Psychiatrists: Do you think that LSD has genuine therapeutic value?!
Question: I read in an article that the Swiss were going to be opening up human studies into the therapeutic value of LSD once again. I also read that the reason that these studies were shut down in the first place was because LSD got out of the hands of qualified professionals and onto the streets, where it subsequentially became the scourge of the 1960's.
As unbiased medical professionals who have knowledge and experience in this area, what do you think? Why?
Answers: I read in an article that the Swiss were going to be opening up human studies into the therapeutic value of LSD once again. I also read that the reason that these studies were shut down in the first place was because LSD got out of the hands of qualified professionals and onto the streets, where it subsequentially became the scourge of the 1960's.
As unbiased medical professionals who have knowledge and experience in this area, what do you think? Why?
You need to take yourself to the nearest medical school library as mosts psychiatrists (they are medical doctors) work too long of hours to be killing time on Y/A and they are ethically prohibited from providing treatment in forums such as Y/A. Even though your question arguably is not asking for treatment, as a medical professional, the person cannot assess your mental status, etc., and determine your motivation for asking such a question and they are entering a legal minefield should they answer a question such as yours, particularly if thereafter something dreadful happened that someone could then try to blame on the psychiatrist. Even if such a lawsuit could not be won, it would cost the doc tons of money and time to defend against such as baseless suit. So, get to the local med school library & do reasearch the real way. If you are a student, you may have access to academic databases online through your university and there are some (very few) medical and academic resources available online. But generally, the real research is through university databases that are not available to the general public. However, most university libraries will allow the public limited access to their materials. You may not be able to check books out, but you can read articles, use inter library loans services (maybe) and copy articles & sit in the library all day and read your heart out.
Are you asking because you are tripping?
LSD hasn't value when it comes to the 1950's and trying to 'cure' homosexuals.
Also i love Acid. it's almost as good as mushrooms.
I'm not a psychiatrist, but I seriously doubt that LSD has any therapeutic value. As a paramedic, I've picked up my share of people who were having "a bad trip" on LSD, and it wasn't fun I can tell you.
not much on the street right now is anything like LsD, first off.
but yes, huge therapeutic value. redirecting efforts and relearning how to feel, think, and experience sound like great therapy no matter what the problem. it creates new imprints on the brain that naturally stop occurring somewhere around 12 yrs in the average person. new imprints means that behavior can accually be re learned completly instead of the current process of nullify and nuetralize symptoms alone.
a trip would have to be super planned, though. in a medical building (unless your experienced, then you can get an at home referral) and virtually anything can be taught and understood (the word understanding takes on a new meaning) through a series of processes involving LsD.
People can discard unhealthy behavioral habits some much more permanently...
I am not a medical professional, and nobody is unbiased.
I do believe that LSD may have potential as a therapeutic agent, however using LSD for therapy is a very different thing to people taking LSD to get high. I believe that psilocin and psilocybin also warrant investigation in this respect, in a properly regulated clinical trial.
Hopefully this research in Switzerland will shed some light on the matter.
Most of what has been sold as LSD for the last 15years is not LSD, and some of the substances sold as LSD are outright neurotoxic, so outside of a professional setting, with pharmaceutical grade LSD, I'd say it has almost zero potential as a therapeutic agent.
EDIT : To the person above who mentioned treating 'LSD overdoses' - you can take 15,000 times the typical dose of LSD and you will not overdose. You will experience total depersonalisation, and you will be out of it for many hours, but your vital signs will be relatively normal! Medically you are safe, other than maybe the memories of a very bad, scary trip.
People certainly do buy what they are told is LSD, and overdose, and sometimes die on it, but it is not LSD they have taken.
On a related topic, there were studies approved a few years ago in the USA for use of MDMA in contolled clinical trials for treatment of post traumatic stress disorder, and maybe a couple of other conditions, I don't recall. The results of these should have been published by now, but I haven't combed through the medical journals for them yet.
i am not a psychiatrist , but i worked in a large mental health facility, including a drug rehad program, in Canada, in the height of the drug area, in the 60 s and 70 s. inspite of a lot of people getting bad trips, very few were admitted to a hospital because of acid. a lot more were admitted because of alcohol, and heroin. a lot of my friends took LSD, . LSD will sometimes sublimate mental illness symptom's. increased paranoia, some hallucinations, anxiety, and some obsessive behavior, depending on the person, and their surroundings. it is also possible that a great deal of LSD, can lead to a psychotic breakdown. for the most part my friends who took a lot, eventually gave it up with not a lot of severe effects. it is now believed that most major mental illness is organic , and genetic, with no cure. it was also believed if LSD can sublimate a mental illness symptoms in a person without mental illness , that it may alleviate the symptoms of mental illnesss, if a person with mental illnes was given LSD. this is just theory, but it may be possible. hope this helps your question.
LSD before it was made illegal was shown to have plenty of medicinal uses before it was hijacked by the underground. Take alcoholism for example, AA has normally a 10% long lasting cure rate, while in the 50's studies done showed using LSD to treat alcoholism had a near 50% success rate. It's not just LSD, before ecstasy was made illegal therapist were calling it a wonder drug for couples being able to do in 5 hours what normally took months of therapy.