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from the lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds dept.
Beginning in the nineteen-fifties, psychedelics had been used to treat a wide variety of conditions, including alcoholism and end-of-life anxiety. The American Psychiatric Association held meetings centered on LSD. Some of the best minds in psychiatry had seriously studied these compounds in therapeutic models, with government funding.
Between 1953 and 1973, the federal government spent four million dollars to fund a hundred and sixteen studies of LSD, involving more than seventeen hundred subjects. Through the mid-nineteen-sixties, psilocybin and LSD were legal and remarkably easy to obtain. Sandoz, the Swiss chemical company, gave away large quantities of Delysid—LSD—to any researcher who requested it, in the hope that someone would discover a marketable application.
Now, forty years after the Nixon Administration effectively shut down most psychedelic research, the government is gingerly allowing a small number of scientists to resume working with these powerful and still somewhat mysterious molecules.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @07:09PM
> You've got no evidence of long-term brain damage,
I dunno about that guy, but there are some commonly reported long-term "flashback" effects associated with LSD and other hallucinogen/psychedelic use and over use. These effects are widely known in the online "lsd community."
Here is the first hit I got when I went googling for some background material.
https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_info3.shtml [erowid.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @07:43PM
So I experience these "flashback" effects, and in my case they're nothing to write home about. I skimmed the article, and it looks like most of them emerge in the dark, which is consistent with my experiences.
As an example, I'll see trails behind small lights like status leds in the dark. I'll also see lava lamp type patterns if I close my eyes (that one is actually kind of neat). The last time I used a drug of this type is more than a year ago.
In my case, I wouldn't really call it damage. The stories in DARE pamphlets about having full blown trip flashbacks are unsubstantiated. If I'm super relaxed and listening to certain types of music I an almost get a taste of my emotional state while intoxicated, but that's more of a nostalgia thing I think.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @09:10PM
I get those visual effects (have done all my life) and I've never used LSD or any other similar drug.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @09:59PM
> I get those visual effects (have done all my life) and I've never used LSD or any other similar drug.
And some people are born without a hand (like myself) that doesn't mean that someone whose hand has been amputated is not suffering from hand damage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @10:17PM
Those patterns are called phosphenes they are normal and we're always there :
The occurrence of phosphenes can be spontaneous, and they can be provoked in a number of ways. They appear spontaneously only when visual stimuli are lacking and especially when the viewer is subjected to prolonged visual deprivation. According to Oster (1970:83), phosphenes may account for the 'illuminations', the visions or the experience of 'seeing the light' reported by religious mystics meditating in the dark; they are the 'prisoner's cinema' experienced by people in dark dungeons; they may well occasion reports of phantoms and ghosts. Darkness is not a requirement; only the absence of external visual stimuli is needed. Phosphenes are a hazard to the long-haul truck driver peering for hours into a snowstorm. Aeroplane pilots often experience phosphenes, especially when they are flying alone at high altitudes, where the sky is cloudless and empty of the usual depth cues (Oster 1970:83).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @10:45PM
Your bare quote seems to be saying that LSD related effects are normal.
If phosphenes are normal, then LSD related effects are not phosphenes.
Read the erowid link.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @11:05PM
I have read it but schedule 1 drugs research of the 80's then to be flawed since a positive publication would mark the end of your funding. The leading theory on post lsd visual disturbance is that while the phosphenes where amplified/boosted/modulated by the LSD, your visual system could not ignore them anymore and you became to irreversibly aware of what was there but hidden in plain sight. (a 12h training of the visual cortext to classify those patterns instead of discarding them)
But PTST is a real possibility in case of a high intensity bad trip, however this kind of posttraumatic stress respond really well to therapy...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @11:57PM
Psychedelics, particularly MDMA (Ecstasy), are some of the best and most effective treatments known for PTSD. [maps.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @12:27AM
Mdma is not a psychedelic... However 80mg of Mdma 20 minutes into the trip is the best way to avoid bad trip...
It is called candy tripping...
Mdma + 2c-e = best therapeutical tool ever according to Sasha Shuglin wife
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:19AM
Its close enough, its a phenethylamine - well technically an amphetamine but all amphetamines are phenethylamines ("amphetamine" stands for "alphamethylphenethylamine"). Its in the same category as the 2C-x series, DO-x series, and TMA-x series of psychedelics, which also includes mescaline. Since you're mentioning Shulgin, you know that MDA and its derivatives are featured in PiHKAL. "Entactogen" vs "psychedelic" vs "entheogen" vs whatever is just semantics.
(Score: 2) by Sir Finkus on Thursday February 12 2015, @01:40AM
I can only speak for myself, but these phosphenes became much more vivid and "ordered" after my trips. My theory is that drugs like this heighten your awareness of those kinds of visual "glitches", much like you may notice cars that look exactly like yours with greater frequency than you had before getting that particular car. I believe that that would account for most of what people think of as Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (yes, it has a name). A very small minority can experience more severe effects that interfere with their lives. Based on what I've read, most of these people had taken massive doses or were heavy users.
The trouble with most of the studies I've read on the matter is that they rely on self-reporting among users of an illicit substance. Most of what gets sold as "LSD" these days are actually research chemicals such as 25I-NBOME due to the difficulty and cost of synthesizing the real deal. Self-reporting is a bit "meh" as far as reliability goes, and you have to assume that these people were taking the real thing.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @08:11PM
Any intense or traumatic experience can cause flashback. Far more people have flashbacks about the Vietnam War, for example, than LSD trips.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @08:27PM
> Any intense or traumatic experience can cause flashback.
Can an intense and traumatic experience cause someone not to read the linked article and instead go off on an unrelated tangent?
Looks like a big yes! to that.