Tagpsychedelics
Scientists are taking a new look at hallucinogens, which became taboo among regulators after enthusiasts like Timothy Leary promoted them in the 1960s with the slogan “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Now, using rigorous protocols and safeguards, scientists have won permission to study once again the drugs’ potential for treating mental problems and illuminating the nature of consciousness. […]
Researchers from around the world are gathering this week in San Jose, Calif., for the largest conference on psychedelic science held in the United States in four decades. They plan to discuss studies of psilocybin and other psychedelics for treating depression in cancer patients, obsessive-compulsive disorder, end-of-life anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction to drugs or alcohol. […]
Although federal regulators have resumed granting approval for controlled experiments with psychedelics, there has been little public money granted for the research, which is being conducted at Hopkins, the University of Arizona; Harvard; New York University; the University of California, Los Angeles; and other places.
New York Times: Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again
(via Disinfo)
(Photo by Chris Halderman / CC)
I’m not familiar with Jonathan Ott’s work, but this is galling:
[My] home was completely burned, destroying everything that was most important: laboratory, hydroelectric system, custom-built and -designed electric motorcycle and, for the crowning touch, [the arsonist] tried to burn [my] library, one of the best private collections on ethnomedicine that exist[s]. Signed, personal copies of some of Albert Hofmann’s books were even used as fuel to ignite expensive laboratory equipment! While the humidity of the cloud-forest saved the books, the house was rendered uninhabitable and without power; the laboratory unusable.
It is the attempted book-burning which most outrages me and, I think, will outrage others.
The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics has started a Jonathan Ott Fund.
(Via Cole Tucker)
I’ve just found a remarkable 1963 study [pdf] from the Archives of Opthalmology in which 24 blind participants took LSD to see if they could experience visual hallucinations.
It turns out, they can, although this seems largely to be the case in blind people who had several years of sight to begin with, but who later lost their vision.
Those blind from a very early age (younger than two years-old) did not report visual hallucinations, probably because they never had enough visual experience to shape a fully-functioning visual system when their brain was still developing.
Mind Hacks: Do blind people hallucinate on LSD?
(via Paul Bingman)
You don’t need psychedelic drugs to start seeing colors and objects that aren’t really there. Just 15 minutes of near-total sensory deprivation can bring on hallucinations in many otherwise sane individuals.
Psychologists stuck 19 healthy volunteers into a sensory-deprivation room, completely devoid of light and sound, for 15 minutes. Without the normal barrage of sensory information flooding their brains, many people reported experiencing visual hallucinations, paranoia and a depressed mood.
“This is a pretty robust finding,” wrote psychiatrist Paul Fletcher of the University of Cambridge, who studies psychosis but was not involved in the study. “It appears that, when confronted by lack of sensory patterns in our environment, we have a natural tendency to superimpose our own patterns.”
Wired: Just 15 Minutes of Sensory Deprivation Triggers Hallucinations
Nearly 40 years after widespread fear over recreational abuse of LSD and other hallucinogens forced dozens of scientists to abandon their work, researchers at a handful of major institutions – including UCSF and Harvard University – are reigniting studies. Scientists started looking at less controversial drugs, like ecstasy and magic mushrooms, in the late 1990s, but LSD studies only began about a year ago and are still rare.
The study at UCSF, which is being run by a UC Berkeley graduate student, is looking into the mechanisms of LSD and how it works in the brain. The hope is that such research might support further studies into medical applications of LSD – for chronic headaches, for example – or psychiatric uses. […]
In 1966, the federal government made LSD illegal, and by the early 1970s, research into all psychedelic drugs in humans had come to a halt, although some scientists continued to study the drugs in animals.
“It has long been suspected that humans have an ancient history of drug use, but there has been a lack of proof to support the theory. Now, however, researchers have found equipment used to prepare hallucinogenic drugs for sniffing, and dated them back to prehistoric South American tribes. Quetta Kaye, of University College London, and Scott Fitzpatrick, an archeologist from North Carolina State University, made the breakthrough on the Caribbean island of Carriacou.
They found ceramic bowls, as well as tubes for inhaling drug fumes or powders, which appear to have originated in South America between 100BC and 400BC and were then carried 400 miles to the islands. While the use of such paraphernalia for inhaling drugs is well-known, the age of the bowls has thrown new light on how long humans have been taking drugs. Scientists believe that the drug being used was cohoba, a hallucinogen made from the beans of a mimosa species. Drugs such as cannabis were not found in the Caribbean then. Opiates can be obtained from species such as poppies, while fungi, which was widespread, may also have been used.”
(via Telegraph)
“It’s surprising to see such media exposure with these studies. Perhaps it really is the psychedelic renaissance. I would be really interested in hearing Keith Ablow’s scepticism, but it seems he was never given the chance to speak. Did his comments on psychedelics even air?”
(via Animam Recro)
There’s a new psychedelic blog called “Psychedelic Research”. It’s author is Matthew Baggott who is a graduate student in neuroscience at UC Berkeley and a research associate at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute.
His reasons for starting the blog:
“This is a blog to track research and events relating to the scientific study of hallucinogens and consciousness. I hope that documenting my readings here will be interesting or even helpful to others. My writing goals with this blog are relatively modest: I primarily aim to provide abstracts from papers, linking to them whenever possible, with occasional brief comments about what interests me.
Most hallucinogen research still takes place with a pharmacology context. But increasingly, people are using research tools from other domains, such as neuroscience. As a result, I think our understanding of hallucinogens and human consciousness may both be improved. Although science has yet to fully realize this promise, there are many studies that contain gems of insight. Hopefully this blog can help reveal these gems.”
(Psychedelic Research. h/t: Drug Monkey)
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