SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the enjoying-the-afterglow-of-some-Mighty-Quinn dept.
Psychedelic Medicine: LSD, a Future Anti-Anxiety Pill?:
The craze for psychedelics used for therapeutic purposes is real. However, the scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness and explaining their mode of action in treating mental health disorders is still very thin. A new study led by Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, a senior scientist in the Brain Repair and Integrative Neuroscience (BRaIN) Program at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), sheds light on previously unexplained neurobiological mechanisms by which LSD is believed to relieve anxiety.
While preliminary studies suggested that psychotherapy-assisted microdosing was effective in alleviating anxiety and depressive symptoms in people with severe psychiatric or neurological problems, the biological mechanisms underlying these effects had remained unclear to date. The study conducted by Dr. Gobbi's team demonstrates for the first time that regular administration of low doses of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) reduces anxiety symptoms through neurobiological mechanisms that are similar to some commonly prescribed classes of antidepressants and anxiolytics: selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). SSRIs are better known by their trade names: Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Cipralex, etc.
[...] According to the results of the study, the use of LSD increases the nervous transmission of serotonin, also called 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT). Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that plays an essential role in the state of well-being. It has been shown that prolonged periods of stress result in a decrease in the activity of the neurons that transmit serotonin (5-HT neurons). Like the SSRI antidepressants, LSD is believed to desensitize the receptors, which decrease the electrical activity of serotonin on these neurons, thereby stimulating them to release more serotonin.
Dr. Gobbi's study also found that low doses of LSD promoted the formation of new dendritic spines in rodents. These spines are the branches of neurons that are responsible for transmitting the electrical signal to the nerve cell body. "We have shown that LSD can rebuild these branches that are 'dismantled' due to stress. This is a sign of brain plasticity," explains Dr. Danilo De Gregorio, who is today an Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at San Raffaele University in Milan and first author of the study.
Journal Reference:
De Gregorio, Danilo, Inserra, Antonio, Enns, Justine P., et al. Repeated lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) reverses stress-induced anxiety-like behavior, cortical synaptogenesis deficits and serotonergic neurotransmission decline, Neuropsychopharmacology (DOI: 10.1038/s41386-022-01301-9)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @09:50AM (10 children)
So it straight up heals dain bramage, but we'll have to wait another 100 years for it to be switched to Schedule II.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @11:14AM (9 children)
If it doesn't fuck you up, why was it ever banned?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @11:37AM
Because the government knows best.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @11:58AM (6 children)
So that the government would have a pretext to arrest hippies.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday March 22 2022, @05:17PM (3 children)
Don't forget about the money being exchanged without the government getting their cut.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by deimtee on Tuesday March 22 2022, @06:07PM (2 children)
Nope. Until drugs are banned they are cheap as fuck. If it wasn't for laws against it, 99% pure heroin would be a couple of dollars per kg. Cocaine is more labour intensive, maybe 20 or 30 bucks/kg. Given the tiny doses required LSD is more trips per dollar than dollars per trip. There is a reason cannabis is called weed, it grows like one. It would be practically free to pick on the side of the road.
It's all about control and extortion. DEA et al are funded by the black market they create and enforce.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 23 2022, @01:32AM
It was so cheap before it became illegal that people were handing it out for free, sometimes in large quantities. See "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test".
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2022, @06:35AM
Not just cheaper, safer by far. Less money to cartels, plus fewer degenerate junkies stealing and whoring.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 22 2022, @09:02PM (1 child)
Not quite. Arresting hippies is a bonus. They'd really rather arrest brown people, and they do. But even racist arrests aren't the primary motivation. It's so the Drug Enforcement Agency has a reason to exist.
This goes back to the days of Prohibition, and Anslinger, the leader of the federal agency tasked with enforcing Prohibition. With the repeal of Prohibition imminent, the whole agency was facing the loss of their jobs. So helped by films such as Reefer Madness, Ansligner tried a smear campaign against marijuana, literally telling Congress that the substance turned normal people into axe murderers, and, sadly, it worked.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @10:53PM
Hearst and Dupont played their parts. Hearst had laid out a lot of money on pulp timber for paper, and Dupont wanted to sell their new nylon as rope. Banning hemp was a big win for both of them.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @01:34PM
We can't have people getting "ideas" or "thinking"... imagine what would happen if they all just tried to get along? Who would we leech off then?!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @11:53AM (4 children)
We live in a system where the most harmful drugs are legal and the least harmful illegal.
https://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/News%20stories/dnutt-lancet-011110.pdf [ias.org.uk]
TLDR; https://psychscenehub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Drugs-ranked-according-to-total-harm1-resized.jpg [psychscenehub.com]
The reason for this backwardness?
In the 21st century, it has to do a lot with political virtue signalling, see the Nixon administration and its support for the War machine counter to the new age psychedelic anti-war movement.
https://thebaltimorestory.org/history/nixons-war-on-drugs [thebaltimorestory.org]
The total cost of the "War on Drugs", in the Trillion$$$
https://www.sunshinebehavioralhealth.com/blog/usa-war-on-drugs-info-cost/ [sunshinebehavioralhealth.com]
This leads us to bad drugs as politicians play "wack a mole", see Argentina recent deaths.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-60235154 [bbc.com]
Unfortunately, this will only change once politicians see legalizing drugs as a "hip" new way to score the younger generation votes instead of being a natural progression of humans to advance their civilization.
However, there is hope:
https://www.inspiremalibu.com/blog/drug-addiction/10-countries-that-ended-their-war-on-drugs/ [inspiremalibu.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @12:09PM
TFW you know the "Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis" PDF when you see the URL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @03:10PM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @05:10PM
What's annoying is I remember reading on the FDA's website (I can't find it right now) that the FDA has the ability to ban any substance/product that may have medicinal value or for which substantial medicinal research was put into the substance even if the substance isn't being labeled as having any medicinal value so long as the substance was on the market past a certain date. The page said the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act allows the FDA to do that. So even if the substance is safe the FDA can still ban it so long as it has medicinal utility or so long as substantial research has been put into researching its potential medicinal utility.
Now the FDA wants to go after NAC
FDA Requests Information Relevant to the Use of NAC as a Dietary Supplement
https://www.fda.gov/food/cfsan-constituent-updates/fda-requests-information-relevant-use-nac-dietary-supplement [fda.gov]
"Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, products intended to cure, treat, mitigate, or prevent disease are drugs and are subject to the requirements that apply to drugs, even if they are labeled as dietary supplements. "
https://www.fda.gov/food/cfsan-constituent-updates/fda-sends-warning-letters-seven-companies-illegally-selling-hangover-products [fda.gov]
While I get that consumers are often stupid and do stupid things (ie: trying to find a holistic alternative treatment to cancer, etc...) I also think that the FDA is often a racket intended to make prices higher.
Donald Trump passed an executive order allowing us to buy drugs from Canada/other countries and Biden administration undid this all the while doing nothing to reduce drug prices despite saying they will. Drug prices continue to climb higher and higher.
The FDA didn't want to release information on the Pfizer vaccine and when told to do so they wanted 55 years to complete the request (I believe a court later was trying to suggest that they had to reduce that, not sure where that went, haven't followed up).
IIRC, the FDA wanted to ban all dietary supplements and it was the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act that put certain restrictions on it. Will they go after vitamin K next?
Why does the FDA always default to doing the wrong thing and it is everyone else that must fight an uphill battle to hopefully try and get the right thing done.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday March 23 2022, @08:52AM
If you look at the jpeg (second link) then most of the illegal drugs cause a lot of harm, and you would think, on a per user basis they would be worse than alcohol or tobacco. If you then read the PDF (first link) you find that virtually all of the red bar (harm to others) for illegal drugs is simply due to their illegality, and most of the blue bar (harm to self) is due to either the illegality, or the impurity (also caused by the illegality).
Fully legalise drugs and more than 90% of the harm they do would simply evaporate.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 22 2022, @12:08PM (1 child)
Seriously, this has Sackler fingerprints all over it!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @01:52PM
Not much money for the Sacklers without a captive market.....
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 22 2022, @01:57PM (6 children)
There's something that goes unsaid in all our(my generation, and the next one, I guess) concern for anxiety as a problem. It serves a role in the human psyche that has positive attributes. Namely anxiety is our natural way of handling and preparing for physical and social insecurity. It readies us for problems, prevents some kinds of unhealthy behavior too.
I think it's still true there's more anxiety disorders from overactive anxiety than underactive, but I worry about a world where none of us try to think ahead to scary problems before they affect us. Or is that just anxiety speaking?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @02:12PM
I may have crippling anxiety, but you will feel THE FEAR.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday March 22 2022, @05:52PM (1 child)
No anxiety: Jumps off cliff to see what happens.
Optimal anxiety: Stays back from cliff, builds safety rail, posts warning signs.
Excessive anxiety: Worries day and night that rail will fall over. Can't function because of it.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 22 2022, @06:18PM
It's trickier than that. Anxiety doesn't make you build the rail and stay away from the cliff. Those are conscious plans to address a problem you're concerned about. Anxiety is what makes you worry about your walk each day that takes you past the cliff. It's a mental reaction to a perceived threat. It raises the concern in the forms of nagging doubts.
And if one level of natural anxiety is appropriate for a cliff(which is a natural threat we've probably evolved a healthy overall relationship with), it might not be the right level of anxiety for another kind of threat, like say filing taxes. The level of threat to your life might very well be similar, probably a similar number of people suffer serious consequences from tax problems as have serious falls each year. But being anxious and avoidant to one is okay, but pointlessly debilitating to the other.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @06:57PM (2 children)
When citizens in a fully developed nation have anxiety over basic survival like food, health, shelter, well now you've got real problems. Anxiety has a valid purpose, but in this wage slavery capitalust hellhole far too many people are stuck with anxiety and no practical method to escape it. Average jobs can barely support a single person fully, forget a full family. There are limited high paying slots and limited economic innovations for someone to make.
When most people are struggling there is little money to spread around on non-essential services or products. Capitalists are killing the world economy with their driving need for ever expanding profits. We're in the process of collapse and the only long term solution is to heavily tax the wealthy to provide free healthcare and education while funding programs to help out those in need. It would create jobs and free up the average citizen to have some spending money which would greatly benefit the economy as a whole.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @07:39PM
Normal anxiety is about whether you're going to embarrass yourself asking someone out on a date.
Normal anxiety is about figuring out what car you should buy next.
Today's anxiety is about whether you'll be homeless next month unless you're approved to rent a shitty apartment for half your income.
Today's anxiety is about deciding to go to the doctor will bankrupt you or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2022, @06:30AM
> heavily tax the wealthy
Why not do it in the form of yachts? Every billionaire must purchase a yacht but they can only be made by the government. Win-win.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2022, @04:15AM (3 children)
All this "therapeutic" microdose bullshit needs to make way for what psychedelics are all about. Pushing the boundary. High dose experiences are described as among the most important experiences of people's lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2022, @04:24AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rhln28YJcg [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2022, @04:31AM (1 child)
If microdosing has reproducible benefits and gets it legalized, then good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 24 2022, @02:26AM
Just spare me the corporate Wellness(tm) line about increased productivity. I don't give a shit about life in Disneyland.