Psychedelic Drugs May Launch a New Era in Psychiatric Treatment, Brain Scientists Say (npr.org) 75
An anonymous reader shares a report: One of the hottest tickets at this year's Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego was a session on psychedelic drugs. About 1,000 brain scientists squeezed into an auditorium at the San Diego Convention Center for the symposium, called Psychedelics and Neural Plasticity. They'd come to hear talks on how drugs like psilocybin and MDMA can alter individual brain cells, can help rewire the brain, and may offer a new way to treat disorders ranging from depression to chronic pain.
[...] Brain plasticity may explain why a single dose of a psychedelic drug can have a long-lasting impact on disorders like anxiety, depression and PTSD. "It can be months or years," says Dr. Gitte Knudsen a neurologist from University of Copenhagen in Denmark who spoke at the psychedelics session. "It's a stunning effect." These long-term effects have been shown with drugs including psilocybin, LSD and DMT (ayahuasca), Knudsen says. In contrast, most existing psychiatric drugs need to be taken every day. But psychedelic drugs have some drawbacks. They can cause nausea or produce hallucinations that are frightening or unpleasant.
[...] Brain plasticity may explain why a single dose of a psychedelic drug can have a long-lasting impact on disorders like anxiety, depression and PTSD. "It can be months or years," says Dr. Gitte Knudsen a neurologist from University of Copenhagen in Denmark who spoke at the psychedelics session. "It's a stunning effect." These long-term effects have been shown with drugs including psilocybin, LSD and DMT (ayahuasca), Knudsen says. In contrast, most existing psychiatric drugs need to be taken every day. But psychedelic drugs have some drawbacks. They can cause nausea or produce hallucinations that are frightening or unpleasant.
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WAR ON DRUGS RETARDED MEDICAL PROGRESS (Score:1, Insightful)
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No, it's not. If you don't want the government interfering in you taking whatever drug you want, then have it. It is not the responsibility of others to protect you.
Your body, your choice, right?
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Never said to dismantle anything. All I said was the person should bear the responsibility for their actions.
But keep moving the goalposts.
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Never said to dismantle anything.
Stop all government sponsored drug treatment centers/clinics, stop any form of needle exchange, safe havens for drug use, Naloxone disbursement, and so on.
There ya go
Re: WAR ON DRUGS RETARDED MEDICAL PROGRESS (Score:1)
Re:WAR ON DRUGS RETARDED MEDICAL PROGRESS (Score:5, Insightful)
I do see the advantage of some drugs not being readily available. If you google images for "Krokodil drug" (don't do it if you want to be able to sleep tonight), you know why.
But I'd have a very different approach than the average conservative: How about finding out why people reach for shit like that and try to solve that issue instead of just outlawing something? I mean, let's be honest here: This is the time of the internet. These people KNOW what those drugs will do to them. They KNOW that. And despite KNOWING that this crap will (not might, will) kill them, they take it.
Am I the only one wondering "wtf, WHY?"
If you're serious about the "war on drugs", this is your battlefield.
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I do see the advantage of some drugs not being readily available. If you google images for "Krokodil drug" (don't do it if you want to be able to sleep tonight), you know why.
But I'd have a very different approach than the average conservative: How about finding out why people reach for shit like that and try to solve that issue instead of just outlawing something? I mean, let's be honest here: This is the time of the internet. These people KNOW what those drugs will do to them. They KNOW that. And despite KNOWING that this crap will (not might, will) kill them, they take it.
Am I the only one wondering "wtf, WHY?"
If you're serious about the "war on drugs", this is your battlefield.
Krokodil is a RESULT of some drugs not being readily available. How many people would turn to it if cheap, safe opiods were obtainable? People reach for shit like that because they're addicted and it's all they can get.
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That's not a red herring at all. It is proof positive that the war on drugs is immoral. Moral behavior would be allowing drugs to be sourced through official channels and using normal means of quality control. Immoral behavior is banning drugs knowing full well that the uncontrolled quality of criminal distribution will kill addicts.
But then we wouldn’t be hurting the right people /s. I was only pointing out how the damage it did pales in comparison to the rest of the BS going on, in all cases legal drugs would be better for everyone but the ruling class, especially the right wing ruling class. God it’s tiring having to argue basic common sense all the time.
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Liberal? Where's the liberal in the US? You have a right authoritarian wing that wants to limit what I can say or do because if offends their imaginary friend and a left authoritarian wing that wants to limit what I can say and do because it offends their sensibilities.
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America has two fairly similar parties with their main difference being their ownership. Essentially, as an American voter, you can only decide which corporations get to fleece you for the next legislation period.
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America has two fairly similar parties with their main difference being their ownership. Essentially, as an American voter, you can only decide which corporations get to fleece you for the next legislation period.
If you haven’t yet, check out this study from Princeton [princeton.edu]. It uses statistics to show beyond a doubt how true that is in minute detail. The sigma is high enough to classify it as a scientific discovery, but anyone who ever thought it out, even half-assed, knew this already.
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If you're serious about the "war on drugs", this is your battlefield.
I would like to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.
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I was already saying, considering the outcome of the "war on drugs", "war on terrorism" maybe we should declare a "war on common sense". We sure need more of that, too.
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I was already saying, considering the outcome of the "war on drugs", "war on terrorism" maybe we should declare a "war on common sense". We sure need more of that, too.
I see you are failing to not apply logic. This could work.
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The reason is fairly clear. These people are horribly addicted to opioids. They don't WANT krokodil, they want heroin. They resort to krokodil because they can't get heroin. Nobody starts out using krokodil.
They NEED addiction treatment and decent clean drugs to take under medical supervision while they taper, but that doesn't seem to be on offer. So they (not so) slowly kill themselves with krokodil.
NOTE: Krokodil is the result of bathtub chemistry to convert codeine into desomorphine. It became 'popular'
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Screw krok, why the fuck would people want heroin either. When was the last time you thought "Hmm, it's a lazy Tuesday evening, why not shoot some crap I got from some dealer in a shady alley up my vein, what could be the harm?"
These people just know exactly as well that heroin, or fentanyl, will eventually take them out. They KNOW that. We should try to figure out why the hell they think that reaching for that shit is better than continued existence, for crying out loud!
Re:WAR ON DRUGS RETARDED MEDICAL PROGRESS (Score:4, Insightful)
A shockingly large number of addicts in the U.S. started out with a legitimate prescription for actual pain. Then they got abruptly cut off by a doctor afraid of attracting DEA attention and ignorant of best practices for weaning a patient off when they have trouble just stopping. We don't know exactly why some patients can just stop and others can't. Still other patients have a terminal condition and so nobody worries that much if they can't stop, they'll stop soon enough when their illness kills them.
Some can't stop because their pain didn't stop. That should have been addressed, but the war on (some) drugs has everybody so on the look-out for drug seekers they got pigeonholed into that category and tossed out on their asses. The thing about pain is that it doesn't show up on an MRI or a blood test. It's also common to feign pain to get drugs. There may be no objective difference in that presentation.
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Finally we have a clue what it might be. Ok, then. Let's take a look around the world to see how other countries deal with it.
Hmm. Germany is second only to the US in fentanyl prescriptions but has only about 1/50th of the opiate related fatalities (source [addictioncenter.com]). What could be the reason?
Maybe that Germans generally have medical insurance and this insurance pays for pretty much all prescriptions? Opiates have one thing in common, compared to alternatives: They are cheap. Non-opiate painkillers tend to cost at le
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A big helpful first step in the U.S. would be to quit letting cops who are definitely not doctors interfere with the doctor-patient relationship. That is, cops are NOT qualified in any way to decide if a doctor is or is not over-prescribing pain meds, much less if the over-prescribing rises to the level of criminality. No more DEA agents who can't even spell oncologist deciding "gee, that looks like a lot of drugs".
A number of states have made a good step by allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana and it's
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No, it's pain that you are actually feeling that is severe enough to warrant a strong painkiller, as opposed to fake pain used to induce a doctor to prescribe "the good stuff".
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The Sacklers fucking knew that their goddamn opiates were addictive (no shit, all opiates are addictive), and knowingly lied. They destroyed thousands of communities all across the United States, especially in rural communities to the point that people just assume when anything is "off" in a rural community it's because the person is addicted to opiates.
A
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Opportunist doesn't know what he's talking about.
Re: WAR ON DRUGS RETARDED MEDICAL PROGRESS (Score:1)
Re:WAR ON DRUGS RETARDED MEDICAL PROGRESS (Score:4, Insightful)
Krokodil is not "readily" available, it's cooked up by the end user out of codeine tablets, and it's mostly contaminants and other fuckups in that synthesis that makes their skin fall off. What they really want is pure heroin, but that's less available or too expensive.
The explosion of fentanyl overdoses in the US is due to pretty much the same reason. Nobody wants fentanyl. 10-15 years ago, everyone got pharmaceutical grade oxycodone or hydrocodone from their doctor. When that was taken away, they went to the black market, which started supplying them with fentanyl because it's cheaper and easier to smuggle.
The fentanyl epidemic was entirely predictable. Every time you amp up the drug war, waves of death and destruction follow that make the original drug problem look tame in comparison.
Happens every time.
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Again, the problem is not that the drugs are available. The problem is that people reach for them. That is what e need to address.
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But then we'd have to take a long, hard look at society and find out what makes people want to escape their crappy lives. Bills that can't be paid, living homeless on the street, medical conditions that result in excruiating pain. Fixing those issues would go a long way to addressing the drug problem, but that might cost actual money, and we just can't have that.
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Worse, it would cost money that goes to poor people.
Now who the hell would want that?
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Drugs, even the "evil ones", are considered treatment for some conditions. People with a tendency towards hallucinations are drawn towards nicotine and opiates, because it stops their hallucinations. There are different phenomena, which are "treated" with other drugs: anxiety, depression, PTSD, ... you name it, something legal (alcohol, Cannabis, ...) or illegal (Cocaine, Amphetamines, ...) deals with it quite effectively - and with horrible side effects (including but not limited to deadly addiction). No,
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Then I think these people should get help with their problem instead of leaving them alone to self-medicate with what's essentially a depressant that just dumps a load of weight onto the problem until it doesn't move anymore. That doesn't solve it.
Maybe that's the reason why the US has a much bigger problem with drugs than Europe. People here can actually get help because it's not a money issue. And frankly, I'd rather pay to have some hallucinating person taken care of than spend about the same money on tr
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Then I think these people should get help with their problem instead of leaving them alone to self-medicate with what's essentially a depressant that just dumps a load of weight onto the problem until it doesn't move anymore. That doesn't solve it.
That's their problem: they're trying to deal with their ailment, get no real help from official medicine and find it in illegal drugs. Yes, that's in a country with sane health care, not the failed US system. These people use(d) opiates et al. to deal with a real problem, not with "poverty" or "poor life conditions" or whatever is frequently named as driving force behind opiate abuse.
The problem is not really solved by opiates either. These compounds wear people down over time, at the age of 40 addicts show
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But I'd have a very different approach than the average conservative: How about finding out why people reach for shit like that and try to solve that issue instead of just outlawing something? .....
I'm an independent and have frequently voted cross-party in many elections, including the last one. We need conservatives on the ballot that will take your position: When there's a problem, don't outlaw it - FIX IT! Sorry if that's hard work but we live in a complex world with complex problems. Simple solutions are frequently both elegant and wrong.
Thank you for letting me know I'm not alone.
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What really pisses me off is that fixing the problem is very likely a lot cheaper than hauling a huge apparatus about trying to keep the problem at bay with the legal system. We go out of our way to spend more money on punishing people instead of doing something that would make everyone happy, including those affected, and would also cost less tax money!
Re: WAR ON DRUGS RETARDED MEDICAL PROGRESS (Score:2)
That said, as we say with opioids there is just too much profit to be made. The drug dealers will kill people. With opioids we saw doctors prescribing drugs and pharmacies filling these drugs for profit not medical need. Without regulation in 200
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Informed consent and rehabilitation on demand is responsible medicine and governance.
We understand from animal models and from human experience that well adjusted individuals with access to society will use at a reduced rate. With enough positive social activity, addiction is not an issue.
Our society manufactures the conditions that predispose people to addiction and prohibition exposes them to a downward spiral leading to addiction. Taking responsibility for this is just. Ignoring the inputs and outputs
This just in. (Score:3, Informative)
in other words: psychiatrists will try anything (Score:2)
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Be that as it may, we're talking about *neuroscientists*, not *psychiatrists*. In fact psychiatry is an entirely different medical field than neurology.
Although psychiatrists in the US are certified by the same board as neurologists, due to the inherent overlap in the fields, psychiatrists apparently receive relatively little neurological training.
Side effects extend to bystanders (Score:2)
But psychedelic drugs have some drawbacks. They can cause nausea or produce hallucinations that are frightening or unpleasant.
Second-order side effects: Elon Musk takes plenty of neuro-active drugs; everyone else can't believe the crap he's doing. And we really can't wait until he gets his ass to Mars.
Re: prisoners (Score:2)
Politicians are Criminals (Score:2)
Learn how the therapists knew that MDMA combination therapy was an effective treatment for PTSD by the mid-late 70's and that in a DEA court in the early 80's this was established by physicians, therapists, and other experts and agreed to by the administrative court judge - and then a political appointee just said "nah, no medical value" and made treatment of PTSD illegal for 40 years.
Worse than Mengele. Nuremberg consequences.
https://www.cato.org/multimedi... [cato.org]
Single Dose; THE Marketing lie. (Score:2)
"Brain plasticity may explain why a single dose of a psychedelic drug can have a long-lasting impact on disorders like anxiety, depression and PTSD. "It can be months or years,"
A single dose you say? Gee, that's nice. Now let me explain how the the Big Pharma brain works on Greed, No "single dose" solution will ever be accepted or allowed in American medicine, because there's not nearly enough profit in it.
Why the hell do you think "two weeks to slow the spread" turned into a never-ending marketing campaign for COVID boosters? Not hard to see the patented obvious when you remove your head from their wallet.
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If psychedelic treatment is ever legalized, it's going to be similar to an inpatient surgical procedure, where you're under observation/therapy/whatever by very expensive specialists in a very expensive facility for a day or three. They're not going to give you a tab of acid and let you take it back to your house.
"Two weeks to slow the spread" was an arbitrary number the Fuhrer pulled out of his ass, probably involving some magical thinking that they could make the issue disappear within that timeframe. It
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If psychedelic treatment is ever legalized, it's going to be similar to an inpatient surgical procedure, where you're under observation/therapy/whatever by very expensive specialists in a very expensive facility for a day or three. They're not going to give you a tab of acid and let you take it back to your house.
If you really sat and thought about exactly why Big Daddy Patent and the Pharma band has been so corruptly against anything and everything that can heal you very well naturally, you'd realize that there is NO ability to prevent you or millions of others from taking that psychedelic treatment at your house, and growing it for free, without insurance needing to cover a collusive mandated price tag. (They're growing psilocybin mushrooms for this treatment.)
Greed N. Corruption found it very difficult to live
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There's plenty of "palefaces" that aren't willing to trek the Amazon rainforest in search of Lady Aya, don't want to study mycology, are scared of drug dealers, etc., But they would gladly spend a few grand to take it at a facility.
It's like quitting heroin, you don't need to pay $10,000 to do it at a resort in Florida, but a shitload of Americans do it anyway, and a huge industry has arisen to make money off it.
It's true the pharmaceutical industry has a tight grip on the approval process, but I think they
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MDMA Needs Goog People to Work (Score:2)
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Haha (Score:2)
People with psychoses caused by today's extra strong weed will now need to take LSD to get better. Sure.
Bullshit! (Score:1)
For example, Abilify drug is miswritten Ablify word because they donâ€(TM)t really want to ablify people with the drugs.