it seems, beginning to lift.
"LSD has made pretty big advances over the past five or 10 years just
because people are trying to get this research going again and
showing that it does work. Everyone's starting out really small with
whatever funding they can find in different areas and showing the
positive results with it is what's helping us turn a corner," says Wold.
From the black market to the medical market
It will likely be years before LSD research enters the mainstream and
is legalized for use in therapeutic treatment. According to Hencken,
another generation will likely pass before LSD becomes completely
acceptable in society.
"I really don't see it being available by prescription for years and
years and years," says Wold. "What I see happening with LSD and
psilocybin is that hopefully you'll be able to go get it prescribed
in a hospital or at a clinic, not over the counter at a pharmacy."
ClusterBusters and MAPS are endeavoring to make LSD legal as an
alternative to antidepressants which tend to cover up pain or anxiety
and create dependence. But many scientists, including Schwarcz,
question whether LSD would provide positive benefits that can't be
obtained from other drugs with a similar chemical structure.
"LSD is what is called a serotonin psychedelic because the chemical
structure is so similar to that of serotonin. And there's a lot known
about serotonin and serotonin mimics," says Schwarcz. "I don't know
where LSD would fit in there or why there would be a need to look at
this when there are so many other serotonin mimics."
Hencken and Wold, however, argue that LSD and antidepressants that
mimic serotonin are on the same pages of very different books.
"There's nothing that's legal on the market that compares to LSD,"
says Hencken. "What we have are sedatives; we have things that mellow
people out or numb them so they don't feel anxiety. But we don't have
anything that allows them to explore the issues that have caused them
that anxiety in the first place."
Another significant discrepancy is that while antidepressants must be
taken on a daily basis, psychotherapeutic use of LSD would require
that the drug be administered only a handful of times. Wold finds
that while a couple of doses is sufficient to end an excruciating
months-long cycle of headaches in only a week or two, he believes
that this may be another obstacle in the way of LSD's legal status.
"Pharmaceutical companies really aren't interested in funding this
kind of work because they can't sell a pill for someone to take four
times a day for the rest of their life when [instead] you can take
two doses a year and you're all done," says Wold.
Although concerns regarding regulation and control of the substance
are cited by those opposed to its illegality, regulated use of LSD
may drive the drug out of the black market and into the medical market.
"Having LSD available from a trained psychiatrist or psychologist or
MD is a much better situation than we have currently. In the U.S.,
600,000 people try LSD for the first time each year, and rarely in a
circumstance that's guided," says Hencken. "We would rather see a
situation where people could go and use these powerful medicines in a
safe situation under the care of somebody who's been trained … These
drugs are more dangerous unregulated than they would be regulated."
Schwarcz agrees that there are safe and dangerous ways to use drugs,
but that drugs are not safe or dangerous in and of themselves, so
appropriate regulations should therefore be designed.
"If it's significantly better than what exists, you can design proper
regulations and proper control. But from what I've seen, that isn't
the case," says Schwarcz. "My guess would be the benefits are not
going to outweigh the risks, and that it's not going to supplant
anything that's out there."
Barbara Davis,* U3 English literature and history, took acid for the
first time the way that most young people do - as a party drug. But
after extensively researching the drug, she discovered that it could
benefit her therapeutically.
"The third time I took LSD, I went through a massive phase of
research actually looking into the therapeutic uses, reading stuff by
Albert Hofmann and Timothy Leary. When I took it after that, I
literally confronted all the demons from my previous life and I was
able to accept that it was okay," says Davis. "It was really a huge
deal. I'm bipolar, and after that, for a week, I felt entirely cured.
I wasn't having any mood swings - I accepted everything."
For Davis, the greatest benefit of using the drug as a form of
self-medication is the lasting sense of self-acceptance, which
persisted well beyond the week after her trip. Though she obtained
the drug illegally and took it without psychiatric guidance, her use
of LSD to treat bipolar disorder gave her relief that antidepressants
like Prozac and anti-anxiety medication like Valium never provided.
"LSD is special because it makes me reevaluate the world and see how
beautiful the world is and how it can be free of all of its
boundaries," she says. "That really affected me and my general outlook."
If psychedelic research continues with the success it so far has,
those suffering from anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a
slew of other mental ailments may find similar results to Davis, but
in a regulated - and most importantly, legal - clinical setting.
"What we have on the market now are band-aids," says Hencken. "And
what we're developing with psychotherapy is actual psycho-spiritual surgery."
.
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