Author: thepsychedelicscientist

Turning up the creativity dial

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Swirling colours, delirious patterns, groovy rhythms and otherworldly vistas. These are some of the first things that come to mind when we think about psychedelics. The unique fashion and culture of the 1960s was influenced by the popularity of psychedelic drugs like no other time in our history; the colours, patterns and hair-dos of that time stand out like a carnival in our recent timeline.

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Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles… the list of bands influenced by psychedelics could go on and on. Aldous Huxley’s works, still hugely influential to this day, are clearly inspired by his experiences with mescaline and LSD. Steve Jobs took LSD in college, and called it “one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life”. The inventor of PCR, a breakthrough biomolecular technique that has revolutionised medical research, said that LSD gave him the intuition that allowed him to make the ground-breaking discovery. Artists and architects, authors and entrepreneurs have been finding inspiration in LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and DMT for decades.

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The Consciousness Conduit

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The aptly-named ‘hard problem’ of consciousness: why do we experience? Why do we perceive colours and sounds? Why do we feel emotions?

On the surface, we can track the mechanical basis of all these sensations. We can look at a network of firing neurons and say, “there, that’s the perception of the colour red”. But we can’t explain how that links to our actual experience of the colour red. We currently have no neurobiological or physical explanation for how subjective experience results from complex systems of neurons.

robot brain

It seems as if there is no reason why subjective perception would have evolved in us. We just don’t need it. To escape a predator, I just need my brain to recognize a rustle in the bushes and make my legs move. To stop at a red light, I just need my neurons doing their jobs of recognizing the colour red, and pushing on the brake pedal. Where does my subjective perception of these events actually matter? On the surface, I am no different from a robot.

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Clubbing with Ecstasy

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Strobe lights, dense fog, thumping beats, crowded dance floor… and a whole lot of MDMA. It’s a typical clubbing experience.

Clubs devoted to the class-A drug ecstasy aren’t exactly a new concept. They’ve been around for decades. But this was my first encounter. Everyone was clearly there to get high; the dancers knew it, the DJ knew it, the bouncers knew it.

In some ways it was a bizarre experience. And it was a microcosm of our nonsensical drug laws.

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Ecstasy has been illegal since 1985, but it is a relatively harmless drug. There are risks associated with taking large amounts, taking it frequently or mixing it with other drugs, but compared to alcohol or tobacco these risks are low. Former head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Professor David Nutt, was fired for (truthfully) saying that taking ecstasy is less dangerous than horse riding.

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Avoiding bad trips

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“I felt my stomach drop upon the realization that all of my friends and family had always been simply creations of my own disturbed mentality, but even more so that I would be alone for all of eternity with only my thoughts to accompany me.”

“I feel parts of me go numb. I feel my heart start to give out but I pull it back to life. I am fighting to survive at this point, I have forgotten that I took a drug, I am alone in an eternal hell.”

“I became very restless because my mind was so incoherent. I wandered from bed to bed in the room, lying down and crawling into a foetal position in some attempt to make it stop. The trip was making every moment of existence complete and utter hell. I wanted to stop existing immediately in order to make it stop.”

These are all excerpts from various trip reports collected on the drug information website Erowid.org. They’re just a few of countless examples of people who have experienced the nasty side of psychedelics.

Psychedelics are extremely powerful drugs. Despite their enormous medical and spiritual potential (of which I’ve barely scratched the surface in this blog), they have the power to do harm when used irresponsibly.

bad trip

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Psychedelics and end-of-life anxiety

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Death is something we all have in common. Although we all think about death to different degrees and for different reasons, it’s something that ties us together. We can all empathise with a fear of death, even if most of us have not had to face it as starkly as others.

People suffering from life-threatening diseases have perhaps the most traumatic relationship with death. Knowing you have only months or weeks to live must produce an existential crisis of enormous intensity. In many patients, this can mean anxiety and depression 1, and can make the last part of their lives also one of the most distressing.

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Unsurprisingly, psychiatrists and therapists have turned to the classic psychedelics, including LSD and psilocybin, as a potential salve for end-of-life anxiety. Psychiatrists have known for half a century that these psychedelics can provide a new perspective on life, and result in meaningful and spiritual experiences. Early studies from the 60s and 70s suggested that psychedelics could reduce end-of-life anxiety, and help terminal cancer patients come to terms with their death.

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Why isn’t cycling illegal?

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Cycling enthusiasts are all over the place these days… donning their questionable lycra outfits at ungodly hours to fly through the standstill rush-hour traffic, saturating our cities with bright neon colours and flashing lights. Maybe some people don’t really get the appeal… but to many, cycling is fun, it makes them happy, and it benefits their lives in loads of ways.

It’s not without its risks of course, but so are many things in life. We get around those risks by wearing helmets, lights and fluorescent jackets. The government builds us cycle paths and spends money on education and awareness. Overall it’s a pretty good system; people understand the risks and work hard to minimise them. And people have a great time cycling.

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Let’s say the government becomes unhappy with the numbers of cycling-related injuries and deaths. They respond by increasing their campaigns of safety-awareness, introducing new regulations to keep cyclists safe on the roads, and build better, safer cycle paths. Maybe they even pedestrianise city centres! I think most people agree that this is a pretty rational reaction.

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Could LSD cure society’s problem with alcohol?

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Alcohol abuse is one of the biggest health problems in the EU. Alcohol is highly addictive, highly toxic, and does unrivalled damage to society. In men aged 16-54, alcohol is the number one killer in the UK 1. In 2012, the UK saw over a million hospital admissions due to alcohol. Alcohol abuse currently costs EU countries around €125 billion a year – over 1% of these countries’ GDPs. In 2010, Professor David Nutt and a panel of experts ranked alcohol as the most harmful drug in the country, in terms of both its harm to users and others 2. Alcohol addiction is powerful, dangerous and deadly.

alocoholism

Ironically, hope for treating alcoholism could lie in a drug that the UK Home Office regards as one of the most dangerous in existence; LSD. After its discovery as a psychedelic drug in the 1960s, LSD was used by therapists who thought its effects could help treat problems like depression and addiction 3. When LSD was classed as an illegal drug, its use in therapy dwindled, and research into its potentially healing properties was stifled.

Although LSD research is still possible today, it’s extremely expensive and highly restricted; costs increase tenfold compared to trials on unrestricted compounds, and jumping the necessary hurdles can take many years. Before LSD was made illegal, a considerable amount of research was published in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, when it was still easy to obtain and therapists were convinced of its medical value. Recently, two scientists decided to look back on six of these studies to see if there is really any merit in using LSD as a treatment for alcoholism 4.

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Therapy with Ecstasy; treating post-traumatic stress disorder

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Right now, millions of people are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) worldwide. Up to 10% of the population of the US will suffer from PTSD in their lifetime 1. PTSD can develop after any kind of trauma, most commonly sexual assault or combat experience. People with PTSD may find it hard to function normally, re-experiencing their trauma in frequent waking nightmares. It can lead to depression, drug abuse, and even suicide in many cases.

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PTSD is a real struggle for healthcare professionals to treat, with various therapeutic and drug-based approaches having limited benefit. Many PTSD patients are resistant to commonly used therapies, and may develop a chronic form of the disorder 1.

The stimulant drug Ecstasy, or MDMA, is most commonly known for its use as a party drug. But MDMA was originally used as a tool for psychotherapy in the 70s and 80s. Psychotherapists used MDMA to induce an easily controllable emotional state that enhanced communication with their patients 2. Use of MDMA in psychotherapy became a well-kept secret, with therapists constantly in fear that their miracle drug would be taken away by the DEA. Very little was published on MDMA around this time, but private correspondence was circulated around psychotherapists for years, hailing this new unique therapy drug.

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Salvinorin A: killing pain without addiction?

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Salvia divinorum is a unique psychoactive plant that has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries. But could its use go beyond the spiritual? Salvia has also been used traditionally as a painkiller at low doses, and recent research suggests that Salvinorin A, the main psychoactive compound in Salvia, may be the key to developing a non-addictive painkiller. Could this mystical plant really have medical potential?

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Salvia has been used in religious ceremonies for centuries in Mesoamerican culture

A common issue with modern painkillers is that they are often very addictive. Many effective painkillers, such as morphine or codeine, can lead to addiction with improper use. In America, more people die from prescription drug abuse than heroin. An ideal painkiller would relieve pain without causing addiction; this is where Salvia may come in useful.

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Classic psychedelics could open new doors in the treatment of depression

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Psychedelics have huge potential to benefit society in a number of ways – but perhaps the most immediate is the treatment of suffering. From psilocybin as a salve for end-of-life anxiety in cancer patients 1, to LSD as a potential treatment of alcoholism 2, psychedelics are increasingly showing their medical value. Recently, a group of investigators from UCL headed by Dr Robin Carhart-Harris and Professor David Nutt, have released a handful of studies investigating psychedelics, supported by the pioneering Beckley Foundation. All together, these studies support the idea that classic psychedelic drugs like psilocybin and LSD could lead to new treatments for depression.

Nutt Harris Fielding

Authors of the studies, Dr Carhart-Harris (left) and Professor Nutt (middle) with Beckley Foundation creator Amanda Fielding (right). Picture: Beckley Foundation.

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