Pubdate: Wed, 05 Apr 2006
Source: BBC News (UK Web)
Copyright: 2006 BBC
Website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Author: Katy Hickman, Producer, All in the Mind
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hallucinogens.htm (Hallucinogens)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME

Before 1960s' Flower Power, LSD was a medical wonder drug - a supposed
treatment for mental illness. Then it became outlawed and discredited.
But now a new generation is researching the medical benefits of
psychedelic drugs.

"You realise that your feelings are beginning to change. You have to
understand these drugs don't put things into your mind. You're very
aware and in a subtle way this drug begins to change your perception -
you're able to look at your same problem and feelings in a very
different way."

Pam Sakuda, 58, is dying of cancer. Last year she took part in a
controversial pilot project which uses psilocybin (pronounced
sil-o-cybin), which comes from magic mushrooms, to help patients cope
with the anxiety of being terminally ill.

"It became paralysing," she says of the stress caused by confronting
her mortality. "It came to the point where you feel that you don't
have anything left to do. And I was hoping in this study to be able to
get some relief from that."

Pam spent several days talking to the psychiatric team at Harbor-UCLA
Medical Centre in Los Angeles, before agreeing to the trial.

When using hallucinogenic drugs in a medical environment, volunteers
are subjected to a regime known as "set and setting" - knowing what
might happen, and feeling safe in one's environment.

The hospital room in Pam's case was specially decorated with beautiful
drapes and vases full of flowers. Pam lay down wearing eye shades and
listening to her favourite music, waiting for the drug to take effect.

"Physically you begin to feel a tingling warmth and a flush to your
head," she says. "It's physical but it's more than physical."

Psychiatrist Professor Charles Grob, who is leading the project, says
individuals "appear to have much diminished anxiety, improved mood
regulation and also more acceptance" of their condition.

Professor Grob believes the psilocybin, like LSD, gives an insight
into one's sub-conscious.

"Individuals can have very deep, very personally rewarding
experiences" he says. "[They] can have beautiful aesthetic
experiences, powerful autobiographic experiences, where they review
aspects of their lives. There's something about that experience that
seems to have an intrinsic capacity to heal."

Professor Grob's study is a small pilot - just eight volunteers. It
is, however, one of a number of new research projects into
psychedelics sanctioned over the last few years: psilocybin is being
studied for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; MDMA, more commonly known
as Ecstasy, is being used alongside psychotherapy for Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder (PTSD).

There's even a tentative step to get permission to use LSD for cluster
headaches - a debilitating condition that involves months of severe
migraines.

If it sounds familiar, that's because hallucinogenics - in particular
LSD - used to be the wonder drugs of psychiatry back in the 1950s and
60s - used to treat addiction, depression anxiety and other mental
illnesses.

But LSD soon became the drug of choice for hippies and those involved
in the 60s counter-culture, and was outlawed.

For Professor Grob, like many of this new generation of psychedelic
researchers, LSD remains their ultimate goal. He chose to work with
psilocybin because the mere mention of LSD still provokes extreme reactions.

"We could more easily glide under the radar and do our work without
attracting the negative attention that I think would happen with an
LSD study."

In Britain LSD was used widely in hospitals - Powick in Worcestershire
even had an LSD block. But ignorance about its powerful effects
resulted in some disturbing experiments.

Diane is one of many former patients who sued her health authority for
the harm she says LSD caused her.

A rape victim, she was treated with LSD because "they wanted me to
discuss it, and I couldn't... in those days you just didn't."

She remembers being given something to drink and then left in a
hospital room, not knowing what would happen. She suffers recurring
flashbacks of being smothered and huge crawling black spiders.

"I always have, I don't know whether they're nightmares or trips at
night which wake me up and I'm too frightened to go to sleep then,"
she says. "I'm just generally frightened of everything and everybody."

Diane now lives quietly with her full-time carer, but believes LSD is
a dangerous drug that doesn't deserve a second chance.

"There were terrible mistakes, terrible lapses in judgement of
individuals doing treatment," admits Professor Grob. "But I think
we're seeing more serious, sober, scientific medical investigators
getting interested in this area. There's a growing recognition that a
psychedelic experience can have a therapeutic profile which might be
extraordinary particularly in patient populations that do not respond
well to conventional treatments."

It's far too early to say whether psychedelics do have a role in
modern psychiatry. But Pam Sakuda is convinced her experience of
psilocybin has helped her face death.

"It was a dramatic difference from the morning to the afternoon," she
says. "I came to see that being so afraid and so negative about all
the things I wouldn't be able to do was really limiting the time I do
have left. I started to live fully and richly and intensely."

- - All in the Mind is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 1630 BST on Wednesday
5 April, or you can hear it through the BBC Radio Player.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake