LSD used in fear therapy.

[Call Me Wesley]

Swiss Psychiatrist Fights Fear with LSD

By Samiha Shafy (DER SPIEGEL)

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?

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.

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1600039,00.jpg

Read full article here.

[Xicano]

1. That could go either way

LSD and other hallucinogens have the tendency to amplify one's consciousness state of mind. I think a better selection would be using MDMA.

[Call Me Wesley]

2. I'd personally prefer LSD over MDMA if I ever need to choose.

MDMA has a lot of side effects that LSD doesn't have. But, it's being tested within the same program:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA#Therapeutic_use

[Xicano]

6. I agree LSD is favorable vs MDMA for most reasons

Especially when comparing their LD50 vs effective dose. Its just as a drug for psychological therapy in the hands of a doctor, I think MDMA would work better.

For shamanic/spiritual experiences I think LSD, of course, would be far better and its LD50 is far safer. But for these usages, IMO, the best substances are DMT (in ayahuasca form) or psilocybin. While LSD might have a curve which lasts a bit longer than psilocybin and is a bit more flatter. Psilocybin, however, has the ability to get you higher, or a better description is to say it can take you further down the rabbit hole than LSD can. DMT will take you a bit further still.

Hopefully one day our country will grow up and stop treating these substances like they are the boogy man or something. These substances have been responsibly used all throughout the world for their mystical experiences for thousands of years. Its not until christians came along with their fear of everything did these things get outlawed and treated like as if they are criminal. Oh well what a bummer...

[MagickMuffin]

15. MAPS: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

is being allowed to use MDMA on troops suffering the PTSD.


http://www.maps.org/mdma/


Interesting Ralph Metzer was one of the interns Leary worked with in the prison program I posted about in post #9.

A lot of good info @ link.

[KittyWampus]

3. Similar results are yielded using meditational practices. But that's woo-woo to many DU'ers

Sigh

[Call Me Wesley]

4. You're talking to a Buddhist here.

And there's the problem, probably, that meditational practices are also woo-woo to most of these patients, and while medical treatment with LSD shows some effect in one sitting, meditation isn't something that comes to you really quick - it needs practice, and these patients don't have it. :hi:

[KittyWampus]

5. I was talking to a therapist yesterday and she mentioned "Willingness" and "Resistance".

So you have a very good point.

We are meditating constantly. Buddhists and Qabalists learn to meditate consciously and with intent. So you do have a very good point which is salient with what my friend and I discussed.

Unless a patient is Willing to explore, investigate and make choices they will be Resistant and throw up roadblocks to avoid areas they aren't ready to delve into.

So using meditational techniques takes time BUT in doing so, patients develop their own capacity to work things out for themselves on their own. They pick up techniques they can use on their own.

That said, using LSD does force the breaking down of barriers, but the patient hasn't built up any psychic "muscle".

[nightrain]

7. There's a "safer" approach called 'holotropic breathwork" which

was first used by psychiatrist Stan Groff, after he experimented with LSD and ?other drugs. The helpful factor in breathwork is that a person can stop the experience if they are having a "bad trip", unlike drugs. Still, it's not for the faint of heart or body.

[Call Me Wesley]

8. Interesting, thank you,

I'll have a look at Stanislav Grof's works. :hi:

[nightrain]

32. You're very welcome. There are many practitioners around the

world. The are cautions about the work--need to be pretty grounded, not troubled emotionally. And it is physically demanding.

[nightrain]

33. Oh, Grof did research at Johns Hopkins in the 50s with the dying and

some other groups of patients, then developed this non-drug approach which is much safer. He has several books. Good to have a really solid practitioner to accompany a person.

[truedelphi]

18. I love holotropic breathwork

Very interesting and satisfying. But like you say, not for the faint of heart.

[nightrain]

31. I've experienced breathwork several times, and during them I've

gone places inside that were just phenomenal. I've had experiences that were just incredibly wonderful and some that were scary in the moment, but very informative and expanded my whole view of consciousness. If I hadn't had these experiences, I wonder if I wouldn't have believed it possible that consciousness was so vast and deep.

[MagickMuffin]

9. Prisoners to Prophets by Timothy Leary

Leary was a pioneer in this field before he got fired from Harvard. Set, and Setting IS the KEY, to a good experience.


When Leary received the approval to use prison inmates for his experiment, one thing that proved very effective is Leary and his interns "tripped" with the prisoners. That is unheard of in the Psycho-analogy field.

Leary in his own words recalling his experience.

Beginning of article:

By spring we had given psychedelic drugs to over 200 subjects and had learned a lot about how to run sessions. Eighty-five percent of our subjects were reporting that the experience was the most educational of their lives. These testimonials were pleasing because most therapies, including psychoanalysis, traditionally reported around thirty-three percent positive change.

As scientists we were still dissatisfied. We were faced with the unavoidable problem in the field of psychiatry. How do you demonstrate that someone has improved? Self-appraisals are an important index but inconclusive; heroin addicts and born-again Christians claim to feel better but others might disagree. There didn't seem to be an objective way to keep score on life changes. Half of the people coached might have loosened up and half might have gotten their lives more tightly organized, and for any or all of them the changes might have been a genuine improvement. Half might have increased the intimacy and closeness of their marriages, and half might have left their spouses. Some might have benefited by making more money, some by making less. We needed clear statistical indices, like batting averages, for the game of life.

About this time a call came from two officials of the Massachusetts prison system, requesting that Harvard graduate-interns be assigned for research and training. They expected a quick turn-down. Just as prison guards were the bottom of the law-enforcement hierarchy, prison work was at that time the pits of psychology. Criminals simply didn't change.

Much to their surprise I invited the prison officials over for lunch at the Faculty Club. I welcomed the chance to get into a prison and initiate a volunteer rehabilitation program. I had two purposes in mind: first, if we could change the behavior of violent criminals with our drugs, we'd demonstrate that our methods and theories worked where nothing else did. Second, prison rehabilitation would provide us with the behavioral scientist's dream, an iron-clad objective index of improvement—the recidivism rate.

The return-rate in Massachusetts prisons was running seventy percent. I felt we could decimate that percentage. What a boon to society—converting violent criminals to law-abiding citizens! If we could teach the most unregenerate how to wash their own brains, then it would be a cinch to coach non-criminals to change their lives for the better.

A deal was made over lunch. I agreed to send Harvard graduate-interns into the prisons; the officials agreed to get clearances from the wardens and correctional psychiatrists for us to give drugs to convicts.

A week later I drove out to the prison. I wore my Ivy League tweed uniform. I even wore leather shoes for this occasion. Warden Tom Grennan, a fellow Irishman, was impressed and pleased. A Harvard psychologist had never come around before.

Next I had to get the approval of the prison psychiatrist. This could have meant trouble. Shrinks didn't usually like programs of head expansion, and medics liked to preserve their monopoly on drugs.

I walked nervously down the hallway to the metal cage that opened into a prison cellblock. Rang a bell. A slot opened. A guard looked out, nodded, and opened up a second metal door. I walked through the prison with a sense of foreboding. And precapitulation. I'd been here before and I'd be here again.


Snip: End of article


Psychologists were at first reluctant to apply the imprinting principle to human behavior, probably because of the challenge it posed to our notion of free will. However, the dramatic changes in behavior that followed our prison experiments seemed to be best explained by these concepts. The drugs appeared to suspend previous imprints of reality (in this case, the prison mentality) inducing a critical period during which new imprints could be made.

People tended to form powerful positive attachments to those present during a trip, sometimes following one another around like Lorenz's goslings. It was also true that I was becoming attached to those present during my sessions.

Even more important than the bonding was the re-imprinting of new belief systems and attitudes about others and society that occurred during the sessions. In a positive, supportive environment, new non-criminal realities were being imprinted. (And in some weird and ominous way, I may have been re-imprinting a prison mentality, a reality which I was forced to inhabit between 1970 and 1976.)

More @ link


http://www.psychedelic-library.org/leary1.htm

LSD is a better way of achieving higher planes of Consciousness. Even though meditation can be one way of obtaining bliss, but why walk when you can fly!


edit: added more bold text

[XOKCowboy]

11. You beat me to it and much more eloquently...

Set, Setting and Dosage is the key. LSD is a powerful drug that can be used in the proper conditions to treat many mental illnesses. Or so it seemed until the Feds shut down Leary and Alpert's studies.

[Call Me Wesley]

13. Peter Gasser uses 200 micrograms of LSD with the main group.

And it's about Set. Setting and Dosage:

Within the framework of the study, Gasser is permitted to treat 12 patients suffering from anxiety disorders as a result of a severe physical illness. Eight of them receive a capsule of 200 micrograms of LSD each, in two full-day sessions spaced several weeks apart. The remaining four patients, the control group, receive a dose of 20 micrograms, which is too small to have much of an effect. "With a substance like LSD, a placebo-controlled procedure is, of course, questionable," Gasser admits, noting that the patient quickly realizes what he or she has swallowed. But that is just the way things are done in medicament research, he says.

[Call Me Wesley]

12. I agree, you bring back some memories here.

And this was the time while the CIA used LSD as a 'truth-drug' on interrogations. If it helps people, I honestly consider it a crime against humanity to not use it (with all professional precautions, of course.)

[MagickMuffin]

21. Yep, the CIA used it on unsuspecting people NOT GOOD

When people don't even know what they are experiencing it CAN be dangerous. They not only used it on interrogations they were using it on mental patients who didn't have the right environment to cope with what was happening to them. The CIA did more damage then Leary ever did. Evil bastards!

[MagickMuffin]

22. OOPS, a dupe post

[JackBeck]

35. I educate others about Drug: Set and Setting when I do trainings on adherence to HIV meds.

There's a bias among many in the field of case management that drug use automatically equals loss of control.

When I deliver our training on adherence strategies, I always incorporate Leary's Set and Setting and talk about how in many cases, it isn't the drug that is the problem, it's the mindset and the setting that you find yourself in that contribute to using.

Thank you for posting this.

[XOKCowboy]

10. Dr. Timothy Leary wasn't the kook he was made out to be...

Before the hysteria over LSD he and Dr. Richard Alpert did studies on inmate recidivism rates with great results before being shut down by Harvard and the Feds.

[MagickMuffin]

19. I would have to agree with your statement, Leary WAS a Pioneer in this field

I think Ken Kesey and the Merry-Pranksters were a lot more responsible for the actions taken by the Feds, although Leary was more of the bogeyman because of the media and the danger Leary posed as being a Professional. Kesey flew under the radar. He also didn't think Leary's approach was the right direction. He WAS wrong.

I've never known anyone who took acid and thought they could fly. :shrug: I've often wondered if those stories were invented to frighten the masses. If so, it certainly worked.

[XOKCowboy]

23. It goes back to Set and Setting..

I saw a lot of my friends take acid and go to the fair or to a concert. Their mindset was PARTY and the setting was totally out of control. Many "freaked out" and it's no wonder. It's not really a recreational drug.

[MagickMuffin]

26. I think Set and Setting are the only way to go ;=D

although I have done both, I prefer the Set & Setting Environment the BEST. I've had some Most Excellent Mystical Experiences using Set & Setting. :blush:

[rollingrock]

14. Reminds me of this story on CNN

CNN: Ingesting magic mushrooms has long lasting positive effects.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RisxckQlzc

[bridgit]

16. Fear can be crippling, it's good to see someone trying to circumference it

^rec5 :kick:

[KittyWampus]

24. Did you mean circumvent it? Any way, circumference it is a great thought too!

[bridgit]

25. Understood, but yeah more like get our arms all the way around it...

:)

[anigbrowl]

28. yeah right lol

I love the lengths people go to in attempts to rationalize trivial mistakes on the internet.

[me b zola]

29. Why the personal attack?

She wasn't even speaking to you.

[anigbrowl]

30. Kejserens nye Klæder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes

[bridgit]

34. Oh no, "circumference", that is what it was: circumference, 1. the outer boundary...

...esp. of a circular area; perimeter: the circumference of a circle.
2. the length of such a boundary: a one-mile circumference.
3. the area within a bounding line: the vast circumference of his mind.

But thanks for using Google Maps :)

[anigbrowl]

37. It's the first time I've seen anyone attempt to use it as a verb...

...especially when 'circumvent' or 'encircle' already exist for that purpose :-p

[KittyWampus]

36. I am not a grammar or spelling Nazi, just thought it was a whimsical use of terminology

now please remove whatever is out of your ass and life will be much more pleasant all the way around.

[Xicano]

17. Terence McKenna

Two of my favorite audio lectures by Terence McKenna:


Tree of Knowledge: Parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

The Earth and its Double: 1


Just a little video fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-ubLKuE1HQ


:smoke:

[rucky]

20. Just stay away from the brown stuff.

It's bad.

[TalkingDog]

27. Ecstacy and PTSD

A couple of years ago I looked into this study. I was required to be on anti-depressants first for a set length of time.

I'm not depressed, but started them anyway.

After the 3rd or 4th day when I was walking down a city sidewalk and everything took on a "mystical importance" I realized I'd never be able to be on the anti-depressants long enough to qualify for the study.

Understanding that a brick building, a concrete sidewalk and a bartlett pear tree are all a part of "the wholeness that is" was not quite worth it either.