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An approach to treating schizophrenia with psychedelics (2022)

Snafu in the Void said:
These types of things sound so bizzare to me, because self administered LSD and daily DMT is what caused my psychosis/schizophrenia. I did eventually recover, though.
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Glad you recovered Snafu. Note that these studies include intensive psychotherapy and since hallucinogens are highly susceptible (is that the right term? English is not my native language) I guess a lot depends on the input or guidance by the therapists involved. Although that one case of self administration seem to have worked. It’s just a case report but I’ve found a study which concludes that the use of psychedelics is not related to increased mental health problems.



This is another interesting study which concludes that long term treatment of schizophrenia with anti psychotics is detrimental for recovery:

academic.oup.com

Does Long-Term Treatment of Schizophrenia With Antipsychotic Medications Facilitate Recovery?

Abstract. Antipsychotic medications are viewed as cornerstones for both the short-term and long-term treatment of schizophrenia. However, evidence on long-
academic.oup.com academic.oup.com
 
Pjotr777 said:
No link found between psychedelics and psychosis:


I don’t know how representative this is. Maybe mentally healthy people use more often psychedelics than those with severe mental disorders or those genetically predisposed to them.
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Both studies in that article aren't very controlled and are voluntary self reported surveys. Not sure how much this proves, if anything at all.

A lot of the data is just people who used psychedelics once in their life.

In my case, it was a 5 month period of overly frequent/high dosing. That type of use is not typical or advised.
 
Back around 2005 my friend got schizophrenic triggered by meth use and we experimented with DMT. I watched him go from zombie-like to normal, it also somehow got rid of the 4 voices in his head.

I do think DMT is somehow unique, I don’t think it would be a good idea to use most other psychedelics but puffing on a little DMT seems to calm things down. I remember back in those days I would smoke DMT to “calm down” super intense DOC trips.

His voices did not come back until years later after he did some cocaine.
 
Psychedelics are important medicinal tools and—as schizophrenia is associated with dopamine system dysfunction more so than serotonin system—schizophrenic patients should, I think, have access to them. Testing the waters with smaller psychedelic doses and/or combining a psychedelic with a slightly high dose of antipsychotic that doesn't block 5-HT2A (eg haloperidol) may serve to improve quality of life with minimal risk.
 
What are loosely termed 'atypical antipsychotics' act on the serotonin receptors. More specifically they are antagonists or partial agonists.

Isn't that what the article is really considering? Partial agonists, I mean. It's not a very accurate title.
When I first began studying medicinal chemistry in the 1980s, it was noted that ALL people suffering from mental disorders classified as schizophrenia showed elevated levels of DOPAC (a dopamine metabolite) and/or decreased levels of NMDA in their cerebrospinal fluid. But even then the atypical antipsychotics were shown to work in refractive cases. But is that a cause or a symptom?

But I note that none of the atypicals are 5HT2a selective. In fact, as a whole, the antipsychotic drugs are awful. I mean, few medicines require you to take one or more other medications just to deal with their side-effects (at least when given long-term). It would certainly be wonderful if we could find a very selective ligand that helped people who are suffering and/or struggling to manage their disorder.

It seems that their is a genetic predisposition towards the disorder with over 50% of monozygotic (identical) twins displaying the disorder even if they are separated at birth which should theoretically rule out environmental factors.

One of my closest friends developed schizophrenia when they were in their early 20s. I saw them several times a week, almost every week for years. It took a good 2 years from them suffering 3 major losses all within a week to there descent into psychosis. In the end they were apprehended by the police after an unprovoked attack, their placement into a psychiatric unit and finally their enforced medication. Last news was from 2002 when they accidentally set fire to their home.
 
I hope it’s readable. It’s about weekly high dose LSD psychotherapy for treating, I should say curing, psychotic patients.

From “LSD Psychotherapy” Stanislav Grof
7583-E8-A2-411-B-42-DF-B39-D-E57279304181.jpg
 
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Ik I’m a bit late to the party here but this topic interests me, I’d say psychedelics can help schizophrenia for a good amount of people but not everybody, I don’t think macro doses would do much good and might do more harm then good however I think micro dosing pure LSD or magic mushrooms might help out a lot gotta make sure it’s pure some laced drugs disguised as LSD can mimic schizophrenia symptoms so it’s important to buy a test kit to make sure what you are getting is real, I’ve had a psychotic episode and tripped on high doses of LSD and they feel completely different, LSD kind of feels like the opposite of psychosis to me cause I feel like I can think more clearly then ever, now onto the topic of micro dosing so yesterday morning I hadn’t slept well and woke up with anxiety and racing thoughts i took a micro dose of LSD and just felt completely alright it took my anxiety away like magic I feel like during my psychosis if I took a micro dose it would help ground me that’s just how I am personally though everybody is different there’s been other people who say the same about micro dosing and it helping with psychosis though.
 
My friend has skitzoeffective disorder, and he has auditory hallucinations, psychiatrists say that blotter acid caused this hidden disorder to " surface", so taking something that mimics hearing or seeing things, acid, is not going to be a supplemental recreational idea. It's not tested, no founded information, and has no records of the data to effectively treat anything based in science. Just a Cheech and Chong idea that encourages psychosis and finding yourself in a mental health ward. Taking a cocktail of Haldol, and benadryl, then, you will drool, alot! and rock back and fourth like a complete lack of personal knowledge. I've seen it, and wow, man.
Drug info, haldol and benadryl are referred to as a B52, it's legal replacement for thorazine. Not recommended. People who were treated with ECT had more cognitive function than B52's. Stay sober, and take meds as directed by a psychiatrist, not Charlie Manson.
 
People who do psychedelics often, always seem to think they can cure everything, especially addiction or mental health related.
The same way the take psychedelics/hallucinogens and claim the resultant hallucinations and "Visions" are real spiritual or other-dimensional, religious experiences etc...even though they only after experience them after taking drugs that are known to cause them
 
ChemicallyEnhanced said:
People who do psychedelics often, always seem to think they can cure everything, especially addiction or mental health related.
The same way the take psychedelics/hallucinogens and claim the resultant hallucinations and "Visions" are real spiritual or other-dimensional, religious experiences etc...even though they only after experience them after taking drugs that are known to cause them
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Dont forget to take vitamin c attaining the illusion that turns everything orange...
 
As someone who experienced a lot of the symptoms of schizophrenia during a prolonged period of dissociative abuse and high stress (both of which are known to produce schizophrenia-like symptoms), I always found that psychedelics seemed to alleviate some of the positive and negative symptoms, although not so much the cognitive symptoms.

The one positive symptom I can't see psychedelics helping with is psychosis, as sometimes high doses of psychedelics on their own can produce psychosis. I think that's the reason there's so much disagreement here. People conflate psychosis and schizophrenia, when the reality is that schizophrenia is a constellation of symptoms, one of which can be psychosis, but psychosis can also occur in the absence of schizophrenia.

The OCD-like symptoms were what I noticed psychedelics helped with most, which is supported by rodent studies with psilocybin. These studies suggest this effect on OCD-like behaviors is 5-HT1A mediated, but I suspect 2A is also important in humans because 2C-D helped a lot for me (and PEAs have low 1A affinity). My sister had OCD quite badly and when I was younger I noticed it slightly, but was able to extinguish it. I always noticed dissociatives would bring it out, especially during periods of heavy abuse.

But I also get people wanting to be cautious. There's actually studies that show untreated schizophrenics have upregulated 2A and this normalizes with age (in parallel with the delusions and hallucinations, which also decrease with aging).
 
Apart from a couple of specific medical conditions - nobody has shown them to be of benefit in ANY other condition... and with so much money to be made, I'm sure they have spent lots trying to find utility.

Truth is, most medicines licenced after the 70s are suspect. Yes, a few are amazing, but anti-depressants for example. Tricyclics are repeatedly shown to be the best, but since the patent ran out, they tried to find new ones.... for the profit.
 
I consider long to share or not to share this and decided it would be against HR philosophy not to.

Schizophrenia (and many other mental illnesses) and psychedelics don’t mix! Schizophrenia (and many other mental illnesses) and psychedelics mixed can result in injury and death! I know for 3 cases of suicide and 1 case of homicide that might (almost certainly) have been prevented if psychedelics weren’t added as fuel to mental illness! One case was person who had schizophrenia diagnosed, one case was person without diagnosed mental problem and idk enough details about other two cases but I know what drug was involved in all cases. 3 cases were caused by well know researched psychedelics and one with highly selective 5ht2a psychedelic.

I was also a close friend of a person whose mental issues hugely improved following DMT but eventually resulted in full-blown schizophrenia from which he’s still suffering today, going of and on drugs of abuse (stims and all kind of botanical stuff in huge amounts mostly, last I heard) and loosing his shit occasionally curing himself with mescaline or something.
 
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