TUNE IN, TURN ON AND CHEER UP - Swiss Psychiatrist Fights Fear with LSD

[Purveyor]

A Swiss psychiatrist is treating severely ill patients with LSD to alleviate their fear of pain and death. Other psychedelic drugs are being tested on patients in the United States, Britain and Israel. Are psychotropic substances about to make a comeback in therapy?

Nothing's happening, Udo Schulz thought to himself with quiet regret. I must have been given the placebo. He was lying on a mattress in a brightly lit room, waiting for the first real drug experience of his life.

Schulz, 44, is German and suffers from cancer. He is also the first person in more than three decades who has been allowed to consume LSD legally in the context of a scientific study. The goal of the study is to determine whether lysergic acid diethylamide, the notorious drug of the hippy era, could be useful in the treatment of certain emotional disorders.

It was May 13, 2008, and it was quiet, as it usually is, in Solothurn, a small, picturesque Baroque town at the foot of the Jura Mountains in Switzerland. The Aare River, a tributary of the Rhine, flows at a more leisurely pace here than it does in the Swiss capital Bern, past Roman walls, the Krummer Turm ("Crooked Tower") and the imposing Cathedral of St. Ursus. There could hardly be a better spot for a study with such a potentially explosive impact on society than this inconspicuous little Swiss town.

The wall of the treatment room was decorated with a red tapestry, a gong, a drum and a portrait of a smiling Buddha. Peter Gasser, a psychiatrist, and fellow therapist Barbara Speich crouched next to the patient on thin foam rubber mats.

They sat there for at least half an hour, waiting. "Then I finally sensed that something was changing in my psyche," recalls Schulz. "Wow, it was fantastic!"

MORE...

SPIEGEL ONLINE: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,638080,00.html#ref=nlint

[RandomThoughts]

1. And when there was a big anti war movement in the 60s, You know, peace and love.

The CIA opened testing centers for LSD at 140+ college campuses, including distribution of LSD, and also helping to move the peace and love culture to a drug culture.

I personally believe mind altering chemicals are bad, and I am skeptical of any new distribution systems.

I believe I understand how it works, it widens the pipe between the conscious and sub conscious allowing things to be seen in more different contexts. However without a stable conscious mind to evaluate and sort the data, it becomes pretty bad, since their is a numbing of the rational state needed to think and feel on the larger data set. Although I have not done LSD, nor recommend it.

[givemebackmycountry]

2. I have.

Orange Sunshine, Blotter, and liquid acid - one drop on the tongue, wait an hour and your gone.
I don't know what the long term repercussions may be, but I've never had flashbacks or blackouts.

The strangest thing that ever happened to me while I was "tripping" was at THE WHO concert in Boulder, Colorado.
HUGE guy with long flowing hair walked up to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, got right in my face and said...
"YOU know what it's all about don't YOU?
Then he kissed me on the forehead and walked away.

It didn't scare me in the least.
One of the happiest moments in my life to be honest with you.

If he thought I knew what it was all about, who was I to argue?

[Born_A_Truman]

3. Ahhh Sunshine

Only took it once. At the drive-in watching "Five Easy Pieces" and realized that I had been watching the concession stand during most of it with the exception of the "sandwich" scene in the diner. :crazy: