Medicinal Drugs: Is Psychedelic Therapy the Future?

[ezza]

I swear this whole 'enlightening' thing with psychedelics doesn't work for me

sure when you're on acid or shrooms you have these moments where u think you've worked shit out

but then when you come around later you just laugh at how you'd come to some ridiculous conclusion over an exaggerated situation, which was pretty much all in your head

[lovelydivot]

What if...

We are all interconnected wizards...
and sometimes a persons soul gets handed over to another person...
so that the other person can fix them...or grow them
but only we don't know it...or we sort of know it but not really...

and things like LSD help us to understand the impact we have on other people - telepathically
because it's clearing out the calcified/rust and stuff in our brain receptors

and then we all become as clear as animals who have no need for language

and then we MUST become vegetarians - regardless as to what the cats say.


or did I just make that up.

[lovelydivot]

...and then girls can finally stop being given away by their fathers

and that whole females being underspells and stuff

things


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androgeny

[lovelydivot]

this again...

What the Fuck is Lou Reed talking about?

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[lovelydivot]

I'm getting too tired to talk now - and this is how I like it.
Brain - Let Go

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[Sonika]

Growing Calls In US For Legalised Marijuana:



> http://news.sky.com/story/1074650/growi ... 4.facebook

A new poll finds 52% of Americans are now in favour of legalising the drug as producers say it creates jobs.

A study by the Pew Research Centre found 52% of people thought the use of the drug should be made legal, with people aged 18 to 32 most in favour.

Even opponents of moves to legalise the drug nationwide - something compared to the end of prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s - admit it is probably now inevitable.

Colorado and Washington state voted to legalise the drug last November but it remains illegal at the federal level, prompting a debate about how police should treat producers and users.

-

Only a matter of time. When it happens, they need to Up the education and research about the herbs so everyone is informed responsibly.

thank god

[test_recordings]

That means the UK may be soon after

[d-T-r]

A trial looking at whether magic mushrooms could be used to treat depression has stalled due to ‘insane’ rules on the use of illegal drugs in research, a leading researcher has claimed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/ ... depression +

http://rt.com/news/magic-mushroom-trial-laws-461/

http://metro.co.uk/2013/04/07/magic-mus ... s-3586088/



Professor David Nutt, who was sacked as the government’s chief drug adviser in 2009, has been given funding for the trial, including a £550,000 grant from the Medical Research Council, and the ethical ‘green light’ but British and European regulations are currently preventing the trial from going ahead.

The president of the British Neuroscience Association and professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London said his team had discovered evidence that the hallucinogen psilocybin may combat severe depression in people who don’t respond to other treatments.

However, the hallucinogen is illegal in Britain and a Class A drug, so despite the funding and backing Professor Nutt said he has been unable to develop the research.

"We live in a world of insanity in terms of regulating drugs at present. The whole field is so bogged down by these intransigent regulations, so that even if you have a good idea, you may never get it into the clinic.’

In previous research, Professor Nutt said he found that when healthy volunteers were injected with psilocybin the drug switched off a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is known to be overactive in people with depression.

‘Even in normal people, the more that part of the brain was switched off under the influence of the drug, the better they felt two weeks later. So there was a relationship between that transient switching off of the brain circuit and their subsequent mood,’ he said. ‘This is the basis on which we want to run the trial.’

Professor Nutt lost his job as the government’s chief drug adviser in 2009 after claiming tobacco and alcohol were more harmful than ecstasy, LSD and cannabis.

[test_recordings]

Well people will start coming round to the idea at some point in the near future with America considering legalising weed. When everyone realises it's actually a good thing to have these helpful plants around all the drug war nonsense will come undone.

[d-T-r]

Iboga for heroin /opiate addiction...Dimitri Mugianis closing a session for drug addicts using elements of a shamanic ceremony.



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/nyreg ... .html?_r=2&

At this needle exchange, run by the New York Harm Reduction Educators, Mr. Mugianis helps treat drug users with fire-dancing and other techniques he learned by traveling several times to Gabon in West Africa to visit a group that practices Bwiti, a folk religion whose essential practice is consuming a hallucinogenic plant called iboga.

After taking large amounts of Iboga during all-night shamanic ceremonies of dance and music, said Mr. Mugianis, a former addict himself, he was initiated as a follower, and now he uses the techniques in New York to treat drug addicts.

“My job in the Bwiti is to dance with heroin addicts,” he said with a laugh after Thursday’s meeting, during which he held a furry civet skin and waved a ceremonial rattle from Gabon. He danced and sermonized about being reborn in the Easter season, using an impassioned style that combined beatnik phrasing, a preacher’s cadence and a savvy street hustler’s strut.

Years ago, Mr. Mugianis said, he kicked his own drug addiction by using ibogaine, a derivative of the iboga root.

Its advocates call ibogaine a cure for heroin addiction, but it is banned in the United States. Mr. Mugianis began acquiring it through an underground network to treat other drug addicts. He has stopped including ibogaine in his treatments since being arrested in a sting operation conducted by federal agents in Seattle in 2011, he said.

The Thursday group, which he leads with a social worker, Brian Murphy, is called We Are the Medicine, because the healing is communal, said Mr. Mugianis, who worships with his fellow Bwiti followers at a temple in Queens. They hope to gain religious status and fight for the right to use ibogaine as a sacrament to end addiction.

“They took away my magic powder, so I thought they were my enemy, but now I realize we were dancing together,” he said. “Even the arrest was part of my initiation — it was a blessing.”

[d-T-r]

For those in London and free tomorrow ; 19th may


Topic: Multidimensional clairvoyant entoptic cymatic synaesthesia: The art and science of psychedelic perception

Venue: Hoxton Gallery (Basement) -12-18 Hoxton Street (Entrance on Drysdale St) N1 6NG

https://www.facebook.com/events/363712093734996/

Psychedelia Railway Gathering present: An afternoon with David Luke PhD



When: Sunday 19th May 2013

Time: 2pm - 5pm

Entrance: £8 concession £5

Why is the world’s oldest artwork thought to be psychedelically inspired? What does sound look like on mescaline? What do blind people see on psychedelics? Is it possible in altered states to see the extra space-time dimensions proposed by physicists? How does it feel to have your asymmetry sung straight? People describe the weirdest experiences on psychedelics, … even spiders make strange webs under the influence. What can be understood about art and perception from scientific research into psychedelics?

David Luke, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he teaches an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experiences, focusing on his two main interests of psychedelics and the paranormal. He is also a guest lecturer at the University of Northampton, UK, for the MSc in Transpersonal Psychology and Consciousness Studies and is past president of the Parapsychological Association. Since 2008 he has directed the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series at the October Gallery in Bloomsbury, London, and is one of the core organizers of the Breaking Convention: A Multidisciplinary Meeting on Psychedelic Consciousness (due to return 12-14 July 2013).

How to get there?

Overground: Hoxton (5 Mins)

Underground: Liverpool St or Old St (10 Mins)

Buses: 8, 26, 45, 48, 55, 67, 78, 135, 149. 242, 243 & 388

[test_recordings]

A recent article in the British Psychological Society's magazine 'The Psychologist' actually challenged the common notion that we only have 5 senses as there is heat and pain sensitivity to consider amongst others, at least. Hopefully there will be some research in to what actually constitutes a 'sense' to open up new areas of exploration.

[d-T-r]

^ think something along those lines were mentioned at the talk.

Also,Some news from Nutt ; http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/vaop/ ... n3530.html - Effects of Schedule I drug laws on neuroscience research and treatment innovation

"The worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Galileo': Scientists call for drugs to be legalised to allow proper study of their properties "

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 54514.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/ ... david-nutt

"The outlawing of drugs such as cannabis, MDMA and LSD amounts to the “the worst case of scientific censorship since the Catholic Church banned the works of Copernicus and Galileo”, the former Government drugs advisor Professor David Nutt has claimed.

Professor Nutt, who was dismissed from the Home Office’s advisory council on drugs in 2009 after clashing with ministers, said that UN conventions on drugs in the 1960s and 1970s have delayed the development of “innovative treatments” for PTSD and depression by 30 years and also set back research into areas of neuroscience such as consciousness.

In a paper published today with two other scientists in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, he said that drugs policy is being driven by “politics, not science”.

[test_recordings]

Well it's just re-exposing his views. The fact that he's a good scientist helped him through political disenfranchisement

[alphacat]

New study: Magic Mushrooms Repair Brain Damage From Extreme Trauma



A new study by The University of South Florida has found that low doses of the active ingredient in magic mushrooms repairs brain damage caused by extreme trauma, offering renewed hope to millions of sufferers of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).

The study confirms previous research by Imperial College London, that psilocybin, a naturally occurring compound present in “shrooms”, stimulates new brain cell growth and erases frightening memories. Mice conditioned to fear electric shock when hearing a noise associated with the shock “simply lost their fear”, says Dr. Juan Sanchez-Ramos, who co-authored the study. A low dose of psilocybin led them to overcome “fear conditioning” and the freeze response associated with it faster than the group of mice on Ketanserin (a drug that counteracts the receptor that binds psilocybin in the brain) and a control group on saline.

An estimated 5 percent of Americans – more than 13 million people – have PTSD at any given time, according to the PTSD Alliance. The condition more often associated with combat veterans, is twice as likely to develop in women because they tend to experience interpersonal violence (such as domestic violence, rape and abuse) more often than men.

PTSD is not just psychological. Common symptoms, such as hyper-vigilance, memory fragmentation, flashbacks, dissociation, nightmares and fight or flight responses to ‘triggers’, are generally thought to be psychological and therefore treatable by learning to change thought processes. But new research suggests that they may in fact be the result of long term physiological mutations to the brain.

In the South Florida University study, the mice treated with low doses of psilocybin grew healthy new brain cells and their overactive medial prefrontal cortex regions (common in PTSD sufferers) were restored to normal functionality.

Further independent studies (http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com) have shown that the hippocampus part of the brain is damaged by extreme stress and that this is specific to PTSD and not associated with anxiety or panic disorders.

Dr. Sanchez-Ramos acknowledged that there was no way of knowing whether the mice in the experiment experienced altered states of consciousness or hallucinations – commonly experienced with magic mushrooms, but he believed the doses were too low to cause psychoactive effects.


Decriminalisation of psilocybin could help millions

Previous studies have shown that low doses of psilocybin produce no consciousness state altering effects. Administered in the correct amount, psilocybin could therefore be assumed to safely treat PTSD with minimal risk of adverse side effects. Magic mushrooms could help millions recover from the debilitating cycles of fight and flight and other conditioned biological responses caused by extreme trauma, if only they weren’t listed as a dangerous Schedule 1 drug with no medical benefits.

Meanwhile, doctors are authorised to dispense powerful, side-effect laden pharmaceutical drugs to army vets and others suffering from the symptoms of PTSD without any evidence that these treatments actually work, according to a major review by the committee of theInstitute of Medicine on the topic.

The situation is so bad that an average of 18 American veterans commits suicide every day (http://www.naturalnews.com), linked to the sharp rise in prescription drugs, depression, and other psychological conditions. Safe, natural alternatives to pharmaceuticals such as homeopathic and herbal remedies have been found to alleviate symptoms (http://www.naturalnews.com). Meditation has also been shown to reduce high activity levels in the amygdala (the brain’s emotional centre) experienced in PTSD sufferers as anxiety, stress and phobias.

Sources used in this article:

http://www.ptsdalliance.org

http://intellihub.com

http://digitaljournal.com

http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com

[nowaysj]

Nothing, anywhere, is going to get better until corporate/financial control of politics is ended. End of right there.

Our democracies were not set up to withstand this threat, and we've been completely dominated.

If you look at almost any injustice, any serious human suffering, you will find at its root, corporate profiteering.

Plus these patients and doctors just wanna get high, am I right m8son/bennyfroobs, am I right?

[butter_man]

Hopefully there will be some research in to what actually constitutes a 'sense' to open up new areas of exploration.

haha! my time travel theory. chcolate & cyanide

Looking back it appears I had PTS after cold turkey, for 5 years. meds blocked out the anxiety but psilocybin helped me restructure my thought in a healthy pattern that has sustained to this day and served me well

[test_recordings]

Luckily the evidence is stacking so high for the benefits of these drugs they won't be able to be ignored in the mainstream politics and media. Even the US government is permitting trials of MDMA for PTSD now... won't be so long before all evidence will be considered

[_ronzlo_]

Ibogaine's Uncertain Future

For those who dun kno, the Iboga tree and its psychedelic compound Ibogaine have shown considerable promise for breaking the cycle of opiate addiction; however, the tree itself is increasingly under threat for a number of reasons... in part, ironically, because of how well it does seem to work.

[m8son666]

ibogaine sounds like something you put on ur knob