Category Archives: Entheogens/Psychedelics

Magic Mushroom Produces Short Term Benefits for Sufferers of OCD

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“Doc, I am ready to play ball.”

It had been years since Jeremy (not his real name) had touched a basketball.

Living with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Jeff feared contamination from dirt and germs which prevented any part of his body from touching the ground, save for the soles of his shoes.

But whilst taking part in a small clinical study to investigate the effects of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in ‘magic’ mushrooms, on people with OCD, Jeremy’s bare feet lay on the floor and he expressed a willingness to engage in an activity, playing with a ball, that just hours before he would have been considered abhorrent.

Although Jeremy’s symptoms gradually returned, other patients also experienced transient relief from their OCD symptoms and one entered an extended period of remission lasting more than six months.

Lead researcher Dr Francis Moreno, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona, Tucson, said: “I really think that participating in the study influenced the patient’s remission.”

It was the first to investigate the therapeutic benefits of psilocybin to be published for more than 30 years.

bbc
minkhacks follows up

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Ecstasy’s Brain Booster Ability Could Help Parkinson’s

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It could be a rave result for people with Parkinson’s. It seems that ecstasy boosts the number of dopamine-producing cells in the brain – the type that decline in those with the disease. Or so rat studies suggest.

Previous human studies have suggested that ecstasy is bad for the brain because it damages serotonin signalling neurons, which play a role in memory. When Jack Lipton of the University of Cincinnati and his colleagues gave pregnant rats the drug they found no signs of damage in newborn pups.

Instead, they saw a threefold rise in the number of dopamine producing cells. These cells were also more highly branched and developed than normal, suggesting they functioned better.

Similarly, when cultured embryonic dopamine cells were exposed to ecstasy, roughly three times as many cells survived. The effect didn’t vary much with increasing concentration, although particularly high doses did kill the brain cells.

NewScientist

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Application of Transcerebral, Weak Complex Magnetic Fields and Mystical Experiences: Are They Generated by Field-Induced DMT Release from the Pineal Organ?

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Summary:

During the last 15 years weak, complex magnetic fields have been applied across the two cerebral hemispheres at the level of the temporoparietal lobes of more than 500 volunteers. Most of these subjects have reported visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive sensations as well as experiences of detachments from the body of ‘sentient being’. Similar but more intense experiences were reported by Strassman in 2001 for volunteers who were injected with N,n-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a compound Stassman hypothesized as the primary mediator of these experiences. If this speculation is valid, then subjects who are exposed to a very weak, complex field known to elicit similar experiences should display significant increases in the metabolites of this compound within their blood.

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LSD Treatment For Alcoholism Gets A Second Chance

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For the past five years, Dr. Erika Dyck has been unearthing some intriguing facts related to a group of pioneering psychiatrists who worked in Saskatchewan, Canada in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Among other things, the University of Alberta history of medicine professor has found records of the psychiatrists’ research that indicate a single dose of the hallucinogenic drug LSD, provided in a clinical, nurturing environment, can be an effective treatment for alcoholism.

Her findings are published this month in the journal Social History of Medicine.

After perceiving similarities in the experiences of people on LSD and people going through delirium tremens, the psychiatrists undertook a series of experiments. They noted that delirium tremens, also know as DTs, often marked a “rock bottom” or turning point in the behavior of alcoholics, and they felt LSD may be able to trigger such a turnaround without engendering the painful physical effects associated with DTs.

As it turns out, they were largely correct.

Science Blog

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Drug’s Mystical Properties Confirmed

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Psilocybin, the active ingredient of “magic mushrooms,” expands the mind. After a thousand years of use, that’s now scientifically official.

The chemical promoted a mystical experience in two-thirds of people who took it for the first time, according to a new study. One-third rated a session with psilocybin as the “single most spiritually significant” experience of their lives. Another third put it in the top five.

The study, published online today in the journal Psychopharmacology, is the first randomized, controlled trial of a substance used for centuries in Mexico and Central America to produce mystical insights. Almost no research on a psychedelic drug in human subjects has been done in this country since the 1960s. It confirms what both shamans and hippies have long said—taking psilocybin is a scary, reality-bending and occasionally life-changing experience.

washington post

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Bicycle Day

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It was 63 years ago today that Albert Hofmann first deliberately ingested 250mcg of LSD-25. After beginning to feel the effects of the chemical, Dr. Hofmann and his assistant rode their bicycles to his house.

Here’s a short excerpt from “LSD: My Problem Child” in which Dr. Hofmann describes his experience:


4/19/43 16:20: 0.5 cc of 1/2 promil aqueous solution of diethylamide tartrate orally = 0.25 mg tartrate. Taken diluted with about 10 cc water. Tasteless.

17:00: Beginning dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh.

Supplement of 4/21: Home by bicycle.

From 18:00- ca. 20:00 most severe crisis.

Here the notes in my laboratory journal cease. I was able to write the last words only with great effort. By now it was already clear to me that LSD had been the cause of the remarkable experience of the previous Friday, for the altered perceptions were of the same type as before, only much more intense. I had to struggle to speak intelligibly. I asked my laboratory assistant, who was informed of the self-experiment, to escort me home. We went by bicycle, no automobile being available because of wartime restrictions on their use. On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me that we had traveled very rapidly. Finally, we arrived at home safe and sound, and I was just barely capable of asking my companion to summon our family doctor and request milk from the neighbors.

In celebration of this day, psychonauts across the globe will be taking LSD and riding their bicycles (hopefully in a safe spot). I recommend that our readers do the same.

A few LSD links:

Images, Video, Audio, and Text from the 2006 LSD Symposium
Hofmann Library Collection
Audio from the Acid Tests with the Grateful Dead from Internet Archive

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Lancet calls for LSD in labs

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“Use more psychedelic drugs,” is not advice you would expect from your GP, but that is the call from an influential US medical journal to researchers.

An editorial in the Lancet says that the “demonisation of psychedelic drugs as a social evil” has stifled vital medical research that would lead to a better understanding of the brain and better treatments for conditions such as depression.

The journal’s editor Richard Horton said he was not advocating recreational drug use, but championed the benefits of researchers studying the effects of drugs such as LSD and Ecstasy by using them themselves in the lab.

“The blanket ban on psychedelic drugs enforced in many countries continues to hinder safe and controlled investigation, in a medical environment, of their potential benefits,” said the editorial, ”...criminalisation of these agents has also led to an excessively cautious approach to further research into their therapeutic benefits.”

Dr Horton told Guardian Unlimited that important advances were made by researchers using psychedelic drugs on themselves, but that these studies were stifled by the post-1960s anti-drug backlash. “Our very earliest understanding of the neurochemistry of the brain came from studying LSD-like compounds. Those same researchers were also taking those drugs, not recreationally, but as experiments on themselves. This was immensely important work.”

Guardian Unlimited

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Problems After 40,000 Ecstasy Pills (Kouimtsidis 2005)

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Mr. A, 37 years old, used ecstasy between the ages of 21 and 30. For the first 2 years, he took 5 tablets every weekend, escalating to an average daily use of 3.5 tablets for the next 3 years, and further escalation to an average of 25 tablets daily over the next 4 years. An estimate of lifetime consumption yielded a total intake of more than 40,000 tablets. At the time of his presentation, Mr. A reported current cannabis consumption, together with a previous history of polydrug misuse (i.e., solvents, benzodiazepines, amphetamines, LSD, cocaine, heroin). After three episodes of “collapsing” at parties, Mr. A finally stopped his ecstasy use. For a few months, he felt as if he was still under the influence of ecstasy and suffered several episodes of “tunnel vision.” He eventually developed severe panic attacks, recurrent anxiety, depression, muscle rigidity (particularly at the neck and jaw levels), functional hallucinations, and paranoid ideation. His family and before-drug-use psychiatric history were negative. The Mini-Mental State Exam revealed disorientation to time, poor concentration, and short-term memory difficulties. Decrease in level of cannabis intake led both to disappearance of his paranoid ideas and hallucinations and reduction of his panic attacks, but remaining symptomatology persisted. Administration of the Wechsler Memory Scale (3rd Edition)3 suggested the existence of global memory-function impairment, with no subtest score being above the 10th percentile. Assessment of daily functioning skills identified major behavioral consequences of his memory loss (i.e., repeating activities several times). Although Mr. A was able to fully understand the instructions given, his concentration and attention were so impaired that he was unable to follow the sequence of the tasks required. A structural MRI brain scan revealed no focal cerebral lesions; specifically, both temporal lobes showed normal symmetrical hippocampal areas. The structural areas of the “Dealy-Brion” system were normal. There was no evidence to suggest atrophy. Mr. A was then prescribed olanzapine 10 mg and admitted to a brain-injury unit, where there was some improvement of his memory skills as a result of the use of compensatory strategies.

psychiatryonline

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Tune in, turn on . . . evolve?

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On the walls of dozens of caves in southern France and northern Spain lie some of the most majestic works of art ever painted. Drawn 25,000 to 40,000 years ago, the paintings have puzzled anthropologists since they were discovered more than four decades ago.

Where did this astonishing display of talent come from? Why did these prehistoric societies decide to paint these scenes in such remote locations? And what inspired them to paint the strange array of bisons, horses and therianthropes (part animal, part man)?

A scientific consensus of sorts has finally emerged on one of those questions: Although there are still dissenters, a majority of anthropologists now champion the theory that the paintings in Europe were the work of shamans, and in part the product of trance states, likely induced by psilocybin (the psychoactive ingredient in some species of mushrooms).

Similarly, South African anthropologist David Lewis-Williams maintains that the remarkable rock art of the San people of southern Africa, also painted at least 25,000 years ago, is the result of shamanic trances created by drumming and ritual ecstatic dancing.

In his new book, Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, published by Random House, British writer Graham Hancock has taken Prof. Lewis-Williams’s research as a point of departure to posit a theory as fascinating as it is provocative: If it’s true that cave art derives from altered states of consciousness, then it constitutes a watershed moment in human history, marking the first visible encounter with the supernatural, the first expression of spiritual myth.

globeandmail.com

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The New Alchemy by Alan Watts

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In every experiment with LSD one of the first effects I have noticed is a profound relaxation combined with an abandonment of purposes and goals, reminding me of the Taoist saying that “when purpose has been used to achieve purposelessness, the thing has been grasped.” I have felt, in other words, endowed with all the time in the world, free to look about me as if I were living in eternity without a single problem to be solved. It is just for this reason that the busy and purposeful actions of other people seem at this time to be so comic, for it becomes obvious that by setting themselves goals which are always in the future, in the “tomorrow which never comes,” they are missing entirely the point of being alive.

When, therefore, our selection of sense-impressions is not organized with respect to any particular purpose, all the surrounding details of the world must appear to be equally meaningful or equally meaningless. Logically, these are two ways of saying the same thing, but the overwhelming feeling of my own LSD experiences is that all aspects of the world become meaningful rather than meaningless. This is not to say that they acquire meaning in the sense of signs, by virtue of pointing to something else, but that all things appear to be their own point. Their simple existence, or better, their present formation, seems to be perfect, to be an end or fulfillment without any need for justification. Flowers do not bloom in order to produce seeds, nor are seeds germinated in order to bring forth flowers. Each stage of the process – seed, sprout, bud, flower, and fruit – may be regarded as the goal. A chicken is one egg’s way of producing others. In our normal experience something of the same kind takes place in music and the dance, where the point of the action is each moment of its unfolding and not just the temporal end of the performance.

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Dr. Rick Strassman Guest Blogs @ Non-Prophet

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N,N-dimethyltryptamine, abbreviated DMT or N,N-DMT, is a molecule with powerful psychedelic properties. From a chemical structure point of view, it is the simplest of known psychedelics, and is extremely common in the plant and animal kingdoms. DMT formation takes place in human brain, lung, and red blood cells. The gene that synthesizes DMT in humans has been isolated, cloned, and inserted into a virus. Cells in a test tube infected with this virus produce DMT.

We gave a small number of psychedelic drug-experienced, healthy human volunteers DMT in the early- to mid- 1990’s in order to better characterize the effect of this intriguing compound. These were government-approved studies performed with both federal, state, and private funds at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

DMT fairly reliably induced in our volunteers a profoundly altered state of consciousness in which took place a seeming separation of mind from body. Volunteers also reported experiences that share features with mystical and near-death states. Many described the sense of contact with beings variously described as sentient, with whom they communicated. A few described scenes from what they believed was the future; in other words, prophetic visions.
We stopped this research in 1995 for several reasons. They are too complicated to describe here, but I lay them out in detail in my book.

Non-Prophet

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Psychedelics and Religious Experience by Alan Watts

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The undoubted mystical and religious intent of most users of the psychedelics, even if some of these substances should be proved injurious to physical health, requires that their free and responsible use be exempt from legal restraint in any republic that maintains a constitutional separation of church and state. To the extent that mystical experience conforms with the tradition of genuine religious involvement, and to the extent that psychedelics induce that experience, users are entitled to some constitutional protection. Also, to the extent that research in the psychology of religion can utilize such drugs, students of the human mind must be free to use them. Under present laws, I, as an experienced student of the psychology of religion, can no longer pursue research in the field. This is a barbarous restriction of spiritual and intellectual freedom, suggesting that the legal system of the United States is, after all, in tacit alliance with the monarchical theory of the universe, and will, therefore, prohibit and persecute religious ideas and practices based on an organic and unitary vision of the universe.

Deoxy

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The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley

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It was in 1886 that the German pharmacologist, Louis Lewin, published the first systematic study of the cactus, to which his own name was subsequently given. Anhalonium lewinii was new to science. To primitive religion and the Indians of Mexico and the American Southwest it was a friend of immemorially long standing. Indeed, it was much more than a friend. In the words of one of the early Spanish visitors to the New World, “they eat a root which they call peyote, and which they venerate as though it were a deity.”

Why they should have venerated it as a deity became apparent when such eminent psychologists as Jaensch, Havelock Ellis and Weir Mitchell began their experiments with mescalin, the active principle of peyote. True, they stopped short at a point well this side of idolatry; but all concurred in assigning to mescalin a position among drugs of unique distinction. Administered in suitable doses, it changes the quality of consciousness more profoundly and yet is less toxic than any other substance in the pharmacologist’s repertory.

Mescalin research has been going on sporadically ever since the days of Lewin and Havelock Ellis. Chemists have not merely isolated the alkaloid; they have learned how to synthesize it, so that the supply no longer depends on the sparse and intermittent crop of a desert cactus. Alienists have dosed themselves with mescalin in the hope thereby of coming to a better, a first-hand, understanding of their patients’ mental processes. Working unfortunately upon too few subjects within too narrow a range of circumstances, psychologists have observed and catalogued some of the drug’s more striking effects. Neurologists and physiologists have found out something about the mechanism of its action upon the central nervous system. And at least one Professional philosopher has taken mescalin for the light it may throw on such ancient, unsolved riddles as the place of mind in nature and the relationship between brain and consciousness.

mescaline.com

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Study Finds No Psychological or Cognitive Deficits among Native Americans Who Use Peyote Regularly in Religious Settings

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Belmont, MA – Native Americans who use the hallucinogen peyote regularly in connection with religious ceremonies show no evidence of brain damage or psychological problems, report researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital.

In fact, members of the Navajo tribe who regularly use peyote actually scored significantly better on several measures of overall mental health than did subjects from the same tribe who were not members of the religious group and did not use the hallucinogen, according to a paper published in the Nov. 4 issue of Biological Psychiatry.

“We found no evidence that these Native Americans had residual neurocognitive problems. Despite lifelong participation in the peyote church, they performed just as well on mental tests as those who had never used peyote,’’ said the study’s first author John Halpern, MD, of McLean Hospital’s Biological Psychiatry Laboratory. The study was funded, in part, by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

McLean Hospital @ Harvard University

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Entheogenic Linkage

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The Psychedelic Salon has posted a new podcast, this one being a dialogue between Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham.

From the site: It isn’t often that we have the opportunity to see how accurate predictions about the future are, but this fascinating conversation between two of the great thinkers of our times has already proven to be right on target. The reason this may be of interest to you is that if they correctly predicted some things that have now happened, then we are really in for some big time excitement if some of their more far-out predictions come true.

Also, last night on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, the author Graham Hancock was interviewed. Although it’s mostly new-age nonsense, he echoes Terence Mckenna’s claim that our cognitive and linguistic capabilities were enhanced through the use of entheogens.

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