LSD Can Treat Alcoholism 346
ananyo writes "LSD has potential as a treatment for alcoholism, according to a comprehensive retrospective analysis of studies published in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The researchers sifted through thousands of records to collect data from randomized, double-blind trials that compared one dose of LSD to a placebo. Of 536 participants in six trials, 59% of people receiving LSD reported lower levels of alcohol misuse (PDF), compared to 38% of people who received a placebo. The study adds to the weight of evidence that hallucinogenic drugs may have important medical uses, including, for example, the alleviation of cluster headaches."
This reminds me of a nursery rhyme (Score:4, Interesting)
meh (Score:4, Interesting)
A strong dose of LSD removes any underpinnings with reality. There's no way to prepare for it. For some people it's a good, useful thing which helps them gain a different perspective and form new thought patterns or approach problems in a different way. For others its a hellish experience that causes permanent damage to their psyche. Psychoactive drugs can trigger latent personality disorders. I know this from personal experience.
Think of LSD as a focuser; if you're prone to anxiety, you're likely to have an extremely hard time, especially if you're in an sterile lab environment (your ambient environment makes a huge difference to your experience, along with the people you are around).
Anyhow, I have a hard time trusting that study for much. I can see psychoactive drugs having lots of benefits, but a lot of risks too. It's hard to picture someone suffering from alcoholism (which encourages denialism, depression etc) really getting much positive benefit.
Re:LSD to cure Alcoholism? Yeeees... (Score:1, Interesting)
I could not agree more (Score:3, Interesting)
Posting as AC because I don't have an account. I took LSD this very last Saturday, and I can honestly say that having looked at myself and alcohol and what I realize it's been doing to me, I haven't touched it since or had a single craving. I mean, I'm not an alcoholic, I just drink a 6-pack of tall boys every night for a year, right? It was like turning a switch on and off. I dunno, I'm a reasonably happy person, so I think that it's easier for me to say all of this. "Treatment" for addiction (ANY addiction - even sugar) very rarely focuses on the actual underlying cause of the addiction. Yes, some people just like to party. But LSD has a way of making you look inward at yourself....
Re:Go figure (Score:5, Interesting)
Not just lies but misinformation. I mean, LSD is often a far more exotic of a drug to the people who haven't done it than have. It isn't habbit forming. In fact, after a trip, I often said that if someone put more acid in front of me and suggested I do it again, I might punch them. At its best its long and draining, physically and emotionally. Do some people go crazy and do it every day? Sure, but they are hardly the norm.
Don't get me wrong, I saw some people have some difficult times, and see things that sounded far more amazing than anything I ever saw. And I have seen it change lives.
I had a friend who had a few very difficult experiences. He was a bit religious, and talked of seeing deamons around him and being convinced he was going to die. Took him a long time to get over that. Though, it also was the catalyst that changed his life, to become a better person, to get off the myriad of drugs he was using and get a career instead of going into his 20s as a petty crook on his way to jail.
So do I think it can cure alcoholism? No. I think its a tool that could be used to gain perspective and insight and to become invested in change. That may very well be what enables a person to change... however, I don't think its a magic switch... and it might be a difficult ride.
Actually LSD has been used in this manner, I highly recomend "LSD Psychotherapy" by Stanislav Groff. Excellent book on the subject, where clinics have been run outside the US for many years. However, its not just "LSD does the work", it is the entire therapy session surrounding it that guides it.
Re:Go figure (Score:5, Interesting)
The only people who had trips that bad were the ones who ABUSED it heavily, did more than they should have or just tripped in the wrong setting or had underlying psychological disorders to begin with, in which case they needed a controlled dose and not a dose from some dude off the street.
As for FDA approval.. have you EVER watched a commercial for an FDA approved drug? Nice, harmless side-effects like cancer, organ failure, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, blindness, heart failure, brain damage, impotency, birth defects, peripheral neuropathy, weight gain, weight loss, coma, death.
Yeah... you keep counting on those corrupt assholes in the FDA. I will take my chances with the shady looking guy on the corner.
Re:LSD to cure Alcoholism? Yeeees... (Score:4, Interesting)
Trust me...then alcoholism is going to be the least of your problems.
You have knowledge that taking 250 mgs of LSD will so devastate the average person's life that alcoholism will be a comparatively insubstantial problem?
Go on...I'm fascinated.
Re:Go figure (Score:4, Interesting)
Risk tolerance certainly drifts around as a function of time, and the FDA is no exception; but there ends up being some vaguely linear relationship between the ghastliness of the condition being approached and how much slack the assorted side effects and risks of the therapy end up being cut.
Given that alcoholism tends to have pretty dramatic long-term effects on people, many of them pretty nasty, and presently has a lousy cure rate, it might actually have a shot. It would certainly have plenty of company among the 'potentially very unpleasant drugs for definitely very dire indeed psych conditions' that are currently legal, approved, and commonly accepted for use. How much flack it would draw from the 'all you need is more willpower!' school of largely ineffective but morally satisfying therapy would be a different question... Its chances for less serious diagnoses would probably be much poorer, and (depending on what classification it hypothetically received) even off-label use might be strongly discouraged by enthusiastic DEA oversight.
Re:Go figure (Score:5, Interesting)
That's ridiculous. I've known a lot of people who have done acid. A lot of people who've done lots of acid. I've been to acid parties. I've hosted acid parties. All of this is to say, I've got some experience with it. And I've never had a flashback. I've asked many former users, directly, "have you ever had a flashback?" Not a single person has ever said "yes" or even "maybe".
Don't get me wrong, it's got some (semi?) permanent effects--primarily, you will never forget the first time you really trip. I've also noticed that decisions made while tripping seem to "stick" more. At least for me. In my early 20s, I told myself a hundred times that I need to slow down, but somehow when it came time to party I was always up for it. Then, once, I came to the same conclusion while tripping. After that, the temptation to party when I shouldn't was greatly decreased. I can't really explain it, it was just easy to just have a couple beers and go to bed at 2:00 AM instead of getting hammered and staying up until dawn. I didn't even really feel like I was missing out like I did before. It helped me get over an ex-girlfriend that I was being a dramatic teenager about. One night--bam--"hey, she doesn't like you, deal with it, there's plenty of girls out there" and I woke up the next day and it was like I'd been single for a year. It also showed me that there's definite limits to how fucked up I enjoy being.
There was also other stuff. I'd get a phrase stuck in my head while tripping, and then find myself overusing it for weeks after. Cigarettes had that "acid" feel for a couple days (smokers who have tripped will know what I mean), and weed would make me feel like I was tripping, sometimes a week or more later although that could have been my imagination. I think it permanently gave me a better sense of perspective and empathy, and it gave me the "feel" for looking at a problem from a different angle. The "feel" thing is hard to explain too--it's like how when you're learning to water-ski, when you start out, you don't know how things are supposed to feel in order to stay up. Once you've done it though, you know what you're aiming for. Any potential negative effects aside (I really can't say I have any, but then again how would I know?), it's absolutely had a net positive effect on my life.
But one thing I've definitely never experienced or heard of anyone experiencing, is a flashback. Ask anyone--the most frequent response you'll get is, "Damn, I wish."
Re:Go figure (Score:5, Interesting)
LSD "flashbacks" are nothing but vivid memories. Have you ever smelled a smell or heard a tune that transported you back to another place and time? If so, then you've had a flashback. These are not medical events, and I speak from experience.
The safety of LSD is far better established than many FDA approved drugs. They've studied it so much looking for negative effects that we know all of them by now. It's non-addictive and non-toxic. It doesn't increase the risk of schizophrenia. I don't think there's any question that it's safer than, e.g., Adderall.
Ibogaine. (Score:4, Interesting)
The show is worth watching for sure.
Re:placebo for LSD? (Score:5, Interesting)
religion and drugs have a huge amount in common.
they both serve to play with the mind and present alternate realities, then invite the 'participant' to join them in their delusion.
I've had friends explain their trips to me and how it opened their minds. same kinds of words that very religious people also use.
are we wearing tinted glasses when we view the world? does religion allow us to take off the glasses and see reality or does it give us the glasses in the first place? are drugs the removal of glasses or the use of glasses?
if you think you know, then you've got it wrong.
Re:Go figure (Score:5, Interesting)
During this time, [Steve] Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs [wikipedia.org]
Re:Go figure (Score:4, Interesting)
Different trips. My first one, I didn't recognize the visuals at the time and I smoked a bunch of weed that day with friends so I thought it wasn't even real acid--didn't know what it felt like. My second trip, I took a lot, and saw overlapping patterns of giant eyeballs on the walls, but I knew it was just hallucinations. I've never even come close to losing touch with reality, I can't imagine how much it would take to be unable to tell when something impossible happening (like foot-wide eyeballs opening and closing in diagonal rows on the walls) isn't real. Oh, it looks real, but you can say to yourself, "this isn't possible, so it's not real". The real trick is when something that would normally be crazy happens, like a car accident happening outside your house. It takes hard thought to be able to figure out if that's real or fake, and it ain't always real--a closed door can sound like a car crash, and then you look at the car and it's got a dent, but you hallucinate the dent is the whole front of the car, and then you run outside shouting, "oh my god is everyone okay?!" and then the people react to you shouting and then it looks like a crisis situation which just reinforces that an accident happened even though it didn't and now a couple people who just got out of the car have some guy running at them shouting half-coherent questions and--well, you can probably see how stuff can get out of hand. You have to have the presence of mind to think through all that stuff while you're more fucked up than you've ever been in your entire life.
The insights only came when I actually sat down and introspected while tripping--most of the time, I just used it as a party drug. That said, I don't think there's a significant difference between your 2nd and 40th trip. As another poster mentioned, there's a near 100% tolerance from one day to the next, but if you wait a couple weeks it goes away completely. Your first is different because a lot of people, their first time, don't even recognize that they're being affected until they're already on the way down. Strong visuals only happen when you're tripping hard, and the basic visuals (tracers, subtle movements in patterns, etc.) are easy to overlook because the mind-fuck is much stronger than the hallucinations at low-medium doses. You're more worried about the meaning of time and whether drinking orange juice is going to make you permanently insane than whether a leaf on the wallpaper might have moved a little.
I'm a nervous, introspective, pessimistic person, so tripping was always an ordeal for me. But, I'm also a pretty strong personality, so when I felt stuff slipping away I held on harder. Some people trip and fall over that edge, and act like someone in a fugue state, where there's no self-control, and that's the "bad trip" stuff you hear about--I bet a couple of times I had as much internal turmoil as some of those people who ran down the street naked, but I just sat in the corner blowing my cheeks out and scrubbing my hand through my hair every 2 minutes for 16 hours. Not that I'm particularly special or anything, I just never took enough to throw me over that edge, but I definitely got close a few times. I think a fair portion of the people who have the freakouts are looking for an excuse to act crazy, and LSD is one hell of an excuse. And then once you start acting weird, it's easier to keep acting weird and blame it on a bad trip than it is to just pull things together and go "woah, sorry dudes, I was freaking out, I'm good now." But, you've got the mind-fuck going on, so it's hard to rationally say, "oh man I'm taking this too far, it's time to own up to it."
But anyway, no single trip was a massive life-altering experience like I've heard of other people having. It just helped me look at stuff from a different angle, be more objective, and for some reason I can't explain, coming to the exact same conclusion while on acid had a much stronger effect than it would otherwise, but I always felt like the same person the next day and nobody ever sai