National Geographic’s ‘Explorer’ series are examining the myths and effects of LSD:
LSDs inventor Albert Hofmann called it “medicine for the soul.” The Beatles wrote songs about it. Secret military mind control experiments exploited its hallucinogenic powers. Outlawed in 1966, LSD became a street drug and developed a reputation as the dangerous toy of the counterculture, capable of inspiring either moments of genius, or a descent into madness. Now science is taking a fresh look at LSD, including the first human trials in over 35 years. Using enhanced brain imaging, non-hallucinogenic versions of the drug and information from an underground network of test subjects who suffer from an agonizing condition for which there is no cure, researchers are finding that this “trippy” drug could become the pharmaceutical of the future. Can it enhance our brain power, expand our creativity and cure disease? To find out, Explorer puts LSD under the microscope.
Also, someone posted a link to this article from the guardian in the comments:
“The working hypothesis is that if psilocybin or LSD can occasion these experiences of great personal meaning and spiritual significance … then it would allow [patients with terminal illnesses] hopefully to face their own demise completely differently – to restructure some of the psychological angst that so often occurs concurrently with severe disease,” said Griffiths. So by expanding their consciousness during a session on the drug, the patient is able to comprehend their thoughts and feelings from a new perspective. This can lead to a release of negative emotions that leaves them in a much more positive state of mind.
Twelve patients with terminal cancer have already helped Grob to test this idea and, although the research is not yet published, anecdotal reports from some subjects are encouraging. Pamela Sakuda (see below) was diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer in December 2002. Her husband, Norbert Litzinger, said the psilocybin treatment transformed her outlook.
“Pamela had lost hope. She wasn’t able to make plans for the future. She wasn’t able to engage the day as if she had a future left,” he said. Her “epiphany” during the treatment was the realisation that her fear about the disease was destroying the remaining time she had left, he said.
Thanx for posting this! Very interesting.
This is wonderful and inspiring! I’m so glad that we can, as a society, put aside stigmas and social taboos to help much deserving people with this true cornerstone of a drug.
feels so good to tell the truth
isn’t it?
It could at first “enhance” their negatives, but if they’ve tripped as teens on 60s acid–the real thing, not known since– and managed it at peaking time ( about 6 hours in, after the body has shed excess water and waste products in a form of bionic metabolism that includes mucous the mind realizes while tripping is in the way of clear thought , and even the grease of a recent bologna sandwich consumption , which may pop through the skin as pimples- and becomes a body stream-lined for hallucination prowess, the tripper able to use it to be a wiser and better person the rest of their lives without it, ) they will likely control this (these) high(s) too, and go through beneficial feelings they’ve had before such as the one that we are all one.
However it also teaches you about your body, that all matter is in motion, and other scientific principles they only “knew” by rote memorization before so that losing that physicality might seem to them harmful to the continuation of their thoughts and self-awareness.This could produce utter panic.It’s hard to say.
I controlled some 20-24 trips between 1970 and 1979 in which by the time I peaked for 6-12 hours I was in a great place mentally /emotionally , but for example it certainly made seeing the movie “The Night of the Living Dead” for the first time traumatic, and this is a black-and-white movie without gratuitous blood and gore, its scare factor all from the dead coming out of their graves and then farmhouses the first dead found family sleeping in and killed, the latter distinguishable from the ones from graves by their hair curlers and pajamas and loose bathrobes. The fear came from the zombies’ mindlessness and of becoming mindless oneself as it looked so antithetical to intelligent.The zombies showed no attempt to control facial expressions to look their best, no observance of or awareness of anything around them or inside them–it was a frightful place for one’s mind to go, and exactly what made the tripping viewer ill at ease.Whether or not tripping while terminally ill would expand their “I am you and we are one and we are altogether” consciousness, they’d still have the “worms crawl in the worms crawl out they eat you up like sauerkraut” concept to wrestle with.