Submitted via IRC for chromas
The West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute and WVU Medicine, today (Nov. 5) announced the launch of a first-in-the-U.S. clinical trial using deep brain stimulation for patients suffering from treatment-resistant opioid use disorder.
Funded through a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the clinical trial is led by principal investigator Ali Rezai, M.D., executive chair of the RNI, and a multidisciplinary team of neurosurgical, psychiatric, neuroscience, and other experts.
The team successfully implanted a Medtronic DBS device in the addiction and reward center of the brain. The trial's first participant is a 33-year-old man, who has struggled with substance use disorder, specifically excessive opioid and benzodiazepine use, for more than a decade with multiple overdoses and relapses.
[...] "Our team at the RNI is working hard to find solutions to help those affected by addiction," Dr. Rezai said. "Addiction is a brain disease involving the reward centers in the brain, and we need to explore new technologies, such as the use of DBS, to help those severely impacted by opioid use disorder."
Also at TechCrunch and Engadget.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @09:52PM (5 children)
The future is now.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 05 2019, @10:01PM (3 children)
Does anybody read Ringworld anymore?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @12:17AM
Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers are in my collection. They are well worn.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday November 06 2019, @12:29AM (1 child)
Naaah... they cured me of the addiction to Ringworld novels (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 06 2019, @02:46AM
I think I was up to Man-Kzin Wars V before I finally chilled out on it... was fun for a while though.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @11:21PM
Now you can bypass your local crack dealer and get super high by pressing the remote control you thought was for the TV. Or, your kid/wife picks it up and holds the button down for 35 minutes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @09:53PM
Let's torture junkies!
Drill a hole in their brains and subject them to electrical shocks!
That'll teach 'em not to do drugs!
A lobotomy [wikipedia.org] would likely be more effective. So we should do that instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @10:20PM (1 child)
I thought it said:
"In-Brain Electrodes Are the Latest Weapon Against Brain"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 05 2019, @11:06PM
Deep Brain Stimulation has been practiced widely for quite a while - it's sort of like experimental, reversible lobotomy surgery. Don't like the results you're getting? Switch off that electrode and try another.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05 2019, @11:08PM (4 children)
Quicker and less painful for all involved.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday November 06 2019, @01:05AM (1 child)
Bullets for the Sackler family then? They're the ones causing the opioid epidemic.
Or are we still doing victim blaming?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @05:51AM
If by "victim" you mean "shit-stained junkie" then sure, them too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @03:52AM (1 child)
I support your thinking regardless of the SJW's on here who feel triggered and will vote you down into oblivion. But I was kind of thinking that we should just collect them all (the junkies) and put them on a remote island and let them figure it out for themselves. We'll offer get out of island jail free cards to those who truly want to get of the juice. The moment they relapse, back on the island they go. Fight it out or figure it out. Either way normal society can live peacefully and only the strongest (and those with the most will power) will survive.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 07 2019, @03:26AM
Are you one of those guys who doesn't finish his antibiotics because he "feels better" midway through the course of therapy? All you're doing there is, metaphorically at least, creating a "resistant strain" of junkie. Leaving aside the incredible cruelty, you're not offering any realistic, viable, or even plausible solution. You just want to vent your assholery onto an "accepted" outgroup.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @12:28AM
thanks you for helping to bring about the wireheading future. free paperclips all around!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @01:15AM (5 children)
Just give them some fucking dude weed lmao.
If that doesn't do the trick, then spirit journey with DMT or shrooms. Not so sure about processed ergot, but that's better than this shit! "My god man, drilling holes in his head isn't the answer!" The soul must be repaired!
You humans already have all you need! You made the whole fucking epidemic in the first place, and your only response is to make things worse! Argh!
Just blow yourselves up already. The planet is better without you.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday November 06 2019, @01:46AM (1 child)
For a being posing as superior in intellect to hoomans, you show yourself quite obtuse.
You don't seem to get that the epidemic wasn't a bug in the first place... for the suppliers and their profits... it was a feature.
So, forget the hoomans, they have nothing to say about what is a problem and what is not, its the "corporate people" that know better.
And the actual problem is the corporate suppliers of hooman-adjustment-chemicals can't keep their exclusivity on the market for long. And the same will happen with DMT or shrooms.
On the other side, personalized holes in the brain?... I dare you switch the suppliers after they'll be implanting the "genuine inkjet protection"-like chip in your brain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @03:53AM
Your analysis is correct, including the wet dream of a Skynet Trusted Platform Module to add to hooman brains. I'm anxious to see how capital screws up the legal weed.
My guess is they'll do it with early harvesting. I've gotten some bud from gray market, and looking at the trichromes under microscope, it seemed the buds were barely ready to harvest. Experience from those buds was not as good as artisan, non-GMO, organic, grown in small batches, etc. I tried several different strains (no idea what they were exactly), and they were all missing something. My wild guess, without sending samples off to labs, is that the answer will be CBN.
If on the early side of the harvest window, then buds end up with too much THC compared to other chemicals like CBN (am thinking ratio is important here), which can lead to paranoia and overall bad experiences. But capital will harvest early because product must movemovemove! When growing, I recommend waiting a while (not too long, just a couple weeks, ymmv, don't rely on trichromes alone) for CBN to accumulate and THC to moderate a bit, since CBN helps with sleep and anxiety--makes an overall better and more uplifting experience instead of just a different color of drunk that instead interferes with sleep, if that makes sense.
Of course, if looking for palliative care for pain (as in opioid alternative for chronic pain management) and the rest the non-psychological medicinal properties, then CBD is the winner, but that's dependent on strain instead of harvest timing.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday November 06 2019, @03:08AM (2 children)
Given what hallucinogens/entheogens do and how they work, advising most people who are in the kind of situation where opioid addiction is a problem to use them is somewhere between irresponsible and murderous. Bad trips can cause permanent, irreversible mental damage. I'm just glad you didn't suggest salvia, which I've been told is a sobering, depressing experience even at the best of times. Set and setting are everything. One reason I don't even drink, let alone touch entheogens, is knowing that the inside of my head is not a conducive place to good trips.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 06 2019, @05:00AM (1 child)
Oof, salvia is something else. It doesn't seem to work for me, but watching videos of people tripping on it is morbidly hilarious. I don't think it has much usefulness.
Well, this is true. What medicine is without risk?
Entheogens in an ideal world (with a clinical protocol supported by evidence for such things) should be combined with professional (i.e. licensed) care and supervision during the experience. Patient should also be practiced with mindfulness exercises and defusing anxiety attacks (these alone may not be sufficient to kick an addiction such as presumably with our patient in TFS, but for many they are). And of course, if non-chemical means can solve a patient's addiction, then there's no need to involve shrooms or what-have-you. Not suggesting entheogens as a front-line treatment.
Alcohol is hardly the least dangerous thing on the menu here, perhaps only slightly less dangerous than opioids. If you ever did want to try, shrooms are fairly safe, as long as you have a sitter. Low dose of course and be aware that not all species of shroom are created equally potent (p. cubensis being the popular one but not the only or even most potent, see Stamets, Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World). Nausea may occur around 30 minutes to an hour after consuming (before trip starts) and is normal. It will pass. You might be pleasantly surprised, but to each their own. I don't aim to be a pusher, just a paradoxical hippie misanthrope.
Surgery before entheogens seems irresponsible to me. Of course, you're the one who's medically trained. I just think there are more options out there that we skip over because of drug war propaganda.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 07 2019, @03:22AM
That's entirely possible, and I freely admit I despair at the current regimes for treating depression, anxiety, and existential suffering. Furthermore, I know that money has corrupted everything, and there is more to be made patenting and flooding the market with drugs that may or may not work as understood, or intended, or indeed even at all, than actually finding cures for the conditions at hand.
Entheogens probably do have their place, and I'd definitely agree with you that that place is with some serious professional handholding and set/setting fixing. Ditto that they ought not to be first-line treatments. If anything, they'd be an adjunct at a later stage of treatment, once other means have succeeded in getting someone to a motivated stage and on a fairly even keel.
The problem here is that expecting a magic pill to cure depression is similar to expecting a magic pill to cure obesity or another lifestyle-mediated disease, which IMO is what most cases of it are. But the real cure would involve radically restructuring society and culture, which would be a tall order even if there weren't hundreds of billions of dollars of corrupt money standing in the way. All we can do is try to be the signal at the crosswalk, the middle of the seesaw, the one who can grab hold of the timeline and shift it into a better direction, one person and sometimes one day at a time :(
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by conn8d on Wednesday November 06 2019, @07:26PM (1 child)
What happened to "just saying no?"
That campaign worked extremelly well on the 80's and 90's, no reason it wouldn't work today!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Say_No [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday November 08 2019, @04:03AM
You do realize that the "Just Say No" campaign coincided with the crack wars [wikipedia.org], right?
So, no. It wasn't successful at all. And back then, we didn't have doctors and pharmaceutical companies pushing the stuff as we do now.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr