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Saturday, March 10, 2012

EGADS!


Gee, was Bill right all along? Picked this up from Time magazine's web site. It's not the complete article, but the rest is drivel about mushrooms and heroin. Just think, we can now tune in, turn on and drop out. Or something like that.


The psychedelic drug LSD can help people with alcoholism quit or cut back their drinking, according to a new analysis of data originally collected in the 1960s. The study adds to a renaissance of research interest in mind-expanding medications for psychiatric disorders.

Norwegian scientists conducted a meta-analysis, combining the results of six randomized trials that tested the effect of a single dose of LSD for alcoholism in 536 adults. Researchers found that 59% of participants who took acid either dramatically cut back their drinking or quit, compared with 38% of controls, who either took a much smaller dose of acid or used another drinking-prevention treatment. Only eight cases of adverse effects or “bad trips” were reported, none of them lasting longer than the high itself.

Earlier conclusions from the literature have suggested that LSD was not effective for alcoholism, but those results appear to e related to the fact that individual studies on the subject did not include enough participants to demonstrate significant differences between the groups.

“LSD had a significant beneficial effect on alcohol misuse at the first reported follow-up assessment,” write the authors of the new paper, published in the Journal of


Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/09/lsd-may-help-treat-alcoholism/#ixzz1olrkWUh2

Psychopharmacology. “The effectiveness of a single dose of LSD compares well with the effectiveness of daily naltrexone [reVia, Vivitrol] acamprosate [Campral], or disulfiram [Antabuse].” Those are the drugs currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat alcoholism.

MORE: ‘Magic Mushrooms’ Can Improve Psychological Health Long Term

The study found that the differences between LSD and control groups were statistically significant from two months to six months after treatment, but one year later, there was no longer a measurable improvement in those who had taken LSD. But given the persistence of alcoholism, it is perhaps more surprising that the effects of one dose of LSD lasted up to six months than it is that it would “wear off” a year later.

The treatment of alcoholism using LSD is not as unconventional as it may appear to the unitiated. In fact, AA co-founder Bill Wilson was an early advocate of acid treatment for alcohol abuse; unlike some of his followers, Wilson never believed that AA was the only way to deal with alcoholism. He took LSD himself, finding that the mind-expanding substance facilitated a similar spiritual state to the one that had helped him stop drinking in the first place. In his official AA biography, Pass It On, he’s quoted as saying:


Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/09/lsd-may-help-treat-alcoholism/#ixzz1olruYDNJ

It is a generally acknowledged fact in spiritual development that ego reduction makes the influx of God’s grace possible. … I consider LSD to be of some value to some people, and practically no damage to anyone. It will never take the place of any of the existing means by which we can reduce the ego, and keep it reduced.

Similarly, the rationale for the treatment regimen used in some of the early LSD trials was that the powerful drug would “break down” alcoholics’ egos and thereby create a spiritual awakening. This was not supposed to be a fun or mellow trip.

MORE: ‘Magic Mushrooms’ Trigger Lasting Personality Change

For example, in one of the trials included in the current analysis, the patients were actually strapped to their beds within a therapeutic community, a setting that typically involves extensive confrontation and humiliation aimed at revising their personalities. Research now shows, rather unsurprisingly, that trying to annihilate people emotionally is dangerous and can lead to long-term damage, even when it’s done without a powerful hallucinogen. Previous studies on LSD suggest that researchers may have underestimated the drug’s potential by using it as part of a counterproductive therapeutic strategy.


Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/09/lsd-may-help-treat-alcoholism/#ixzz1ols68Ous

12 comments:

  1. Lost my post. Damn it.

    Will have to chill for a bit and will comment.

    Thanks for the topic Joe.

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    Replies
    1. I put it up mostly for shits and giggles. I mean, what can one really say about this? Let's all go out and get stoned in the name of sobriety?

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  2. Good to know, if I start feeling uneasy in my sobriety particularly now that I no longer go to meetings, I'll just drop a tab, much easier than writing an inventory and making amends, plus the colors are fun.

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  3. Loved acid! Acid, Marlboro's and iced tea. :) I became alcohol and cocaine addicted latter in life. Again, if only the substances were the problem then abstaining from them would be the cure. But i could imagine that a dry alcoholic with no spiritual life could benefit from acid to remedy the restless, irritable, discontented state.

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  4. First medical marijuana and now this.

    It makes me wonder why the anti-aa's feel the need to argue when they're perfectly justified smoking pot and dropping acid if they would rather.

    It's kind of needy to insist on external justification for your life.

    Or is that just my brainwashed cult mind speaking........

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  5. Raise your hand if you've ever used drugs to try to moderate your drinking or to stay stopped... satisfy the obsession.

    I for one did. During those times I dont think I ever became an addict, though I was becoming a social weed user.

    I was very careful with my ingestion of acid, shrooms, and coke or crank... unless I was doing those along with drinking... then I merely used them to keep the drunk going.

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  6. There is and has been so much drug use among AA members that I (an old-fashioned alcoholic) feel really out of place in many or most groups.
    That's the way things are going, I guess. Out with the old and in with the new....
    Only a lunatic would prescribe or take LSD as a "cure" for alcoholism. I met the "father" of LSD, Dr. Timothy Leary at the University of Rochester when he gave a speech there in the early 80s. A good man who genuinely liked his audience of young people, but also a man who clearly showed the damage that acid can do.
    I don't think that there is any easy or quick cure for alcoholism. Just bite the bullet and hang on for dear life!
    Happy St. Pat's day to all you Irish, if I don't get back before then!

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  7. Thx Ralph. I get to celebrate Happy Saint Me Day by taking a work certification.

    Acid was a nice ride if you had 12 + hours to kill... preferably in the dark hours.

    The stuff dilates your pupils something fierce.

    When I had my first trip I was at a party minding my own business and some guy named Curt said stick out your tongue and he placed this tab on it and said have fun.

    The buzz didn't hit me for about 30 minutes. I started to feel a weird buzz and the party was ending so I got into my Monte Carlo and headed back to the apt were my parents and I lived.

    When I started to drive off, I felt fine... sort of sharp actually... and I turned on my stereo. I Forgot I had put new front speakers in and it tripped my head off. It sounded good. I took the long way home because I dreaded seeing my folks at 2 in the am.

    I get there... sneak in... and nobody's home!

    I GOT THE PAD TO MYSELF!

    So I goes to my room and crank up the Black Sabbath. Everything is mighty cool...except I look on the ceiling... and there's this huge wolf spider. I move right ... and it moves right. I move left... and it moves left.

    I think... I must just be trippin'. So I grab a sword from my wall... pull back the blade and aim it like a slingshot... and Thwang! I chopped that thing right in half.

    Great trip.

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  8. I know a secret, but let’s keep it here so as not to disturb any pure alcoholics.....alcohol IS a drug, it used to be illegal, but so many people were doing it that they made it legal and profit center for government.


    C

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  9. I'm of the school that it's more of a food than a drug.

    Alcohol started off as a very versatile substance and then for a short period in American history, it was made illegal via Prohibition... that didnt work because the stuff went underground and many were killed and the government lost their battle, caved or gave in, and made it legal again.

    Alcohol purists? Are you talking about recovered alcoholics in A.A. whom follow the traditions?

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    Replies
    1. I prefer the term kosher alcoholic. Never took illegal drugs, never smoked pot, never took legal drugs other than as prescribed (by my doctor). But alcohol? Oh yeah! Lots and lots of it.

      I remember back in my Navy days the seminars we had about illegal drugs and how to handle the problems with the new enlistees. How bad this stuff was and all that. Then it was off to Happy Hour.....

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