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Psychedelics Could Trigger A 'Paradigm Shift' In Mental Health Care
- Synaesthesia 11y agoAt the very least psychedelics should be a legitimate subject of serious inquiry in the fields of neuroscience and psychiatry.
- beagle3 11y agoThe only reason they are not, as far as I can tell, is nearly universal drug schedules in the west - rather than lack of promise or interest among researchers.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- max-a 11y agoPsychedelics can trigger psychosis too.
- trxcllnt 11y agoThere is evidence that does not agree with (edit: support) this statement: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130819185302.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130819185302.ht...
- akjetma 11y agoTriggering psychosis != causing longterm mental illness. I think parties on both sides of the debate over the safety of psychedelics would agree that they can and often do trigger psychosis. And both parties probably agree, at this point, that they do not cause mental illness.
- throwupaway1138 11y agoHow is psychosis not mental illness? You are splitting hairs.
- chippy 11y agoI think the key word was "longterm" with the assumption that psychois is more associated with short term episodes.
- throwupaway1138 11y agoYes, but the dividing criteria is completely arbitrary. The medical term would be chronic. To me psychosis means a form of mental illness, so it looks like the GP doesn't have a clue.
- adrusi 11y agoThats like saying heart palpitations is an illness and therefore when someone takes a large dose of cocaine and gets an irregular heartbeat, they have a heart problem. Any definition you're thinking of that places any psychotic episode as a definite indicator of mental illness is completely irrelevant as soon as the subject is under the influence of a mind-altering drug.
- DanBC 11y agoOne episode of psychosis is not a life long psychotic illness. When people say "psychedelics cause mental illness" that could mean: * Someone with no underlying mental illness takes a few doses of LSD and is left with a life long psychotic illness * Someone with no underlying mental illness regularly takes huge doses of LSD, and ends up with a life long psychotic illness * Someone with underlying mental illness has that illness surfaced by LSD use, when it would have gone un-known if they hadn't taken psychedelics * Someone with underlying mental illness has that illness surfaced by LSD. But it probably would have happened anyway. * Someone with mental illness has that illness temporarily triggered by LSD. Because LSD is illegal and it's very hard to research we don't know much about the interactions of LSD and mental illness. While I'm strongly pro-legalisation I do find it problematic when people dismiss any possible harms of drug use, when it's fine to say we don't know, but should legalise anyway.
- fossuser 11y agoWhile this book is only one anecdote with severe extenuating circumstances - it's a pretty good read. http://www.amazon.com/And-Then-Thought-Was-Fish-ebook/dp/B008DZEWF8 http://www.amazon.com/And-Then-Thought-Was-Fish-ebook/dp/B00... It's also online as part of his blog: http://www.stilldrinking.org/the-episode-part-1 http://www.stilldrinking.org/the-episode-part-1
- douche 11y agoDefinitely a fantastic read. Terrifying, but incredibly interesting. The author seems like an otherwise fairly well-adjusted person now - but it must be incredibly weird to look back at memories from when you were that completely out-to-lunch.
- mistermann 11y agoIt's a bit long but I think well worth reading!
- littletimmy 11y agoTo be fair, water can also poison you. Nothing is risk-free.
- sanoli 11y agoYeah, russian roullette isn't risk-free, just like drinking water, so let's do it.
- DennisP 11y agoThe interviewee acknowledged that, and said people with predispositions to it should not take these therapies. They have reliable screening tests.
- kaffeemitsahne 11y agoHow do they work, and how reliable? Seems like a pretty difficult thing to determine which healthy people are predisposed to mental ilness and which aren't.
- cma 11y agoYou have to be skeptical of psychological screening after Lisa Nowak passed some of the most stringent screening out there and still did her diaper drive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak
- tptacek 11y agoThey have reliable screening tests for what?
- DennisP 11y agoAccording to the interviewee, for vulnerability to serious negative outcomes from psychedelic therapies.
- tptacek 11y agoSince we don't have reliable screening for basic mental illnesses, I find it implausible that we have "reliable" screening for these kinds of vulnerabilities. I must be missing something; any thoughts?
- DennisP 11y agoIt's not my specialty, I was just pointing out something mentioned in the article, by a researcher in the area. If you have references that contradict his claim, I'd be interested in seeing them.
- nmrm2 11y agoTA: "The fact that the effects last beyond the time that you take the medication -- that's really a new paradigm in psychiatry." I have no doubt that psychedelics are capable of producing lasting changes in behaviors, habits, or outlooks. Actually, I'd be surprised if that particular point is at all controversial. However, prespcribing a psychedlic that could have lasting impacts on a person for "reasons we don't understand" seems... unnecessarily dangerous, whenever an alternative exists. Which of course is only an argument for more research.
- MichaelGG 11y agoIsn't this the state of most mental medicines? That is, "reasons we don't understand"? Hence the typical search for the right med combo of anti-depressants, stabilizers, and stimulants to make someone OK? Sure SSRIs might have lots more study than LSD and they might know how it affects certain neurotransmitters. But it seems a far cry from really understanding it.
- tedks 11y agoI know a lot fewer people who have started taking SSRIs and then started taking SSRIs every weekend and got involved in cults centered around taking SSRIs and experiencing enlightenment and then ended up broken shells of people. SSRIs have a very specific method of action, and it's drastically more limited in scope than these recreational drugs.
- Zelphyr 11y agoSSRI's have impacts (albeit not as long lasting) for reasons we don't understand yet they get dolled out like bread. Sure, you don't see visions while taking them but the side effects are no less profound. After years of personal experience with them I think they're WAY over prescribed. But the fact that they're legal at all, to me, is justification for legalizing psychedelics for research at the very least.
- codeshaman 11y agoThey can trigger a paradigm shift in many other areas, not just mental health care. Except it's so hard to explain this to a 'normal' person, who's never taken any. "If God were to permit you a brief voyage into the divine process, let you whirl for a second into the atomic nucleus or spin you out on a light-year trip through the galaxies, how on earth would you describe what you saw when you got back, breathless, to your office? This metaphor may sound farfetched or irrelevant, but just ask someone who has taken a heavy dose of LSD." - Tim Leary, The politics of ecstasy, 1968 It's similar to the 'overview effect' reported by astronauts who've been to space. Of course it triggers a paradigm shift and 'cures' depression or other mind-loops that we find ourselves in so often. It's good to see that there are more discussions about psychedelics in the scientific community. I suspect there are many (more and more) scientists and academics who use psychedelics so I think we will see more and more material published on this subject, apart from the huge amount of anecdotal material available online. I also suspect that people use more psychedelics now than ever in our history. And it's happening globally. And it's a good thing. Because I believe psychedelics are the mythical 'love bomb' which can stop wars and bring peace to people and other species on Earth. And they could, in theory, cure cancer - certainly the psychological and spiritual effects of the disease, which could bring remission to it's physical manifestation. So yeah, there's lots of research still to be done.
- _yosefk 11y agoSo... have you known people who've undergone this chemical love carpet-bombing who are tremendously peaceful, between themselves or with people who were not similarly treated? Because I've known a lot of people who used a variety of drugs and many who swore by LSD, mushrooms, ecstasy or a combination, and they weren't a teeny bit less likely to start petty fights over pretty much nothing than the rest of us, nor were they more free from prejudice towards specific groups of people, etc.
- sanoli 11y agoI've known about thirty people who have used Lsd routinely for years, and I have to agree with you. The only significant difference is that some of them talk like it drammatically changes them. The effect doesn't seem much different from the people I know who really like a hobby and exxagerate its effects. I of course know lsd is something serious and psychedelically powerful, and agree it should be studied.
- s_dev 11y agoIf LSD is this safe in a black market environment: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210 I don't see how if it was clinically manufactured and administered the risks couldn't be acceptably mitigated. The interviewee seems confident the government is on board and things are going down a new path though so I guess this could be a thing now.
- fsiefken 11y agoSupport MAPS (Multidisciplinairy Association for Psychedelic Studies) http://www.maps.org/ http://www.maps.org/ or the Dutch OPEN Foundation to promote research in this area. https://twitter.com/FoundationOPEN https://twitter.com/FoundationOPEN
- Litost 11y agoPretty tangential, and i've no idea yet as to it's accuracy, but i loved the idea that the human race's "emergence into consciousness was triggered by our ancestors encounters with visionary plants". From an ironically, as otherwise i probably wouldn't have stumbled on it, Ted Talk by Graham Hancock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0c5nIvJH7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0c5nIvJH7w Out of interest, are there any other theories as to what might have caused this "leap"?
- superplussed 11y agoThis is known as the "Stoned Ape Theory" and was (to my knowledge) first popularized by Terrence McKenna. http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/ http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/ From the link above: McKenna theorizes that as the North African jungles receded toward the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the branches and took up a life out in the open -- following around herds of ungulates, nibbling what they could along the way. Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. The changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet were many -- McKenna theorizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds.
- Retra 11y agoHere's one: it's not actually much of a leap. Save for the fact that your brain has a bigger language center, you're no better than any other ape.
- knowaveragejoe 11y agoThere are numerous ways in which we're similar to apes and other organisms, and then there's also numerous things that have nothing even close in the animal kingdom(that we're aware of, anyways). So if nothing but a larger language center explains that, then it's a far bigger difference than you make it sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCVu25wQ5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCVu25wQ5s
- werber 11y agoI was surprised the article didn't mention Ayahuasca, maybe the original source did. I know a few people that used it to get off heroin for good after going through several Regan-relapse cycles.
- pstuart 11y agoWhich is effectively DMT.
- pcthrowaway 11y agoNot exactly. Ayahuasca actually refers to the vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which is a powerful MAOI, but contains no DMT. Traditional preparations often (but not always) contain other components which contain DMT, the effect of which is normally metabolized by a mitochondrial enzyme called monoamine oxidase. Since the ayahuasca vine inhibits the activity of monoamine oxidase, a preparation of ingested DMT taken with, or after, an MAOI will allow the DMT to reach the brain. The vine taken on its own, however, has an intense effect which is said to be mildly psychedelic, and a preparation of just the ayahuasca vine qualifies as ayahuasca.
- chestervonwinch 11y agoPsychedelics are a lot like taking a vacation. You may have an experience which will impact your life in some (perhaps significantly better or worse) way. You may gain new perspectives on life. You may gain insight into yourself and travel companions. You may develop an ugly tendency to be that annoying person who always talks about their trip to ___ and always find a way to interject it into conversations.
- MichaelGG 11y agoThat's a risk for just about anything that's interesting. Reading up on a new (to you) philosophy. Finding a new (to you) diet, or exercise or yoga. Learning a new programming paradigm. And on and on. People naturally want to share experiences they found exciting/stimulating/useful/etc. I don't think that really provides much judgement or insight into whether a specific activity tends to be good or bad.
- noahdesu 11y agoI just finished reading "Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal" by Tom Shroder. It was parallel tour of the history of influential people (primarily Rick Doblin of MAPS), and a Iraq veteran suffering from PTSD that was treated later in the book with MDMA. http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Test-Ecstasy-Power-Heal/dp/0147516374 http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Test-Ecstasy-Power-Heal/dp/014751...
- Glench 11y agoHere's a link to an early-release PDF of the study: https://psilosybiini.info/paperit/Psychedelic%20medicine,%20a%20re-emerging%20therapeutic%20paradigm%20(Tupper%20et%20al.,%202015).pdf https://psilosybiini.info/paperit/Psychedelic%20medicine,%20...
- api 11y agoPsychedelics are, I think, a genuine example of a suppressed technology. They're one of two major suppressed technologies of the 20th century, with the other possibly being nuclear power.
- pnevmatico 11y agoTo expand on your point, psychedelics have been suppressed even before that. Witches burnings in Europe for example, have been related to those "witches" taking psychedelic plants and potions. The Christian missionaries explicitly banned Indians from taking peyote and magic mushrooms as it was considered a "communion with the devil" in their eyes.
- xacaxulu 11y agoThis is strong medicine, but the reports around ayahuasca, ibogaine, psilocybin, DMT and peyote all indicate the possibility of deep and lasting positive psychological shifts. I'd personally submit to treatment in the safety of a psych/medical clinic rather than a secret Peruvian yoga retreat but the fact that so many centers are popping up indicates some kind of global hive-mind desire for change. I'm supremely interested in the official and unofficial studies taking place all over the world right now in these domains.
- thucydides 11y agoRick Doblin at MAPS has said he's funding the medical research of psychedelics and MDMA partly to change their public perception. It's a good strategy. "Medicinal alcohol" during Prohibition and medicinal cannabis during Prohibition 2.0 both helped sway a skeptical public. Strategic concerns aside, psychedelics clearly are powerful medicines and can yield profound insights, and their relative safety makes their Schedule 1 status morally repellent.
- Mz 11y ago"The exciting thing isn't just that these drugs work for something that we already have treatment for. It's that they're getting big effects on disorders for which we have very poor treatment." It sounds to me like it may imply that much of what we call "mental health" disorders are really somatopsychic conditions.
- baobabaobab 11y agoWait, do people think that mental health disorders somehow don't involve brain function? What else could it possibly be?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Mz 11y agoUh, I think most people have some vague, hand-wavy notion about "the mind" and social factors, (largely) disconnected from brain function.
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoThe man made the "unreliable narrator" his main device, but I think "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" should put to rest any idea that such trendy chemical amusement aids have much therapeutic value in the general case. It least puts such ideas in a position of having to work a lot harder to make their case.
- oldmanjay 11y agoI'm not sure I follow your logic here. Although there are reasons to believe the incidents in the book are to some degree real, it is a story told with a purpose of entertaining, not a medical evaluation of chemical action. Have I mistaken your purpose, and if not, can you clarify the reasoning?
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoNo, I think the book makes something akin to a moral point. That Our Humble Narrator was as much victim as perpetrator of the Better Living through Chemistry era. It's precisely the opposite of a medical evaluation. It's a reductio ad absurbum on the idea that there's a potential Utopia within us revealed by drugs. Drugs apparently make you a new man but the new man may not be perceptually ... congruent with the old man. I think he's describing the collapse of the experiment that included the Summer of Love. "And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” Can the medicos provide structure to ameliorate this?