Tripping into the future of medicine

Background

It all started back on November 16, 1938, when a swiss-born chemist named Mr Albert Hofmann made what was going to be commonly known as LSD. But he wouldn’t discover its psychedelic properties until mid-1943. He described this hallucination as:

“At home, I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with the intense, kaleidoscopic play of colours.”


-Albert Hofmann


This is what would then lead to an increase in research as many others found that because it reduced the effects of anxiety and then giving some users a relaxing state of mind. Taking off by the 1950’s LSD was then widely used in hospitals and clinics treating patients of psychosis and other mental illnesses. It was so widely recognised that by 1960 it was perceived that the drug would be able to enhance creativity, giving rise to research on more than 100 artists to see the true effects of this drug. By the end of the extensive research on LSD in the 1970s, there were over 1000 scientific papers written about it and 6 international conferences held about the drug. Then, by about 1980 all research on the drug ceased due to an increase in government protests because of growing fears that it was promoting felonious consumption.

What does it do?

As we’ve seen from the history of LSD and other psychedelic drugs, their hallucinogenic properties were perceived to help people with anxiety and other mental illnesses. This was because of the experience patients observed by the intake of a drug called psilocybin. It was found to help relieve emotional distress and reduce fear in certain things such as death.

A study conducted by Dr Anthony P. Bosis a PhD holder studying the effects of psilocybin was started to find out what the effects of hallucinogenic drugs were on the state of mind of “end of life patients”. Here’s a list of some of the things each of the patients he observed felt:

Patients felt unified, they felt as though they were encountering an ultimate reality, sense of sacredness, an experience beyond description, almost as if they are invisible.

He then went on to talk about how all these feelings were helped and are helping many patients with end of life distress and is showing the majority of patients with positive results.

He also found that many patients felt as though they were the disease, they felt unlucky and ungrateful, looked down upon themselves. But, many of the patients coming back and recalculating those thoughts and instead of looking down on themselves or feeling ungrateful, they think of their situation as a blessing. They see the situation they’re in with a much broader perspective.


“The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical”


-Albert Einstein


Other scientists found very similar results, take for example Dr Elizabeth Gilbert, a PhD holder in social psychology found that when patients received a single dose of any psychedelic drug they had decreased anxiety and depression. Some even quit substance abuse along with improving their well being for weeks on end. The great thing about this drug is that she found that there are minimal long-term side effects and little to no addiction risk.

Should hallucinogenic drugs be legalised?

From what we’ve seen in researches conducted by many different people there are many benefits to the drug. So, I decided to ask online what other people who take part in a drug community felt about the legalisation of hallucinogenic drugs. Here are some of the responses:


“They should be legal because ultimately it's the individual's choice what they want to put into their body. People make the case that on LSD you might suicide or harm someone else, but alcohol is much more likely to produce those reactions, and no one bats an eye to it. I'm sure no one would even attempt to drive while on LSD. I believe that psychedelics going mainstream would end up with less crime and with a better society in general. The reasons they are still banned is because they have the potential to change our whole society. When people take a psychedelic, they start to realize that spending 40+ of your best years waking early to work for someone else just to pay your house and your car and a thousand of stupid items you don't have time to use, or sustain a family you spend no time with, doesn't make any sense. People would start consuming less, working less, and doing shit they actually enjoy with people they love, and that obviously isn't good for the capitalistic class that currently holds all the power currently; they rely on us consuming mindlessly.”


-Torabor64


“NO. They should be used as a tool in therapy with a supervisor, and I'm pro hallucinogenics, but the unknown of benefits is not researched enough yet. I have done them, and have had great, mediocre and bad experiences which I have learned from, but one must take into account the possibility of taking them without enough information. They are unpredictable, which is why I'm making this argument. The reasoning for bans is a different topic, and I don't think they are altruistic at all. It’s just "we can't make money off this so let’s just lobby for them to be banned". You are saying "increasing understanding of the medical benefits of them" which is undeniable, but it’s in the infancy stage if you are relating to western medicine understanding. I have hope though, but I don't think it's justifiable to make them easily available just yet.”


-Wrobmaster


“Hallucinogenic drugs should absolutely be legal. They are far safer than alcohol or cigarettes and have far less potential for dependence. I think these drugs are illegal because people are uninformed and have biases against them, and because when the drugs were first criminalized, they were associated with the hippy movement and people who were against the Vietnam war - which of course the government didn't like. It was believed that weed and psychedelics opened people's minds and made people prefer 'love not war'. That's why I believe they were criminalized.”


-rachmaninoffkills

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