Olney's Lesions - An Examination of the Article

[Cokeboy]

Every now and then, somebody brings up the spectre of "Olney's Lesions". Invariably they are referring to the article "This is Your Brain on Dissociatives: The Bad News Is Finally In".
The article can be found here:here
The article is poorly written, unscientific, occasionally erroneous, and completely discardable.

I've been studying the brain for several years now
Note that William White is not claiming to be a doctor, nor does he offer any qualifications of any kind. The quote above is from "Why I'm Telling You This: My Background". Well, I've been studying moon missions for several years now. Does that make me an astronaut?

However, several things have happened recently which have led me to conclude that Olney's lesions apply to humans at recreational doses. First, I've received reports from many hundreds of users of DXM, some of whom have used it heavily and been clearly harmed.
User-submitted reports, no control group, no measurements, no studies, no way of telling if these are poly-drug users - if this were a trial it'd be laughed out of court.

Third, reports of ketamine-related brain damage have started to show up.
From where? E-mail?

Nobody has ever seen Olney's lesions in a human brain.
At last - a germ of reality.
Read the article in it's entirety, with a critical eye. He loses me at several points in the science (I'm not a doctor, but I don't pretend to be), but the article makes unsubstantiated leaps, and uses false logic - and has the audacity to call itself "The Bad News Is Finally In" - as if there are definite answers contained inside.
Finally, Dr. Karl Jansen had this to say when asked about this very article:

I am certain that DXM does not cause Olney's lesions in humans or monkeys. The reasoning is the same as that set out for ketamine in my book Ketamine: Dreams and Realities, and I would refer persons who are interested in the exact details of the argument, and a substantial number of references, to this book.
Best wishes
Karl Jansen MD, PhD.
And from his book:

"The failure to produce toxic changes in monkeys is probably one reason why the Federal Drug Administration did not remove Ketalar from the market,"
I do not recommend usage of drugs without research and knowledge. I am the first to say one should pay attention to the health data available. However, I am also against bad science, the spread of misinformation, and the use of scare tactics in general. This article is terrible.
[ 04 April 2002: Message edited by: Cokeboy ]

 

[I'm On Drugs]

good dissection.

 

[mll]

Amen cokeboy. Excellent post.

 

[ikarus]

Werd to this.

 

[MoFo_S]

Ok... I agree that most people worry about Olney's Lesions far too much. But come on now...
This is William White we're talking about!
I would doubt if anyone on the planet has more total knowledge of DXM as a recreational drug than this guy. He wrote the
DXM FAQ . Note that it is referred to as 'The' DXM FAQ - Look at the thing for a minute, and it shouldn't shock you that after seeing it no one else had the urge to try and write one...
Not only does he seem to have better pharmacological info on DXM than any other source on the internet, his experience with real world DXM users over time is pretty unchallengable. This guy obviously knows his shit. If you doubt that statement at all, look at the FAQ - what is it, two hundred pages? If he thinks there is a danger of Olney's Lesions that DXM users should know about, ignoring him and laughing is probably not a very good idea...

 

[MDMA desciple]

Look at the thing for a minute, and it shouldn't shock you that after seeing it no one else had the urge to try and write one...
it wouldnt shock me if no one had written a FAQ on dxm in the first place -- it's DXM! lmao
seriously tho, i think i'm living proof that the dangers of dxm are clear and present -- my brain is a disaster area from my years of extended use. but even still, there are many ways that this could have come to pass without the involvement of microperforated brain-tissue. dxm-use also fucks up the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain (NMDA, gaba, etc) which could cause many problems later on. but as for olney's lesions, i've always found the research surrounding this to be a bit dubious.
/me applauds cokeboy on a very lucid, intelligent, and well thought-out post
disciple

 

[White Flag]

I am impressed. I applaud you, cokeboy... very insightful post.

 

[Cokeboy]

Thanks all.
MoFo_S - I believe he is correct in saying that there are medical consequences related to the continued abuse of dissociatives. I don't believe he is qualified to diagnose the damage as Olney's Lesions, particularly when medical research has failed to do so.
I'll put my money on the advice of Dr. Karl Jansen. Not only is he easily as "experienced" as Mr. White (literally having written the book on Ketamine) but he also has MD, PhD on the end of his name. Not trusting those letters alone, I bought the book. His examination and arguments "against" are more solid, better stated, and more substantiated than those "for", as presented by Mr. White.

 

[Bone]

good post.
Mofo_s, the fact that he's william white doesn't make what he says any more accurate. The reason his DXM faq is the only one is that nobody else wants to take the time to write another one.
I'm sure he knows more about the effects of dxm than almost anybody on the planet, but that doesn't make him a neurochemist.

 

[LuxAeterna]

nice work cokeboy, it took my immature joke for you to post this, but thankyou, i should have been more serious with that girl in the users of k post. Respect for having the energy to dissect this for everyone

 

[cossack]

If you are so inclined CokeBoy you go and write a FAQ about DXM. How many times on this board do dumb ass people give new users information which is usually wrong. However sometimes they are right, why you ask. Not b/c they are doctors and not b/c they are chemists, it is from life experiance and from research.
WILLIAM WHITE is a professor in Athens. He also has many friends and collegues in chemisty and botany, who only study the long term effects of dissociatives. It is an awesome idea.
It absolutly bothers me when people cut down something but wont go out there and do it themselves. William spent alot of time researching the drug and I believe in his articles and his website he has saved alot of lives.
thats my take on it
cossack

 

[Cokeboy]

cossack - If you can tell me why I should take the word of Mr. White over that of Dr. Jansen I will give it some thought.
Incidently, I don't have any specific problems with the DXM FAQ. I have a problem with his views on Olney's Lesions and with this article in general. I could write a "Why Olney's Lesions are a non-issue" article, but it would probably simply plagiarize "Ketamine: Dreams and Realities", by Dr. Jansen - a book I highly recommend.

 

[mll]

William White is simply wrong. It doesn't make it right if he writes 200 pages. It simply makes him wrong for 200 pages.

 

[cossack]

Cokeboy- I see your point, and yes I cannot tell if he (white) is right or wrong (b/c I am not a doctor) I would take a doctors opinion over Whites if it about medical research, however we must reconize that he (white) does know alot about DXM.
My guess is that White got the information from a doctor anyway.
How many times have we gone to 4 differnt doctors and got 4 differnt answers. Will we ever know? Probally not but differnt and numerous opinions may lead to the overall answer.
I think it is better to caution the bad, than to condone the good.
I didnt mean to be rude cokeboy, sorry if I came across that way.
cossack

 

[cossack]

cokeboy - I agree that it is poorly written and if there is no scientific evidence to back this up or medical evidence for that matter, it would take a big imagination to make it up.
I am not quite sure where william got this from but I think it has some merit, whether it be medical or not, it still puts out some caution.
***Not to use DXM everyday all day***
But yes I think we are arguing the same point, in that, we need better information about the effects of dissociatives and the long term efects. I like reading from different sourses but if it were up to me I would go with the medical community instead of a chemist on this matter.
good disscusion
cossack

 

[Cokeboy]

cossack - 4 visits, 4 doctors, 4 answers... I agree there are inconsistencies.
However, in this case we have the medical research community on one side, and William White on the other.

"There seems to be a lot of unpredictability here. Some people can use dissociatives heavily and not suffer; others suffer after using more moderately."
The article also contains statements constructed as follows: IF [condition] THEN [result], followed by another leap in logic. For instance:

If humans respond like rats do, this means that taking a single anaesthetic dose of ketamine will put an enormous amount of stress on the neurons in your posterior cingulate and retrosplenial cortices. (Recreational doses are, of course, less than anaesthetic doses, but not by enough; it may take a dose five times lower before the danger is gone). This stress will cause the neurons to shut down in order to make repairs; if they can't make repairs, or if they are damaged again too quickly (i.e., from too-frequent use of ketamine), they will die. Ketamine is used as an example; any dissociative will cause the same sort of damage.
Note the flow of logic. First, it all hinges on the assumption that humans respond like rats do, something that is verifiably false. Rodent brain chemistry is substantially different, and the differences are not merely in scale. These differences are why Olney's Lesions have never been observed in primates or humans.
Also note that although he skips through with "if's" and assumptions, he ends with "any dissociative WILL cause the same sort of damage."

 

[Cokeboy]

Sorry all - cossack's reply and my last post flipflopped in placement. I thought I could delete it and repost minus some grammatical errors before anybody noticed.

 

[PuristLove]

I have read Karl Jansen's book. My problem with his opinion on ketamine are that he is 1)a drug user himself , 2) active in the pro-drug movement, 3) tends to get new agey on some of the subject matter.
Does this discredit his opinions? No. I'm a drug user and pro-drug. But it does mean that he has a vested interest in coming to the conclusion that ketamine and other disociative are relatively harmless. Note that he attempts to say this, but even so much of the evidence in his book suggests this isn't true and ultimately he is forced to warn that some users may have problems.
While I'm not sure about Olney's Lesions, I know quite a few people who after having quit heavy disociative use continue to have serious cognitive problems.
Something interesting to note is that Mr.White is A) also a drug user and B) also involved in the pro-drug movement. Yet, something scared him badly enough to write this article.
When it was originally written, his FAQ had been up for a few years and the studies on Olney's Lesions were just beginning to be done. As the authority on DXM, I'm sure he had recieved a lot of emails, phone calls, etc from users of DXM who were experiencing cognitive problems. At the time, those studies DID indicate that Olney's Lesions could be a problem. So he came to a conclusion, it was an early conclusion, and the new evidence seems to suggest it might be an erroneus one, but at the time it was logical.
We certainly need a new article written, summing up the current evidence, and the studies that have been done since This Is Your Brain on Disociatives was written. I'd be interested in the current theories on what seems to cause the memory loss, irregular EEG's and other problems heavy users of ketamine and dxm experience.
I also wish that the studies which have been done on primates and humans, with regard to Olney's Lesions, would be published. Unfortunately they are not, which makes it impossible for Mr. White or Mr. Jansen to cite the primary sources themselves.
For anyone interested there is a short article I've written, Ketamine Dangers, in the FAQ section of the board.
Pure

 

[cossack]

Amen to that......

 

[nick44]

Yes - good thread.