Pubdate: Sat, 26 Mar 2005
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2005 Calgary Herald
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/calgary/calgaryherald/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Sharon Kirkey, CanWest News Service
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n321/a05.html?40344
Cited: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies 
http://www.maps.org/

RESEARCHERS TESTING LSD SEEK PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT

The pain strikes without warning in the middle of the night, an explosive 
shot of pain on one side of Doug Wright's head that feels "like a red hot 
poker suddenly stuck through my eye."

He bolts from bed. He can't lie down, he can't sit still; he paces and 
moves, and if he can't abort the headache instantly by inhaling high-dose, 
high-flow oxygen from the tank he keeps in his house, he drops to his 
knees, screaming in agony. Twice he has blacked out from the pain.

Wright, who turns 49 this year, has suffered from cluster headaches for 30 
years. His are "episodic": three to five headaches per day, for eight to 10 
weeks duration at a time.

"One of the old terms, if you go into medical sites for cluster headaches, 
is 'suicide headaches.' "

Wright treats his using oxygen therapy and medicines that constrict the 
blood vessel walls in his head.

Psilocybin -- the key ingredient in "magic" mushrooms -- could be next.

"Let me state up front that I have not tried this treatment, yet, myself. 
It's illegal. The last thing I want is some person banging on my door, 
questioning what I'm doing, or what's going on," the Nanaimo, B.C., 
chiropractor says.

But as Harvard University doctors prepare to test the hallucinogenic 
fungus, as well as LSD, against cluster headaches, Wright hopes to be 
involved. "I'd like to participate, particularly if we can do it in a 
controlled, laboratory manner," he says.

Decades after another Harvard alumnus proselytized the healing powers of 
hallucinogens, research into psychedelic medicine is experiencing a 
reawakening.

But Timothy Leary wasn't advocating pain control: he pushed psychedelics as 
the path to enlightenment.

Today, hallucinogens are on a path to redemption, with a small group of 
researchers studying LSD, magic mushrooms, MDMA (the drug used to make 
ecstasy) and even ibogaine, a psychoactive derived from the root bark of an 
African plant, as treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, 
obsessive-compulsive behaviours, drug and alcohol addiction and anxiety and 
physical pain from terminal cancer.

"It may not be long before doctors are legally prescribing hallucinogens 
for the first time in decades," a recent article in New Scientist magazine 
predicted.

In addition to testing LSD and psilocybin for cluster headaches, 
researchers at Harvard University won U.S. Food and Drug Administration 
approval in December to test MDMA-assisted psychotherapy on eight people 
with advanced cancer.

Anecdotal and case reports suggest magic mushrooms or LSD may not only 
reduce pain from cluster headaches, but also stop the cycling course of 
attacks. According to Dr. John Halpern, an instructor in psychiatry at 
Harvard Medical School who is heading the LSD-psilocybin cluster headaches 
study, no conventional medications exist that can do that.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom