Psychedelica worden eindelijk ook gebruikt tegen depressies en andere psychische aandoeningen

Het is
al lang bekend dat microdoseringen van bepaalde psychedelische
producten kunnen helpen tegen depressies en andere psychische
aandoeningen, terwijl in de VS juist een beweging ontstaat die alle
psychedelische drugs verboden willen houden…… Je had
waarschijnlijk wel begrepen dat hier een hele dikke lobby van de
farmaceutische maffia achter zit…..

Echter
de kans dat psychedelische drugs als cannabis* in de hele VS verboden zullen worden is te
verwaarlozen, zeker nu de staten die e.e.a. hebben vrijgegeven,
binnenlopen met de belastingen die worden geheven op die middelen…..

In de EU
is de wetenschap al langer bezig zaken als MDMA, de werkzame stof in XTC, te verwerken als microdosis, hetzelfde geldt voor
truffels en paddo’s met de werkzame stof psilocybine, waar voor beide middelen al mensen zijn overgestapt van
psychofarmaca op dit soort middelen (zoals gezegd met microdoseringen). Microdoseringen met 
psilocybine vergroten o.a. de creativiteit en empathie 

Uit begin 80er jaren van de vorige eeuw weet ik dat mensen experimenteerden met microdoseringen LSD, volgens de gebruikers destijds een probaat middel tegen depressies en psychoses.

Het volgende artikel over microdosering met ketamine in de hoofdrol (wordt gebruikt in VS ziekenhuizen), werd geschreven door Elias Marat en eerder geplaatst op The Mind Unleashed, door mij overgenomen van Anti-Media:

Psychedelic
Drugs Are Finally Being Used to Treat Depression in US Hospitals

Scientists
and psychiatrists are embracing psychedelic drugs as “game-changers”
in the fight to treat depression.

August
19, 2019 at 7:44 am

Written
by 
The
Mind Unleashed

(TMU) — As
the country increasingly sheds its prohibitionist stereotypes and
misconceptions about psychedelic drugs, scientists and psychiatrists
are increasingly embracing their potent qualities as “game-changers”
in the fight to treat mental health disorders.

The
new trend unfolding across the U.S. has converted drugs like
ketamine—once known primarily as a recreational drug used at raves
and underground concerts—into a powerful tool for mental health
professionals in the Midwest, 
according
to
 the Times
of Northwest Indiana.

Dr.
Joseph Fanelli, a psychiatrist who is the medical director for
behavioral health services at St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago,
told the
 Times:

It’s
a pretty exciting time that we’ve entered over the last few years.”

Continuing,
Fanelli noted that in the case of ketamine, researchers have found a
drug that kicks in almost immediately versus the weeks that
antidepressants take to make an impact. Ketamine treatment is “
one
of the most rapid, dramatic treatments we’ve had and been able to
use in a long time
,”
he noted.


Psychedelic Drugs Treat Depression

Ketamine
is a strong sedative and dissociative that has been used in the
veterinary and medical fields since the 1960s, but it has also been
known as a club drug for nearly just as long.

Numerous studies in
the recent past have shown how ketamine can be a powerful treatment
option for major depression. And in March, the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) 
announced the
approval of a ketamine-based nasal spray for treating depression that
was patented by Johnson & Johnson, as previously reported by
the 
Mind
Unleashed
.

The
drug, called 
esketamine,
has a slight chemical variation from the original substance and must
be administered in a doctor’s office under tight monitoring due to
the potential for hallucinations. However, Fanelli noted that any
such dose is far lower than the amount typically used on the streets.

Fanelli
noted:

The
effect patients get when treated with it is rarely anything like a
high …Patients might feel foggy-headed or lightheaded. The main
thing we watch them for is to make sure they’re fully alert, not
sedated.”

Many
of the patients leave his office saying things like “
Maybe
I felt something, I don’t know
,”
due to the fact that “
it’s
not really a pronounced effect

despite esketamine’s potency as an antidepressant. The drug is
being given in conjunction with oral antidepressants for those who
felt their previous antidepressants no longer offered relief or whose
effects wore off.

Fanelli
added that the treatment’s length and intensity depends on the
individual patient. He explained:Dr. D. Alam

Some
people have a course of ketamine of two or three times a week for
maybe two to four weeks, then they may be fine without the need for
anything else … Some people have to have it continued, once a week
or month; sometimes less often or more often.”

Dr.
Danesh Alam, medical director of behavioral health for Northwestern
Medicine Central DuPage Hospital in Illinois, said that ketamine
could one day become a “
first
line of intervention

for suicidal patients. He noted:

It’s
going to probably change the way we practice psychiatry and
medicine.”

Alam
warned that despite the FDA’s approval for esketamine, government
restrictions continue to make it difficult to research the
psychiatric benefits of psychedelic drugs, along with marijuana,
while other countries are able to conduct such research. He said:

 “It’s
hard to study (drugs) if you can’t do it with federal support.”

Indeed,
a growing body of research has laid out the benefits of psychedelic
drugs such as magic mushrooms. Recent
 studies have
shown how a microdose of psilocybin—far from the level needed for a
full-blown trip—actually increases the 
creativity
and empathy
 of
participants. Advocates note that psilocybin has also shown great
promise in 
psychotherapeutic settings.

Alam
sees the current moment as 
a
challenging and exciting time in our field: challenging because of
how society is affected by the opioid crisis, the suicide crisis, and
I’d add in the trauma crisis. The exciting part is new treatments
may help us treat the disorders associated with all of these
conditions.”

By Elias
Marat
 / Creative
Commons
 / The
Mind Unleashed
 / Report
a typo

======================================

* Cannabis, ook een psychedelisch middel, dat in diverse verwerkingen al wordt gebruikt tegen een groot aantal klachten, o.a. klachten bij ernstige aandoeningen als kanker.

LSD niet alleen als therapiemiddel maar ook om tot een betere wereld te komen

Het
gebruik van middelen als paddo’s, MDMA (ook wel ecstacy of XTC
genaamd), LSD en cannabis geniet al jaren veel belangstelling van wetenschappers, psychiaters, artsen en psychologen, bij psychiatrie
en de wetenschap is dat zelfs al vele decennia.

Steeds
meer aandoeningen worden toegevoegd aan de lange lijst van aandoeningen (zowel geestelijk als fysiek) die met succes kunnen worden behandeld met één van de voornoemde
psychedelica.

Zo
kunnen posttraumatische stressstoornissen positief worden behandeld
met MDMA, zaken als depressies en concentratiekampsyndroom (of
KZ-syndroom) kunnen succesvol met LSD worden behandeld en dat
cannabis o.a. kan worden gebruikt als pijnstiller is intussen redelijk algemeen bekend, echter cannabis kan ook helpen als middel bij
staar, een middel om ADHD’ers beter te laten functioneren en voor het
opwekken van eetlust bij kankerpatiënten.

Hieronder opgenomen een artikel over LSD van Vikram Zutshi, waarin hij o.a. schrijft over
het gebruik van LSD als middel om tot een betere wereld te komen, een
wereld waar de hersenspoeling door onderwijs, media en religie teniet
kan worden gedaan door nieuwe netwerken in de hersenen te ontwikkelen (middels het gebruik van LSD). Daarmee zal de mens i.p.v. tegen elkaar op te staan, eerder elkaar de hand reiken om samen te zorgen dat de wereld niet ten onder
gaat aan haat, afgunst, onverantwoord gebruik van grondstoffen en ga
nog maar even door.

Niet
voor niets ook dat vele overheden zich zo afzetten tegen het gebruik
van drugs als cannabis, paddo’s, LSD en XTC. Terwijl men alcohol
gewoon blijft accepteren en zelfs pissig wordt als je deze drug een
harddrug noemt, wat het wel degelijk is……… Veronderstel dat er dagelijks 12
mensen zouden overlijden aan het gebruik van XTC, het hek zou van de
dam zijn, terwijl dit bij alcohol de dagelijkse praktijk is….. (en
daar mag gewoon reclame voor worden gemaakt; vergeet voorts niet dat
alcohol fiks kankerverwekkend is!)

Lees
het volgend artikel en geeft het door, het is de hoogste tijd dat
het verzet tegen de genoemde drugs algemeen als contraproductief wordt gezien en erkend…… Dit verzet kost ons bovendien een enorm bedrag aan
politie-inzet en het voeren van rechtszaken…… Al is de
georganiseerde misdaad uiteraard wel blij met een repressief drugsbeleid, je kan verzet
tegen deze drugs dan ook rustig aanmerken als lobby voor de drugsmaffia! Zo kan men de prijzen verhogen door te wijzen op dat repressieve beleid, bovendien: pubers vinden alles wat verboden is op dat gebied uiterst interessant en zullen proberen als met alcohol deze drugs te verkrijgen…. (zoals je weet: waar een wil is is een weg….) 

In de tijd dat Nederland als enige een gedoogbeleid voerde, op in ieder geval softdrugs, waren de problemen met andere drugs verwaarloosbaar vergeleken met de ellende waar omliggende landen mee te maken hadden……

The
Political Significance of LSD: What You’re Not Being Told

June
6, 2018 at 9:36 pm

Written
by 
Open
Democracy

(OD Op-ed) — “Microdosing
on psychedelic substances like 
LSD—ingesting
just enough to heighten cognitive faculties, enhance creativity,
improve concentration and alleviate depression—is currently back in
vogue among people not normally associated with anything remotely
‘countercultural’ in the USA.

The
term 
psychedelic was
coined in 1958 by British psychiatrist 
Humphrey
Osmond
 and
is derived from the Greek words 
psyche (“soul,
mind”) and 
delein(“to
manifest”), hence “soul-manifesting,” the implication being
that psychedelics can access the soul and develop unused potentials
in the human mind. It’s a contention that’s gaining increased
acceptance in mainstream universities.

New
York University
,
for example, is hosting clinical trials using 
psilocybin to
treat alcohol addiction. The 
Multidisciplinary
Association for Psychedelic Studies
 (MAPS)
has been at the forefront of research in treating patients suffering
from chronic treatment-resistant PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder) with 
MDMA,
commonly known as ‘Ecstasy’. The Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) 
recently
designated
 its
MDMA-assisted psychotherapy project as a ‘breakthrough therapy.’
Apart from MDMA, MAPS also advocates the use
of 
Ayahuasca, Ibogaine and medical
marijuana
 for a
variety of conditions
 ranging
from bipolar syndrome and drug addiction to autism-related disorders,
ADHD and clinical depression.

The
therapeutic use of psychedelics isn’t new. Between 1953 and 1973,
the 
US
federal government funded over a hundred studies
 on
LSD with more than 1,700 subjects participating.

Psychedelics
were tested on convicts, substance abusers, people suffering from
chronic depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenics
and terminal cancer patients. LSD was also tested on artists and
scientists to explore its effects on creativity, and on divinity
students to examine spirituality from a neuroscientific perspective.
The empirical data gathered from these tests 
was
largely positive
.

LSD
“truly was an acid, dissolving almost everything with which it came
into contact, beginning with the hierarchies of the mind… and going
on from there to society’s various structures of authority” says
author 
Michael
Pollan
 in
his book 
How
To Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics. 
And
that’s what makes this subject 
socially
and politically
 interesting.

It
is curious to me that what I see as the two greatest
threats—environmental crisis and [political] tribalism—these
drugs directly address both those mindsets” 
Pollan
told the Guardian
 in
a recent interview. “They undermine our tendency to objectify
nature, to think of ourselves as separate from it. They undermine
tribalism in that people tend to emerge from these experiences
thinking that we are all more alike, all more connected.”

If
this is true, then those of us committed to social transformation
must start to take the use of psychedelics much more seriously. But
what’s the actual or potential connection between LSD and politics?

It
was a Swiss chemist called 
Albert
Hoffman 
who
discovered the drug by accident in 1938. While conducting research on
another pharmaceutical compound he absorbed the drug through his skin
and staggered home to lie down on his sofa, where, “in a dreamlike
state, with eyes closed”, he wrote later, “I perceived an
uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with
intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours.” Hoffman felt he had been
given the keys to unlocking the mysteries of the universe, “the
mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality.”

A
few decades later in August 1960, 
Timothy
Leary
,
a clinical psychologist from Harvard University, traveled to
Cuernavaca in Mexico and ingested 
psilocybin
(‘magic’) mushrooms
 for
the first time, an experience that radically altered the course of
his life. In 1965, 
Leary
commented
  that
he had “learned more about … (his) brain and its
possibilities…[and] more about psychology in the five hours after
taking these mushrooms than…in the preceding 15 years of studying
and doing research in psychology.” Leary became a lifelong
evangelist for the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics.

Theoretical
physicist 
Carlos
Rovelli
,
author of 
The
Order of Time
says
his romance with quantum theory and the mysteries of the space-time
continuum were sparked by his LSD trips as a student radical at the
University of Bologna. “It was an extraordinarily strong experience
that touched me also intellectually,” 
he
told the Guardian
.
“Among the strange phenomena was the sense of time stopping. Things
were happening in my mind but the clock was not going ahead; the flow
of time was not passing any more. It was a total subversion of the
structure of reality. How do I know that the usual perception is
right, and this is wrong?”

Rovelli
has spent the better part of his life grappling with the relationship
between space, time and consciousness, fundamental concepts that
underlie existence and how we simultaneously perceive the world and
shape it. “If I observe the microscopic state of things,” 
he
writes
,
“then the difference between past and future vanishes … in the
elementary grammar of things, there is no distinction between ‘cause’
and ‘effect.’” The concept of time, he says, “has lost layers
one after another, piece by piece.” We are left with “an empty
windswept landscape almost devoid of all trace of temporality…a
world stripped to its essence, glittering with an arid and troubling
beauty.”

Large
parts of the world are being polarized at a rate rarely seen before,
helped in no small measure by social media ‘filter bubbles’ and
algorithms that divide people sharply along the lines of nationality
or ideology, their underlying human connections rendered increasingly
irrelevant.

Perhaps
such deep hatred and suspicion of the other was always there, but now
it has taken center stage and is being used as a potent election
strategy by populist and hyper-nationalist leaders the world over.
Like herds of cattle, large numbers of people are being programmed
and deployed as pawns for a larger agenda.

Therefore,
perhaps real change begins with rewiring our perceptual framework.
Psychedelic substances have been ingested sacramentally by indigenous
cultures to achieve this goal since the dawn of time, and now they’re
being validated by the scientific and medical communities.

The
shifts in consciousness that can be brought about by psychedelics can
help in dissolving the man-made boundaries or fear of the other that
are implanted in our collective psyche.

While
Silicon Valley bio-hackers microdosing on LSD to enhance their
workplace performance may not be looking to bring about tectonic
shifts in collective consciousness, there’s no reason to restrict
the use of psychedelics to these groups and purposes. They could also
work as a potent catalyst to awaken humankind to the dangers of toxic
nationalism and rabid nativism that threaten to engulf us.

Op-ed
by 
Vikram
Zutshi
 / Creative
Commons
 / Open
Democracy
 / Report
a typo