Lysergic acid diethylamide

Study Shows How LSD Mimics Infant’s Mind as Ego Dissolves.

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A groundbreaking series of experiments show how LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) alters the operation of the brain.  Scientists gave LSD to 20 healthy volunteers in a specialist research center and used cutting-edge brain scanning techniques to understand what happens once the LSD is ingested.

One significant finding of the experiments was that when volunteers took LSD, many parts of their brain contributed to visual processing, not just the visual cortex.  They could essentially see things that weren’t there, experiencing dreamlike hallucinations.

Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, who led the research, elaborated on this discovery:

“We observed brain changes under LSD that suggested our volunteers were ‘seeing with their eyes shut’ — albeit they were seeing things from their imagination rather than from the outside world. We saw that many more areas of the brain than normal were contributing to visual processing under LSD — even though the volunteers’ eyes were closed. Furthermore, the size of this effect correlated with volunteers’ ratings of complex, dreamlike visions. “

Dr. Carthart-Harris explained further that under LSD, people’s brain networks behave in a “unified” way, with specialized functions like vision, movement and hearing working without separation.

He said: ”Our results suggest that this effect underlies the profound altered state of consciousness that people often describe during an LSD experience. It is also related to what people sometimes call ‘ego-dissolution’, which means the normal sense of self is broken down and replaced by a sense of reconnection with themselves, others and the natural world. This experience is sometimes framed in a religious or spiritual way — and seems to be associated with improvements in well-being after the drug’s effects have subsided.”

lsd study

FIG. 1: Whole-brain cerebral blood flow maps for the placebo and LSD conditions, plus the difference map (cluster-corrected, P < 0.05; n = 15).

Interestingly, Dr. Carthart-Harris also said that the brain in the LSD state resembles the free and unconstrained brain of infancy, with its inherent hyper-emotionality and imaginative nature.  He added that “our brains become more constrained and compartmentalized as we develop from infancy into adulthood, and we may become more focused and rigid in our thinking as we mature.”

It’s noteworthy that the study was crowdfunded, raising almost $80,000 from individual donations. You can see their crowdfunding pitch which explains some of their approaches here:

Additional research from the same team showed for the first time that listening to music while on LSD trigged more information to be received from the parahippocampus, which is involved in mental imagery and personal memory.  The combination of music and LSD triggered complex visions in the subjects, such as evoking scenes from their lives.

The researchers hope that their findings will eventually lead to new therapies involving LSD, in particular directed at conditions with entrenched negative thought patterns such as depression or addiction.  The intention is to disrupt negative patterns by employing psychedelics.

“Scientists have waited 50 years for this moment — the revealing of how LSD alters our brain biology. For the first time we can really see what’s happening in the brain during the psychedelic state, and can better understand why LSD had such a profound impact on self-awareness in users and on music and art. This could have great implications for psychiatry, and helping patients overcome conditions such as depression,” said Professor David Nutt, the senior researcher on the study and Edmond J Safra Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.

Source:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

LSD Triggers Strong Activation Of Mind’s Semantic Networks, Study Finds

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Lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, is a synthetic drug that has been abused for its hallucinogenic properties since the 1960s. LSD can produce visual hallucinations and delusions that affect the consumer’s perception of time and identity. Usually sold as liquid or tablets, the drug is taken by mouth. It is colorless and odorless but has a slight bitter taste.

LSD can blur the line between the self and the environment, which is similar to what occurs in some psychiatric diseases. A study published in the journal Language, Cognition and Neuroscience investigated how LSD can affect speech and language.

Ten participants were asked to identify a sequence of pictures under the effect of LSD and a placebo, one week apart.

“Results showed that while LSD does not affect reaction times,” Neiloufar Family, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at University of Kaiserslautern in Germany, said in a statement, “people under LSD made more mistakes that were similar in meaning to the pictures they saw.”

This means that when people saw a picture of a car when under the influence of LSD, they would incorrectly identify it as a bus or a train suggesting that the drug may affect the mind’s semantic networks. LSD triggered a strong activation of these networks, the study found, bringing to the mind more words that come under the same family of meaning.

The findings of this study could also help in understanding the neurological basis of these semantic networks.

“These findings are relevant for the renewed exploration of psychedelic psychotherapy, which are being developed for depression and other mental illnesses. The effects of LSD on language can result in a cascade of associations that allow quicker access to far away concepts stored in the mind,” Family said.

“Inducing a hyper-associative state may have implications for the enhancement of creativity,” she added. The strong activation of semantic networks can result in even subconscious thoughts coming up to the surface.

Psychedelic Drugs No Risk to Mental Health, Possibly Beneficial.

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Using classic psychedelic drugs does not raise the risk for mental health problems; on the contrary, it may offer some protection, new research suggests.

Among 130,152 representative US adults, including 21,967 reported psychedelic drug users, researchers found no significant link between lifetime use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, mescaline, or peyote and an increased rate of mental health problems.

Rather, in several cases, psychedelic drug use was associated with a lower rate of mental health problems, Teri S. Krebs, PhD, and Pål-Ørjan Johansen, PhD, of the Department of Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, report.

The findings were published online August 19 in PLoS One.

Lower Rates of Distress

“We were not particularly surprised. Overall, there is a lack of evidence that psychedelics cause lasting mental health problems,” Dr. Krebs told Medscape Medical News.

More than 30 million Americans have used LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline at some time in their lives. Some case reports of mental illness in people who had used psychedelics fueled some concern of a link. But there are “many potential biases of relying on individual anecdotes,” Dr. Krebs said. “In particular, mental illness is rather common, and symptoms often appear in the early 20s, which is the same time that people often first use psychedelics.”

In the current population study, after adjusting for other risk factors, there was no link between psychedelic drug use and a range of mental health outcomes, including serious psychologic distress, mental health treatment, symptoms of 8 psychiatric disorders (panic disorder, major depressive episode, mania, social phobia, general anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, posttraumatic stress disorder, and nonaffective psychosis), and 7 specific symptoms of nonaffective psychosis.

In fact, lifetime use of psilocybin or mescaline and past-year use of LSD were associated with lower rates of serious psychologic distress. Lifetime use of LSD was also significantly associated with a lower rate of outpatient mental health treatment and psychiatric medicine prescription.

“We cannot exclude the possibility that use of psychedelics might have a negative effect on mental health for some individuals or groups, perhaps counterbalanced at a population level by a positive effect on mental health in others,” the authors note. Nevertheless, “recent clinical trials have also failed to find any evidence of any lasting harmful effects of psychedelics.”

Less Harmful

“This is an important analysis,” Matthew W. Johnson, PhD, of the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, Maryland, who was not involved in the study, told Medscape Medical News.

“Although there is evidence suggesting beneficial effects of psychedelics in well-controlled clinical research, that does not address the occurrence of psychiatric adverse effects in the population. It is very interesting to know that these drugs are not associated with adverse mental health outcomes at the population level,” Dr. Johnson said.

“However, as the authors note, it is certainly possible that individual recreational users experience harms. This analysis would just suggest that this may be limited in scope, and possibly offset by some individuals also receiving benefit at the population level,” he added.

This study “chimes very much with what we know already about psychedelics — that they are essentially much less harmful than other illicit substances,” Mark Bolstridge, BSc, MRCPsych, Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology, Imperial College London, United Kingdom, told Medscape Medical News.

“Having personally worked in mental health and trained in psychiatry, I am yet to see any individual suffering from significant mental health problems as a result of using psychedelics. Alcohol, amphetamines, and cannabis, yes, but never psychedelics,” said Dr. Bolstridge, who was not involved in the study.

Dr. Krebs noted that “psychedelics interact with a specific type of serotonin receptor in the brain and may stimulate the formation of new connections and patterns. They generally seem to open an individual to an awareness of new perspectives and opportunities for action. People often report deeply personally and spiritually meaningful experiences with psychedelics,” she said.

Researchers at Imperial College London have found that healthy adults recall memories much more vividly while under the influence of psilocybin, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data reveal a neurobiological basis for this effect, as reported by Medscape Medical News.

Their research also shows that psilocybin has potential in the treatment of depression, anxiety, and possibly cluster headaches.

Debunking Myths

“We know categorically that psychedelics taken in a controlled clinical environment with appropriate support almost certainly never lead to any recurring or enduring mental health problems,” Dr. Bolstridge said.

“All in all, I think the [new] paper is an important addition to the scientific literature, and it can only help in dispelling the myths surrounding these much maligned substances and in reinforcing the case for continued investigations into how these fascinating compounds work in the brain,” Dr. Bolstridge said.

“In particular, [it can help in] attempting to determine whether they can prove effective in helping those patients incapacitated by ongoing mental health problems and who are little helped by conventional psychiatric treatments,” he added.

Dr. Krebs said clinical trials looking at the potential benefits of psilocybin in alcoholism and smoking cessation are also under way. Last year, she and Dr. Johansen published a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of LSD in alcoholism, which provided evidence for a beneficial effect of LSD for treating alcohol dependency.

Source: medscape.com

 

LSD could help alcoholics stop drinking, AA founder believed.

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Author reveals Bill Wilson‘s acid theory, but his experiments upset other Alcoholics Anonymous members.

The co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) believed LSD could be used to cure alcoholics and credited the drug with helping his own recovery from often debilitating depression, according to new research.

About 20 years after setting up the Ohio-based sobriety movement in 1935, Bill Wilson came to believe that LSD could help “cynical alcoholics” achieve a “spiritual awakening” and start on the path to recovery.

The discovery that Wilson considered using the drug as an aid to recovery for addicts was made by Don Lattin, author of a book to be published in October by the University of California Press, entitled Distilled Spirits.

Lattin found letters and documents revealing that Wilson at first struggled with the idea that one drug could be used to overcome addiction to another. LSD, which was first synthesised in 1938, is a non-addictive drug that alters thought processes and can inspire spiritual experiences. Wilson thought initially the substance could help others understand the alcohol-induced hallucinations experienced by addicts, and that it might terrify drinkers into changing their ways.

But after his first acid trip, at the Veterans Administration (VA) hospital in Los Angeles on 29 August 1956, Wilson began to believe it was insight, not terror, that could help alcoholics recover.

LSD, by mimicking insanity, could help alcoholics achieve a central tenet of the Twelve Step programme proposed by AA, he believed. It was a matter of finding “a power greater than ourselves” that “could restore us to sanity”. He warned: “I don’t believe [LSD] has any miraculous property of transforming spiritually and emotionally sick people into healthy ones overnight. It can set up a shining goal on the positive side, after all it is only a temporary ego-reducer.”

But Wilson added: “The vision and insights given by LSD could create a large incentive – at least in a considerable number of people.”

His words were found in a late 50s letter to Father Ed Dowling, a Catholic priest and member of an experimental group he had formed in New York to explore the spiritual potential of LSD.

Wilson is known to have taken LSD in supervised experiments in the 1950s with Betty Eisner, an American psychologist known for pioneering use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs as adjuncts to psychotherapy, and Sidney Cohen, a psychiatrist in Los Angeles.

Wilson also discussed, in great detail, taking LSD with the author Aldous Huxley, and it is likely, though not proven, that the pair experimented with the drug together.

“I am certain that the LSD experiment has helped me very much,” Wilson wrote in a 1957 letter to the science writer and philosopher Gerald Heard. “I find myself with a heightened colour perception and an appreciation of beauty almost destroyed by my years of depressions.”

In a talk given in 1976, Humphry Osmond, the British psychiatrist who coined the word “psychedelic”, said he told Wilson in 1956 “that [LSD] was good news”.

Osmond said: “But [Wilson] was far from pleased with the idea of alcoholics being assailed by some strange chemical. Later on Bill got extremely interested and … he likened his LSD experience to his earlier vision of seeing this chain of drunks around the world, all helping each other. This caused various scandals in AA. They were very ambivalent about their great founder taking LSD, yet they wouldn’t have existed if he hadn’t been of an adventurous kind of mind.”

Lattin also found letters in which Eisner described Wilson’s thoughts when attending the VA hospital in 1956 to take LSD in a controlled experiment with herself, Cohen and Wilson’s wife, Lois. “Alcoholics Anonymous was actually considering using LSD,” Eisner wrote. “Alcoholics get to a point in the [programme] where they need a spiritual experience but not all of them are able to have one.”

In a letter to Heard in September 1956, shortly after his first LSD experience, Wilson admitted he was appreciating the drug’s value. “I do feel a residue of assurance and a feeling of enhanced beauty that seems likely to stay by me.”

A few months on Wilson was yet more positive about the long-term benefits. “More and more it appears to me that the experience has done a sustained good,” he wrote to Heard on 4  December 1956. “My reactions to things totally, and in particular, have very definitely improved for no other reason that I can see.”

Lattin said Wilson was “so intrigued by the spiritual potential of LSD”he formed the experimental group that included Dowling, and Eugene Exman, Harper’s religious book editor. Wilson, however, remained sensitive to the controversy of his experiments. In a letter to Cohen, written between 1956 and 1961, he reported hearing gossip about his LSD use in AA circles. He reminded Cohen about “the desirability” of omitting his name “when discussing LSD with AAs”. Cohen reassured Wilson that his LSD trials did not include other active AA members.

In 1958 Wilson defended his drug use in a long letter but soon afterwards removed himself from the AA governing body to be free to do his experiments.

According to the anonymous author of his official biography, Wilson felt LSD “helped him eliminate many barriers erected by the self, or ego, that stand in the way of one’s direct experiences of the cosmos and of god”. He “thought he might have found something that could make a big difference to the lives of many who still suffered”.

But, according to Pass It On, published in 1984 by AA World Services in New York, the movement was totally against his suggestions. “As word of Bill’s activities reached the fellowship there were inevitable repercussions. Most AAs were violently opposed to his experimenting with a mind-altering substance. LSD was then totally unfamiliar, poorly researched, and entirely experimental – and Bill was taking it.”

Source: the Guardian.