Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is yielding results (2015)

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment

by arikr • 10 years ago

227 93 10 years ago

anigbrowl5• 10 years ago

At any other time in history I'd be excited about this. Under the incoming administration, I rather doubt the DEA is going to keep issuing research licenses for controlled substances.

TheSpiceIsLife5• 10 years ago

Do we know which governments throughout the world are more liberal in this regard?

I'd like to think if there was a place this sort of research could take place someone or some pharmaceutical company would be there doing it?

pmoriarty3• 10 years ago

I've read of psychedelic research done in Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. MAPS has information on some international studies being carried out on psychedelics.[1] Erowid probably has some too.[2]

(Curious how MAPS is HTTP and Erowid is HTTPS.)

[1] http://www.maps.org/research

[2] https://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/research/

drvdevd3• 10 years ago

The issue here isn't the DEA or the current Administration in power, but whether a profitiable "therapeutic business model" can succeed in the establishment pharma market, with respect to any controlled substance.

[Edit] for obvious reasons, psychedelics are unusual in this regard, and a hard sell

cr1895• 10 years ago

The F.D.A. today has approved further clinical trials into the use of MDMA to treat PTSD:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/us/ptsd-mdma-ecstasy.html

We can only hope this sort of research will continue to be done, elsewhere if not in the US.

anigbrowl5• 10 years ago

Also: He is also the director of the substance-abuse division at Bellevue, and he told me that he had known little about psychedelics [..] until a colleague happened to mention that, in the nineteen-sixties, LSD had been used successfully to treat alcoholics. Ross did some research and was astounded at what he found.

How do you get to be director of a drug abuse program at one of the nation's top hospitals while being so ignorant about the field you supervise?! I'm not saying he should have been a fan of psychedelics all along, but he should at least have had some awareness of their history and how they came to be controlled substances.

TheSpiceIsLife5• 10 years ago

One would have thought such a role would require at least some formal study of the relevant subjects, which should expose you to the history of such things.

I like to imagine these people actually taking LSD. While watching Bill Hicks. What a blast they'd have.

qwartor• 10 years ago

There are two parts to the characterization at play here:

1. Psychedelics are not "abused" in the same way that other substances are. Furthermore, when psychedelics do get abused, the adverse effects are expressed differently, and patients are not routed through the same treatment channels that addictive substances see. Since psychedelics aren't addictive, users usually don't need ongoing maintenance to prevent relapses. Instead, victims of psychedelic side effects usually suffer from catastrophic burnouts after the mother of all bad trips, or persistent neurological symptoms creep in after a period of experimentation, and remain possibly for life. Once that happens people quit cold turkey, and cope with their flashbacks however they must.

2. Being a director of anything isn't a huge deal. It's not much of an auspicious title. Like manager or vice president, after you meet a thousand of them, big deal. Meanwhile, as for doctors, you'd be shocked at how sheltered some doctors are. Many of the doctors I've met only became doctors because their parents forced them into it, and they spent their youth locked in their bedrooms getting good grades, and those geeky scholarly habits stick with them into middle age. It wouldn't surprise me to meet a doctor who is a total outsider to the patient population their supposedly expected to treat through book learnin'...

WhitneyLand2• 10 years ago

Forget knowledge of esoteric or edgy topics - I bet if you took the 10 most important research results in the last year that your own doctor would not be aware of all of them even if relevant to their practice.

anigbrowl5• 10 years ago

Your point #2 is pretty good, but I was surprised because every psychiatrist I've ever met has taken psychedelics, and doctors enjoy getting high just as much as the rest of the population.

But even so, I thought it would be the sort of thing someone would know about just through a general awareness of current events. I've never taken a flying lesson but I know who the Wright brothers are, that their first successful flight was in 1903, the basic control mechanisms of all aeroplanes, and a bunch of other rudimentary aeronautical knowledge. I thought most people had a vague idea of who timothy Leary was and that a drug named LSD was quite popular in the 1960s and so on - it's not exactly obscure.

csomar• 10 years ago

Did you just describe everything that's wrong with our fucked-up world in 2.?

Falkon1313• 10 years ago

Maybe try reading a couple of paragraphs further?

“By the time I got to medical school, no one even talked about it,” Ross said.

Besides, substance abuse programs focus heavily on the current headliner addiction drugs - opium in the late 19th century, alcohol in prohibition times, cocaine in the 80s, crack thereafter, prescription painkillers and heroin again now; with a secondary focus on whatever's not the current headliner. How many recent (or non-recent) news stories are there about an epidemic of LSD addicts or mushroom addicts?

Kind of like asking how someone gets to be a web developer without being fluent in Fortran and COBOL.

krylon• 10 years ago

Kind of like asking how someone gets to be a web developer without being fluent in Fortran and COBOL.

Completely OT, but I really dig that metaphor!

anigbrowl5• 10 years ago

That doesn't answer my question at all. If I only took an interest in what other people were talking about I'd be pretty poorly informed; I don't see how you can learn effectively without being motivated by internal curiosity.

The relative absence of psychedelic addicts in itself would be grounds for wondering how they got to be tightly controlled substances in the first place. I'm not suggesting that he should be expert, but that he should at least have a base level of familiarity with the field.

I'm not fluent in fortran or COBOL, but at least I know what they are, and I'm also familiar with lots of languages that I'll probably never have occasion to use, like APL, brainfuck and so on.

blubb-fish2• 10 years ago

How many recent (or non-recent) news stories are there about an epidemic of LSD addicts or mushroom addicts?

Not sure how you mean that question. You cannot get addicted to LSD - even psychologically you cannot get addicted really. LSD is too heavy and simply won't work if taken too frequently.

_pmf_• 10 years ago

How do you get to be director of a drug abuse program at one of the nation's top hospitals while being so ignorant about the field you supervise?!

That's probably just the narrative that has to be used when talking to the media.

Broken_Hippo2• 10 years ago

"How do you get to be director of a drug abuse program at one of the nation's top hospitals while being so ignorant about the field you supervise?"

Because knowing too much about it - especially the positives and common usage - isn't really an important bit to know to get the job. What matters more is having the right qualifacations, being in the position to get such a promotion, and most of all, having the "correct" viewpoints on drugs and addicts.

jonasvp• 10 years ago

This is from 2015 and has been discussed before with some very interesting comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8991025

pmoriarty3• 10 years ago

Just out of curiosity, how did you find that link?

I just tried doing a search on DDG for:

  site:news.ycombinator.com "trip treatment"

and it didn't seem to return anything relevant.

eth0up• 10 years ago

Not sure how parent found it, but for HN content, this is the best: https://hn.algolia.com

fragmede• 10 years ago

I found it by plugging "http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment" into the search button at the bottom of an HN page.

slig• 10 years ago

There's a "past" link bellow each story.

RCortex• 10 years ago

"This is far too valuable to limit to sick people"

Not a word about the major negative side effects including panic attacks, seizures, and death, or how some members of the population are at far greater risk of experiencing these side effects for reasons we do not yet know or fully understand.

Sure, if it helps someone near death why not, but I don't like the rosy picture this article portrays.

kingkawn• 10 years ago

Do you support the availability of the option to use chemotherapy against cancer? Yes? Then how can you possibly object to these drugs?

TheSpiceIsLife5• 10 years ago

I'd like to give this comment a more thorough treatment but I don't have the gumption right now. So I'll just say:

One of the side-effects of antidepressants is increased risk of suicide.

So I don't really see your point.

MichaelMoser1233• 10 years ago

So I don't really see your point

here it says that you have a significant chance to develop schizophrenia after a substance induced psychosis event (18,478 cases examined)

https://www.psychiatrist.com/JCP/article/Pages/2013/v74n01/v...

Results: Eight-year cumulative risk to receive a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis was 46% (95% CI, 35%–57%) for persons with a diagnosis of cannabis-induced psychosis and 30% (95% CI, 14%–46%) for those with an amphetamine-induced psychosis. Although alcohol-induced psychosis was the most common type of SIP, 8-year cumulative risk for subsequent schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis was only 5.0% (95% CI, 4.6%–5.5%).

let the downvotes start.

WhitneyLand2• 10 years ago

I'm not aware of these drugs directly causing the death of anyone (excluding someone driving on the freeway after taking them). Do you have an example of a fatality?

As for the other unpleasant effects it's true these can happen temporarily. I know some people anecdotally believe negative effects can be permanent, but I'm not aware of any research supporting cause and effect.

Now weigh the risks above with the possible reward. Near death comfort (while important) is only one application. For example anxiety and OCD are life crippling for so many people, and research suggest psychedelics might offer one of the best treatments yet.

The potential benefits to society are so great, the research must continue. I also see no reason you could not help out with some empirical study.

echlebek• 10 years ago

I found a reference to LSD directly killing someone. They injected 320,000 ug intravenously!

https://www.erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=220

anigbrowl5• 10 years ago

While I've heard of stories of people injuring themselves by jumping out of windows and so on, I've yet to hear a credible story about anyone dying from consumption of psychedelics, or indeed suffering seizures. Panic attacks for sure, they're quite unpleasant although in my experience pretty rare. All the statistical evidence suggests that psychedelics are quite safe compared to popular stimulants and depressives. I've had several bad trips, but I blame myself for those - smoking a ton of weed after you've also taken psychedelics is a good way to get disoriented.

ajryan3• 10 years ago

There are many lesser-known psychedlics with scarily-low lethal doses. Bromo-dragonfly and some *-NBOMe compounds are a few that killed people recently. High doses of DOC can cause extreme vasoconstriction in extremeties, resulting in necrosis. https://psychonautwiki.org is a good site for investigating health risks.

nicklovescode• 10 years ago

would appreciate a [2015]. Into this subject and thought it was a new result.

drvdevd3• 10 years ago

Since you're into the subject, at the risk of repeating my other comment in this page and seeming to oversell it, I'd like to call your attention to the documentary "Dirty Pictures" (if you haven't seen it): https://youtu.be/qXHyKyoHJzo

It's mostly of historical/political interest, but I'm repeating it here because I genuinely think if you're interested and somewhat knowledgable about this subject, you really should watch it.

noahdesu• 10 years ago

While this is from last year, today the FDA approved phase 3 trials of MDMA for PTSD (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/us/ptsd-mdma-ecstasy.html).

eevilspock• 10 years ago

“They were saying things like ‘I understand love is the most powerful force on the planet,’ or ‘I had an encounter with my cancer, this black cloud of smoke.’ People who had been palpably scared of death—they lost their fear. The fact that a drug given once can have such an effect for so long is an unprecedented finding. We have never had anything like it in the psychiatric field.”

This is needed by everyone, not just those dying of cancer.

Nearly everyone is infected with the cancer of cynicism. We are overcome by fear, too weak to do the right thing, condemned to remain prisoners of the dilemma, perpetual losers in the non-zero sum game of life. It is the source of nearly all human created folly, misery and tragedy, this election simply being a recent example. If only there was a drug that would get people to realize love can be the most powerful force on the planet, if only we had the strength of will and courage to actually love, to risk ourselves rather than play it "safe" behind self-servingly cynical justifications for doing the shit we actually do.

swombat2• 10 years ago

Worth sharing:

"What is love?"

"The total absence of fear."

"What is it that we fear?"

"Love."

(De Mello)

SamUK96• 10 years ago

Mathematical break down of that:

let x = love; let y = fear; let z = lack of fear.

This statement is basically saying:

x = z; y = x; => y = z; => We fear the lack of fear.

Sorry but that quote is basically 90% redundant, with x ("love") being a trivial parametric, eliminatable variable.

UweSchmidt2• 10 years ago

Show us several people that are in this enlightened state right now, thanks to a specific psychedelic. Let's see that there are no downsides, no unwanted changes in those persons' personalities.

ajryan3• 10 years ago

Isn't that exactly what these studies are doing?

The burden isn't to prove that there are no side-effects, just that their rate and severity are sufficiently low.

drvdevd3• 10 years ago

To any HN reader interested in this subject, I can't recommend this documentary highly enough: https://youtu.be/qXHyKyoHJzo

[edit: the sheer amount of US history exposed in this documentary on the subject is incredible]

Nursie3• 10 years ago

The more I read the more my belief is reinforced that the war on drugs has been a huge disservice to humanity in so many ways.

From the social problems caused by illegality and the restriction of decent pain relief for the dying to the brake put on valuable research like this.

All for what? Some sense of moral purity?

Humans societies fascinate and disgust me.

sprafa• 10 years ago

One of its main architects (a Nixon aide( has admitted that the War on Drugs was made up to attack subversive elements in the US, like the Black Panthers and the hippies. The idea was never about drugs, just control.

majewsky3• 10 years ago

In more detail: https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

Broken_Hippo2• 10 years ago

That's the attitude that lead me to my current stance: I think they should all be legalized and regulated (mostly for purity of strength and ingredients). I want this even for drugs I think are dangerous or I wouldn't personally take.

jupiter26• 10 years ago

war on drugs has been a huge disservice to humanity in so many ways. ... All for what? Some sense of moral purity?

I was, and still remain to a great deal, very anti-drug. Unless there's a system to manage it effectively, people will abuse drugs. It will destroy their lives. Let's not downplay the impact here.

I've seen the negative effects far too often - from destruction of families to young girls prostituting themselves for their next fix to brutal crimes. It's horrific.

The actual "War on Drugs" has always been a half-hearted effort. It has served as a political talking point and a means to control/surveil the population through fear-mongering. In much the same way that terrorism is being used to increased the powers of the surveillance state.

I do agree with its' usage related to medical purposes or in any way that it can be effectively managed as a recreational activity (but I have doubts about the general population being able to manage harder drugs).

Having said this, there is great value in research. I saw the value of research for the first time when I read 'DMT: The Spirit Molecule' by Rick Strassman, M.D.[1]. It was truly an eye-opening experience for this particular (naturally occurring) drug.

It led me to read (for a while, many years ago) about other psychedelics as well as the research and personal stories related to their usage. Amazing stuff when managed correctly.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0892819278?redirect=true&p...

Nursie3• 10 years ago

You've fallen into several traps there. The major one is that you, like those that wage the war, always leap to the hardest and worst examples and paint broad strokes about all drugs from a few stories of the depths of addiction, usually to opiates or methamphetamine.

The second is that you look at lives destroyed by 'drugs' without looking at the lives destroyed by the war, which pushes profits to cartels, destabilises entire countries and actually harms the people it claims to help.

Ending the war on drugs doesn't mean having a free for all, it means using evidence to weigh up the best course of action. With some substances that's likely legalisation and sale to adults under license. With others it may be medical supervision.

Banning anything psychoactive is not an evidence-based action towards harm reduction.

jjawssd2• 10 years ago

Please enlighten me as to your definition of "hard drug"

I believe all substances taken in excess can lead to severe complications, including water.

If you are classifying hard/soft based on a cutoff value in the therapeutic index, then I would agree with you more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_index

http://i.imgur.com/2aZIuoH.jpg

We should immediately ban alcohol.

MaxfordAndSons• 10 years ago

As a sib points out, it's unfair to attribute the destructive negative effects you're describing to the drugs themselves.

Think about it this way: the two main ways people are harmed in relation to drugs is via a) addiction, and b) the illegal drug trade. The latter only exists because of prohibition (ok, even if all drugs were legalized, there might still be an illegal trade, but imo it would likely be a b2b black market rather than street based retail, so the violence would still be significantly lowered). As for addiction, it's thornier, obviously many people are addicted to legal drugs, but the criminalization of addicts severely exacerbates many addicts problems: they don't seek medical help due to fear of legal repercussions, they're forced to interact with illegal drug dealers, they often hide their addiction even from their friends/family because of the social stigma attached to criminality.

pmoriarty3• 10 years ago

Wait until you actually try some really good drugs. You might change your mind about how horrible they are.

abandonliberty• 10 years ago

The evidence is mounting that we are confusing cause and effect with drug addiction. Here's a good video about it from Kurzgesagt [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg

Other than your initial point or two I agree with your post. I can understand why a society would have wanted prohibition; people are more generally more productive without drugs.

We can barely manage tobacco and alcohol. Drug abuse continues to exist everywhere facilitated by prescription abuse.

I don't believe we should mandate what people can and cannot do with their bodies, but I am concerned about our increasing desire to escape the real world through pharmaceuticals or entertainment.

jrnichols• 10 years ago

I agree wholeheartedly.

I'm a Paramedic, and I can count on one hand the number of patients on shrooms, marijuana, or MDMA that have been any sort of problem. Meanwhile, I've seen more fatalities directly caused by alcohol than I care to remember.

crdb• 10 years ago

On the subject, if you've ever wondered what would happen if the US military were to invest millions of dollars into testing all kind of things from sarin to their version of super-strong LSD on volunteers (and, generally, why there was an actual queue from enlisted men to sign up to be the guinea pig for chemical weapons!), I recommend Ketchum's book about his time in exactly such a facility [1]. There's a wealth of data and analysis on the impact of many psychedelics on humans, both at large doses and for long term exposure.

The anecdote that stayed with me was the guy who liked to show off the relative safety of liquid VX (yes, the nerve agent) to new arrivals by dipping his finger in it then rinsing it with water. Different times.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Chemical-Warfare-Secrets-Almost-Forgo... - Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten: A Personal Story of Medical Testing of Army Volunteers, by James S. Ketchum MD

skc• 10 years ago

I'm not knowledgeable on this topic but I'm a bit surprised that the article doesn't at any time make reference to Rick Strassman and his clinical experiments with DMT. In fact, I've noticed that LSD and DMT are very rarely referenced within the same academic discussions.

beepboopbeep• 10 years ago

One of the worst things that comes from the banning of drugs is the stigma attached to it in order to give reason to ban it. That stigma just doesn't let go no matter what evidence is being presented.

Case in point are the incredible studies by the folks at Johns Hopkins on Psilocybin. They're not feeding people hallucinogenic mushrooms, they're giving them controlled doses of manufactured psilosybin. Incredible studies, very interesting in all ways, but the news headline is almost always some shitty pun or stupid jab about 'shrooms or "trippy" or "far out" which immediately demeans the research in the readers mind.

This usually continues through the text. The author will describe the study, effects, results, etc. then punctuate it with some dumb line about it being groovy. Makes it embarassing to be associated with the results when we could be looking at some truly breakthrough approaches to therapy and who knows what else.

droopyEyelids• 10 years ago

I always write the editors of whatever magazine published an article with the tone you described and complain about it.

Authors do the world a tremendous disservice delegitimizing chemicals that have the potential to treat heretofore untreatable conditions.

jMyles• 10 years ago

Although I don't disagree with the problem of stereotypes and stigmas, what I think we're seeing with the language you've identified is a movement from "they ignore you" to "they laugh at you," - remind me, what are the next two stages?

jjawssd2• 10 years ago

Obfuscation of the true nature of the research might help in this case.

Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the highly reactive hydroxyl radical, a species shown to mutate DNA, denature proteins, disrupt cell membranes, and chemically alter critical neurotransmitters. The atomic components of DHMO are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol.

http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

Learn more about the dangers of DHMO here

overcast• 10 years ago

I did my own research as a freshmen in the late 90's. In my opinion, everyone should experience LSD/Mushrooms at some point in their life. They were some of the most influential, and amazing experiences I've ever had. No dependency issues, and lasts for hours.

ajryan3• 10 years ago

Anyone interested psychedelic users' perspectives on harm reduction, health benefits, and risks should check out http://erowid.org and http://bluelight.org (especially the Psychedelic Drug Discussion subforum).

Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is yielding results (2015)

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