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LSD and brain cells

No, those three in vitro papers aren't inconclusive in the least. They quite clearly show that doses in the 10µM range kill brain cells in culture.

The in vivo evidence tents to suggest that large doses of THC causes histological changes in the brains of rats.
 
Well I don't know how much 10microM is - meaning, how much do you have to smoke for your brain to be exposed to that amount. But generally, when you hear about these experiments that such and such is carcinogenic or neurotoxic - they expose rats and mice to ungodly amounts of the chemical. Like splenda, or those other sweetners. No human would ever eat those qunitities of sweetner so the chances of getting cancer from sweetner is unlikely at best. So it wouldn't surprise me that that would be the case with THC as well.

Also, I couldn't get the first link to open. Might just be me though.
 
yes, 10µM is definatly more than a human is going to get. Though its hard to tell exactly. Follow the pharmacokinetics:

Its been shown that if you smoke a joint with 35mg of THC, you get a peak blood concentration of 150µg/L. Now mind, those are weak (~3%), 1gram joints. (1)

150µg/L is about 0.5µM. Now I think its reasonable that recreational users often take total dose of well more than that. If we say they smoked 2 of those aformentioned joints, they would get 1µM.

Now you can get a reasonable level of cell death (75%) with an hour of THC at 5µM. If you leave 1µM of THC on cells for 2 days, you get 75% cell death.(2)

The is obviously a concentration and time dependent effect. Now while I'm NOT suggesting that if you have a brain concentration of 1µM of THC for 2 days, 75% of your brain cells would die, it does show that these doses aren't stupidly high, and they are a reason to be cautious before you say "There is no evidence that cannabinoids are neurotoxic".

As the article linked to above showed, that doses of 10mg/kg THC in rats probably causes a change in neuronal structure. Now 10mg/kg is a preety big dose. Recreational users probably get around 0.5mg/kg on a big night, and I wouldn't be surprised if I've gotten up to 1mg/kg on the odd stupid occasion. So again, these doses aren't stupidly high.

I also might add, its possible that THC accumulates in the brain to a much higher extent than plasma concentrations would indicate(3), but then there also evidence that it doesn't (4). Theres also evidence that THC doesn't have the same pharmacokinetics as THC/CBD mixes, where CBD allows THC to permiate into the brain to reach concentrations 3x higher than THC alone (5). So we can't be that sure about what kinda brain concentrations people get when the smoke bud just from their plasma.
 
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Holy shit I didn't see those other 3 links... I guess I was in a hurry last time I was online. So yeah, the one report I read was the in-vivo study, which was fairly inconclusive, though it does make some good points.

I just checked out the three in-vitro links you posted, and the results are very interesting, to say the least. I only wish there were more information contained within. I'm reading it saying to myself, "Is this all there is? I want more proof, more details, more anything!"

Good stuff, Bilzor. Thanks.

Church
 
So can we agree that marijuana abuse can fuck your brain up or what??

Bilzor if u have any info on LSD brain damage like those other links that would be awesome and you would be a legend.
 
Yep, marijuana doesn't damage brain cells mate.

And also, LSD use has alot to do with your liver, i'm not sure about the damage, but the largest percentage of the drug goes to the liver and kidneys.

Alot is unknown about LSD, i'm sure there is some significant damage caused somewhere, but I once read(from erowid I think) that LSD is one of the least toxic substances around, even less so than aspirin.
 
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Novus Opiate said:
So can we agree that marijuana abuse can fuck your brain up or what??

Bilzor if u have any info on LSD brain damage like those other links that would be awesome and you would be a legend.
Click to expand...

My personal opinion is that heavy use for long periods of time, (like years and years) does cause some kind of 'damage' to your brain, but there isn't much evidence to back up that idea, apart from this study, and my personal experiences with really heavy cannabis smokers.

When it comes to LSD, there is no evidence that LSD kills brain cells in culture. But then again, I know people who have abused the hell out of mushrooms and they are crazy now; but one could argue you'd have to be crazy to begin with to abuse the hell out of mushrooms, so who really knows?
 
Novus Opiate said:
So can we agree that marijuana abuse can fuck your brain up or what??
Click to expand...

No, we can definitely not agree on that. I tend to pay more attention to real-life, actual evidence of stuff, which in this case is my own long-term marijuana usage. I have not had any problems associated with memory or cognition in my 10 years of consistent use. Not even any lung problems to speak of, from the smoke. So no, no one has proven anything about marijuana causing brain damage.

Bilzor did post some good sources regarding some research into the area, but they are isolated reports, and controls used in this research weren't iron-clad.

Sorry.

Church
 
Well I don't know isolated we can call it. Preety much every study that has looked at the histology of chronically treated rats has seen changes. Likewise, nearly all studies in the rat looking at the effect of chronic THC on behaviour have seen a changes.

The human stuff is mixed, but it is always hard to estabish causation and even correlations in human, post hoc exaiminations.
 
-=ReD-hAzE=- said:
LSD does no physical harm to the body, period.
Click to expand...

What is HPPD then? It's possible, though implausible, that HPPD is entirely psychological. More likely its the result of some sort of changes to the visual system, most of which seem irreversible (or at least only slowly reversible). What causes this?

That's a definition of damage if I ever saw one.

perhaps LSD is a 5-HT2 excitotoxin? I saw that argument floating around for a while... Can't remember how seriously people took it.
 
Well this is where people start to make the same usual mitake. HPPD is psychological. So are the hallucinations caused by LSD. But that doesn't mean they don't have a physiological correlate/cause.

I suspect HPPD and just people going weird from taking too many 5-HT2A agonists is just a mater of synaptic plasticity. Cells that fire together wire together. With all the abarant cell firing going on, cells that shouldn't be linked for "normal" physiological funtion get linked.
 
That still leaves the question of frequency to be answered -- why some people can acquire HPPD after a single dose, whereas others acquire it after large numbers of doses.
 
Well you can form a "memory" from a single occurrence. If synaptic plasticity is the answer, then you would have to guess it would just depend on whether the persons brain was in a plastic state. That could depend on a number of things, such as genetics, sleep state, dose and nature of hallucinogen....

There are also probably different kinds of HPPD, listening to peoples descriptions. Cause some people get something like a permanent trip, you know trials, fractals etc. While other people get really weird freaky, dark, indescribable shit. I think its interesting that people who report HPPD don't usual report cognitive hallucinations/thought disturbances that often.

Hmmm.... I know this is getting off topic, but what if its a focal disorder? Like stroke. People can get strokes and suffer wildly different symptoms depending on the location of the stroke. If you had people suffered from HPPD (i.e. pseudo-continuing action of hallucinogen) in specific places, then for instance, people who got HPPD in visual regions, would get a continuing visual trip. And that might explain why people don't tend to report cognitive HPPD, because those people get HPPD in areas more associated with planning/emotion (prefrontal cortex) are the kind of people I described above as "going weird".

That's just me making shit up though.
 
That's not really off-topic -- it relates to LSD and damage, whether to the cells or the biological structure as a whole.

What bothers me is the fact that after taking lots of hallucinogens people report grainy vision / "visual snow" (as its referred to). I'm curious as to what causes that...
 
Is that grainy vision in regards to HPPD or just post-trip. Cause I might know what they're talking about, in regards to post-trip.
 
Both. People who have used lots of hallucinogens report that their vision is permenantly grainy... they find it harder to see at night in dark-lit areas, and even in the day there's this colour snow present.
 
Hmmm.
There's really a distinct paucity of information on the role of 5-HT2 receptors in memory/synaptic plasticity. Theres a couple of papers looking at hippocampal LTP, but the biggest action of 5-HT2A receptors in the hippocampus is to excite GABAergic interneurons, which is completely different to what they get up to in the prefrontal cortex.

And people still haven't looked at what 5-HT2A receptor activation does in the visual cortex!
 
People research where there is money. There's no money (at present) in treating HPPD, so why research it?
 
Although I've had more psuedo-harm-reduction related research grants rejected in my 1 year as a research scientists as most people get rejected in a decade, I still don't neccasarily agree.

Most physiological research is only very lightly linked to a disease. You could put 5-HT2A and memory under the guise of schizophrenia research so easy. Thats what George Aghajanian has done for about 30 years when it comes to researching hallucinogens.

Sure private organizations only do research where there is money, but we never see most of that anyway. But in public institutions you can get away with a lot more. I mean, one guy in my department is doing his research on poppy-seed tea!
 
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