Do you think LSD has any benefits?

Synaesthesia

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Yeah, and drug dealers are societies most reliable people and would never dilute their drugs......

No doubt a lot of LSD may be diluted. But I don't believe a lot of it is adulterated. This might change in the near future due to the discovery of 25i-NBOME and 25c-NBOME
 

kbilly

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For treatment of PTSD(eg soldiers, rape victims etc) VERY effective, provided you treat it with respect. This is a VERY STRONG medicine, to be done ONLY:

1. At the right time - when you are relaxed and ready.
2. With someone you trust and who can look after you.
3. In a place where you can relax, swim, cry, laugh etc

Beats the crap out of 20 years of psychotherapy and doesnt kill a single braincell, not one - see LD50.
 

Synaesthesia

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I personally thing MDMA is amazing for PTSD. It's much more reliable than LSD in it's effects. LSD can be fantastic, even better than MDMA maybe, but it can also be a nightmare, which is the last thing you want in a person with PTSD.

But yes if the requirements kbilly laid out are met, you will probably have a brilliant and life-changing trip.
 

RiaX

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For treatment of PTSD(eg soldiers, rape victims etc) VERY effective, provided you treat it with respect. This is a VERY STRONG medicine, to be done ONLY:

1. At the right time - when you are relaxed and ready.
2. With someone you trust and who can look after you.
3. In a place where you can relax, swim, cry, laugh etc

Beats the crap out of 20 years of psychotherapy and doesnt kill a single braincell, not one - see LD50.

LSD will probably be bad for PTSD, it causes it or intensifies is in certain people. I cant really say, so I will leave this to people who use acid but apparently if you have a negative mindset you are more likely to experience a bad trip. PSTD subjects are in the negative mindset.

@ Synaesthesia

I respond according to the person im engaging with in conversation

Give LSD to someone with a brain tumour and the will die p? Really?

Probably

When Hoffman discovered LSD, he said it was the most important psychiatric drug

Medical science doesnt take opinions, especially from people to make drugs :D, if drug designers and companies want to talk about their drugs its done with a clinical trial anything else is null and void.

Anyway, it's the benzodiazepines that have become real drugs of abuse too! Xanax is such a great feeling but I suffer tremendous memory loss, loss of coordination and dizziness. It's very addictive.

Yes they are, I used to experiment with them in my campus days. ROFL amnesia is awesome and horrible thing at the same time. Yeah its a drug of abuse for many reasons but they cant be beaten medically, and they used outside of psych and in anaesthetics so you cant really get rid of them, though they are resistricted. These days all that doesnt matter. Sometimes I wonder where the dealers get rohypnol and how they get so much to sell it as a business.
 

Sherbang

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LSD will probably be bad for PTSD, it causes it or intensifies is in certain people. I cant really say, so I will leave this to people who use acid but apparently if you have a negative mindset you are more likely to experience a bad trip. PSTD subjects are in the negative mindset.
Just bear in mind that when it is used therapeutically it is part of an ongoing therapy process. You don't just rock up and get given LSD! Part of the therapists job is to prepare the person by ensuring the they've reached a point in their healing where their mindset is good and positive going into the experience. Therapy will have been going on for a while before the lsd session and will continue after. Having said that though, MDMA does seem to be a better candidate for treating ptsd, imo...
 

lestoran

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On the contrary, the surveys on purity of street LSD I have found have proved the opposite.

There's no real money to be made in LSD manufacture cause the market is too small. It's not exactly cheap to make and you need expertise, equipment and a lab (unlike methamphetamine which is made in bathtubs). One you make it though you have enough for a lifetime (1litre = 10 million doses).

Most of the people who made it (and I have met one) did so cause they are users themselves. He also gave most of it away for free.
 

lestoran

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Actually, 99% of LSD you find on the streets come from Holland and Switzerland at home laboratories by organic chemists. Its pretty difficult to make, and I bet you, you wont find a producer in Africa.

In the 90's at least, it was produced by chemistry students at a local university in rather large quantities. Those days you could buy small containers of diluted liquid containing 10 doses. If you knew the right people you could get a 1 to 100 dilution containing 200 doses. Those where the days.....

No idea about where it comes from nowadays. Suspect you are correct.
 

Sensorei

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In the 90's at least, it was produced by chemistry students at a local university in rather large quantities. Those days you could buy small containers of diluted liquid containing 10 doses. If you knew the right people you could get a 1 to 100 dilution containing 200 doses. Those where the days.....

No idea about where it comes from nowadays. Suspect you are correct.

Yep those were the days lol. I remember a guy I knew drinking half of one of those 10ml liquid drops bottles of LSD at an outdoor party in the late 90s and yes, he lost it completely that weekend but he seems completely fine now. That must have been about 100 doses right there BOOOM!
 

RiaX

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Just bear in mind that when it is used therapeutically it is part of an ongoing therapy process. You don't just rock up and get given LSD! Part of the therapists job is to prepare the person by ensuring the they've reached a point in their healing where their mindset is good and positive going into the experience. Therapy will have been going on for a while before the lsd session and will continue after. Having said that though, MDMA does seem to be a better candidate for treating ptsd, imo...

Just keep in mind its NOT used therpeutically at all in a clinical setting.
 

Sherbang

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Just keep in mind its NOT used therpeutically at all in a clinical setting.

:rolleyes: yes riax but it was used therapeutically in the past and will be used therapeutically again in the future. Officially, that is. I'm quite sure it is currently being used in a clinical setting, in many places around the world, but underground...
 

Sensorei

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LSD To Treat Alcoholism? New Look At Old Data Says It Works...

Interesting article by a PhD who also has a BSc in chemistry with physics. The Research Council of Norway financed the study which was conducted during a research stay at Harvard Medical School.

The trials were double-blinded: neither the patients nor the drug administrators knew who would receive the full dose of LSD.

Krebs and Johansen conclude that their results unambiguously show that LSD helped patients heavily addicted to alcohol and made it less likely they would relapse: "a single dose of LSD had a positive treatment effect that lasted at least six months", they write.

"There has long been a need for better treatments for addiction. We think it is time to look at the use of psychedelics in treating various conditions," they urge.

The patients who received the LSD dose were less likely to relapse into problematic alcohol use, and were more likely to abstain altogether.

"We now better understand that alcoholism is a chronic, relapsing disorder that typically requires ongoing treatment. The next step should be to periodically provide additional doses of LSD in combination with modern evidence-based treatment programs," they conclude.
 

Sensorei

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...and yes, yes, yes, yes we all know that some people can have very bad side psychological effects so in all reality it will never be legal. But to say LSD can have no psychological benefits for those who do decide to take the risk is just ridiculous, arrogant and plain stupid.
 

Sensorei

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Hmm LSD and pscilocybin used to treat terminally ill patients in clinical trials

" 'Pamela had lost hope,' he said. 'She wasn't able to make plans for the future. She wasn't able to engage the day as if she has a future left'.

Treatment allowed her to realise that her fear about the disease was destroying the remaining time she had left, he said.

Professor Charles Grob, who is carrying out the trials at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in California, said: 'I think there is a perception these compounds hold untapped potential to help us understand the human mind.' "


Hmmm Successful Outcome of a Single LSD Treatment in a Chronically Dysfunctional Man

"His mother contacted me, updating me on his new life and his father called me on two occasions, saying that one LSD treatment had produced more results than the previous fifteen years of psychotherapy. To his parents, LSD was a miracle drug."


Hmmmm LSD Proves to be Miracle Cure for Cluster Headaches

"Eventually, Flash decided to experiment with LSD, and found that after one dose, his attacks immediately stopped for the next two years. When he felt the next attack looming, he experimented with psilocybin mushrooms ("magic mushrooms"), which were just as effective. The mushrooms were even effective at stopping an attack that he had deliberately exacerbated with alcohol, as a test.

Harvard Medical School researcher John Halpern, author of the Neurology article, has even applied to the university for permission to conduct a clinical trial. "
 
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RiaX

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hmmm. Okay lets assume we can use LSD and run with a few questions:

- How would a clinical practioner assess if one would be able to safely take LSD? even if the probability is low, a mind breaking event is a reality. No blood test or objective test can be indicative of this. If a family memeber of yours went for treatment and ended up psychotic you wont be very happy, would be the same as coming out of surgery paralysed, blind basically disabled for the rest of their lives. This is the biggest problem this possibility and know there are medical options that dont carry this risk. You cant ethically tests on this either, its like trying to do a clinical trial to find out if you can be infected by HIV from tears of a HIV positive person, ethically you cant expose individuals to something like that. That applies to LSD you cant expose healthy subjects with a possibility of mentally disabling them for life. The proposed treatments LSD can be used for cannot justify this kind of risk, its not a life or death situation like cancer.

-For alcoholism. The results from that research show a promising use however its not as studied or shown to be as effective as disulfram. How would a patient expect to manage treating alcoholism? Put LSD in the real world as medical use. You expect this fellow to wake up in the morning and take LSD? how is he/she suppose to get to work and function normally while on LSD? the addiction is not going to magically disappear overnight it will require chronic use of LSD (and with such a short half-life probably multiple dosing). Its simply too impractical in the real world. Thoughts ? you could increase the molecular weight to remove the hallucination (I think they used BRomo-LSD in one trial) then you might be on to something. The problem with that is people are going to reverse engineer into LSD and abuse it to get high.

- Terminally ill patients with no hope, as I stated they can do what ever they want. Here I dont disagree, if LSD makes them feel better then why not. If they die they die the outcome hasnt changed.

- Hmmm cluster headaches are different. It has been shown to be very effective in treating cluster headaches, however we dont know why. The patient is already pretty much 'disabled' if the headaches are frequent so the mental changes in LSD would not be much of a change in the lifestyle. Again the risk element is still there. Tryptans and ergot alkaloids can be effective off label for cluster headaches but like migraines I would think a shot of pethidine and oxygen would be viable. The information you provided doesnt establish adverse events so its like shooting in the dark, likewise the clinical trail that was done had about 10 patients before it was shut down. Way too little to make any decent calls. You can prevent cluster headaches quite well with verapamil. So this would be subject to the patient WRT to intensity and frequency and failure of standard treatment options. Perhaps once everything has failed, then LSD could be an option. Though more information is required about cluster headaches once that is done then we can find drug targets. The subjective affects of LSD might be good, but with the increased nuerological activity we dont know how that will effect the brain WRT to cluster headahces. Its theorised cluster headaches are caused by increased blood flow in the brain. This increased blood flow increases the pressure on the cranial nerves (usually the trigeminal nerve) this results IN the pain. We know why cluster headaches arise and where they come from, what we dont know is why there is a sudden change in blood flow but we understand the MOA where the headaches generate from.

If we extrapolate these ideas to basic physiology of the brain, LSD increases CNS activity via 5-HT modalities very potently. When CNS activity increases the blood flow to the brain increases to provide it with more sugar and blood pressure goes up (MOA LSD). So the next question is, how does LSD treat this when it causes an increase in the same modalities in the body that cause cluster headaches? its possible that the hallucinatory effects may cause a form of analgesia or the change in the mental state might change their perception of the headache itself (like how morphine works WRT to pain). However you wont be removing the tension on these cranial nerves you would be increases it. Damaging a cranial nerve is a very bad thing. LSD has subjective benefits with this but objectively there are none, zero tests have been done to show the change of blood flow in the brain.

Dont get me wrong, I wont approve of LSD in a clinical setting or taking it for fun but I believe more research should be done, the ambiguious nature of the information out there on LSD, is not solid. If full research is done then people would realise what every medical practioner can predict. Again it wont happen, how do you justify breaking healthy minds permanently to attain an adverse effect report?

EDIT:

harvad medical school guy was fired.
 

Synaesthesia

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Good questions. Certainly we're not at the point where we can use it in a medical context. More research must be done, preferably with volunteers. The safety profile must be investigated further. Most doctors and medical professionals aren't familiar or open to working with it, plus it's illegal, so this is probably years away.

But used in a clinical setting, I would say that the patient needs to be fully aware of what will happen and willing, in a safe, friendly environment, possibly with the guidance of a psychologist or therapist. If the patient is mentally stable, I believe the chances of psychosis are quite low.

Another approach would be to start with a low possibly the dosage needs to be extremely low at firs dosage and ramp it up to accustom the patient to the effects.

Taken for alcoholism, yes you would only need one or two sessions. It's not going to require chronic use. In fact the study always mentioned utilised only one dosage. I think the LSD experience can open your eyes, and show you how you are harming yourself with Alcohol. It's certainly not a substitute for alcohol.
 

RiaX

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Another approach would be to start with a low possibly the dosage needs to be extremely low at firs dosage and ramp it up to accustom the patient to the effects.

This method is called titrating a dose BTW.

This wont work in the case of LSD, its simply too potent. The adverse events of LSD do not from from the drug itself but from the reaction, its hard to explain this I will perhaps put in a simple explaination in the future but for now I cant articulate it properly.

Once LSD is underdosed (according to pharmacology reports) it has no effect on its subjects. So most people to claim having an effect on underdosing LSD its probably just a placebo effect at best.

Must test the placebo effects on your mates when you drink. Pour half the alcohol content for one guy and give the rest of the guys the normal double (or what ever you drink), and see what happens. That friend of yours will get soo drunk like the other guys but on half the alcohol content (do it with someone you know how much they can drink). Observe the power of the placebo effect.

I once made a friend pass out and he had less than 2 tots rofl, I put his mixer first and the alcohol on top so first sip made it seem very strong. He performed like he drank the whole bottle :D
 

Synaesthesia

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Low doses do have effect. I've experienced it quite a few times. There are also many reports online of low dosage effects. Generally you experience stimulation, mood enhancement, and slight hallucinations. I know the placebo effect is very strong but I just don't attribute that to it. I've bought dud acid tabs that did nothing, but a regular strength tab, you will feel at a dosage level of 1/4-1/2 tab easily.

The alcohol trick makes a lot of sense to me. people often think they need to drink to have a good time. Alcohol lowers your inhibitions so you often do have a good time, but if you can lower your own inhibitions, you can have fun without alcohol. So the placebo really helps with that.

There's also the effect of other people's intoxication sort of projecting onto you. So if you hang out with drunk people your mind frame is that of a drunkard, same for other drugs. This phenomenon is known as contact high.
 

lestoran

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This method is called titrating a dose BTW.

This wont work in the case of LSD, its simply too potent. The adverse events of LSD do not from from the drug itself but from the reaction, its hard to explain this I will perhaps put in a simple explaination in the future but for now I cant articulate it properly.

If we extrapolate these ideas to basic physiology of the brain, LSD increases CNS activity via 5-HT modalities very potently.

I read an explanation of the pharmacological effects some years ago that suggested the effects are due to receptor tolerance. Can't remember if it was HT2 or a downstream dopamine receptor. Basic idea was that by the time you feel the effects the drug has mostly been metabolised.

The result of this receptor tolerance is a very slight shift in perception - just enough to interfere with the process of familiarity enough so you actually pay attention to things you usually just label and ignore. For example the feeling in your left toe or the texture of the wood on the chair you see every day but never give a 2nd thought.

As an experienced veteran this is the explanation that fits with my subjective experience the best. Do you know if the're any truth to this? I have not taken LSD or kept up with the research for close to a decade. I'm about as familiar with neurochemistry as a lay person can be as I'm always reading studies and papers on my own condition (ADHD + Aspergers).

You seem very up to date with the science side of this so I would love to hear your opinion.
 
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