MAPS Addiction, psychedelics, and thinking?

neversickanymore

neversickanymore

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How can the correct use of psychedelics positively impact addiction? What do we know, what do we hope, and what is known about the way this works?
 
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I remember reading somewhere that LSD use, even one time, helped some alcoholics stop drinking alcohol. As an example of that, I think that the founder of AA, Bill, had a positive experience with LSD.

Also I have a BL friend that IV h for about 10 years and who, for the longest time, insisted that suboxone didn't work for him and therefore, chose to struggle with on and off dope use until he had a revelation on an acid trip. The trip helped changed his attitude/ willingness towards suboxone, and his vision for sobriety. After that trip, he was able to use suboxone in a therapeutic way and today is off all opiates and has been for months.
 
It is thought that he took this....

The Belladonna Cure[edit]

The formula[clarification needed] for Towns-Lambert cure was the deliriant, Atropa belladonna, also called deadly nightshade. The effects of belladonna include delirium, hallucinations, light sensitivity, confusion, and dry mouth.[original research?] The second ingredient in the mixture was another deliriant, Hyoscyamus niger, also known as henbane, hog's bean, or insane root. It contained two alkaloids, hyoscyamine and hyoscine. The third major ingredient was the dried bark or berries of Xanthoxylum Americanum, or prickly ash, added to help with diarrhea and intestinal cramps.[7] The dosage given was determined by the physiologic reaction of each patient. When the face became flushed, the throat dry, and the eyes dilated, the amount of the mixture was reduced or stopped.[8]
The mixture was given every hour, day and night, for nearly 50 hours. The end of the treatment was marked by the abundance of stools and then castor oil was given to the patient as a further purgative.[8] The treatment was also described as 'puke and purge'.[9]
Every 12 hours the patient was given CC (Compound Cathartic) pills and Blue Mass. These were 19th century medications of varying composition. Blue Mass included mercury, and was prescribed for a cornucopia of ailments.[original research?]
When a patient was admitted to the hospital while intoxicated or at the end of a spree, the first thing that was done was to put the patient to sleep. The only medication given prior to the hypnotic was the four CC pills. The hypnotic Lambert found best contained chloral hydrate and morphine along with one or two grams of paraldehyde. If the patient went to sleep easily on this hypnotic it was safe to wake him every hour for his belladonna regimen. Dr Lambert believed it was important to administer a small amount of strychnine every four hours.[10]
The week following the treatment a diet of a special tonic and simple and easy to digest meals would relax the patient.[11]
Towns Hospital

from The Belladonna Cure section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_B._Towns

drugs, including ANYTHING, does not change thinking alone, it just facilitates it.
 
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As a hopeless young pothead, the ONLY time ever went a few days without was after an intense trip. Something to be said for using psychadelics like lsd, ayahuasca, ibogaine etc.
 
My psychedelic abuse (!) was sort of a gateway to harder drugs, namely dissociatives (since they seemed to offer similar insights) which turned out to be even more abusable in an escapist fashion. That's just the way it went down, as much as I wish for things to have gone differently. I've easily had over 200 experiences with psychedelics. These days the only one I still use regularly is DMT and very rarely so (every other year - twice per year).

I'm optimistic they can be therapeutically utilized, ideally in clinical settings, but I strongly doubt the classical serotonergic psychedelics have intrinsic anti-addictive properties, since all I ever did with them was abuse them heavily and I know lots of people who have done so as well, no matter how "right" each experience might have felt.
 
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Ho-Chi-Minh said:
LSD has a higher success rate than AA.
Click to expand...

See this excellent review on treatment of alcoholism with LSD in the sixties (published in 2012)

http://jop.sagepub.com/content/26/7/994

Also, at Johns Hopkins they've started doing clinical research with psilocybin trying to help people to stop smoking tobacco. There's a lot of data on the treatment of alcohol addiction with LSD in the sixties (although most of the research isn't really up to current scientific standards).

Research with ibogaine on resetting / cancelling out craving in opiate (but also other substance) users is scarce, but there's some animal data and certainly plenty anecdotal evidence.

Also interesting is this paper on addiction among ayahuasca users. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20554400
 
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