• N&PD Moderators: Skorpio | someguyontheinternet

DMT and opiate activity

what i was trying to say is that ketamine seems to alleviate opiate withdrawal,you seem to be saying that dmt may,whilst i havnt found dmt to be effective,i have found ketamine and mushrooms to help.mushrooms were mentioned in another post.im sorry if i went a bit off topic talking about dihydrocodeine,but the statement was true and backed up medically and you took a sarcastic tone with it,why not just say,thats a bit off topic?
 
I've never said that DMT would allieviate heroin withdrawl, just that it does seem to produce a mild opiate like feeling, possibly due to endorphin release (or possibly an endorphinase inhibitor?). To stave off heroin withdrawl, you would need a mu agonist, which is way beyond the capability of something like DMT; if it was, as you increased the dose, the opiate like effect would also get stronger, but it doesn't, it just gets swamped by the psychedelic effect.

Actually, it just occurred as I was writing this about the possibility that it's an inhibitor of the enzyme responsible for metabolizing beta-endorphin. That would explain why the opiate like effects dont increase with dose, if at fairly low doses, the enzyme is 90+ percent inhibited (Oh no, return of the Mikhalis-Menton plot!)
 
when i could feel that my body needed dhc i would take ketamine instead,sometimes doing a run for a good few hours before coming down and taking the dhc.i think it could have been the analgesic properties working on the body and i think the dissasociative effects on the brain staved off the withdrawal for a few hours.i think most psychedelics can produce a similar feeling to opiates at certain doses,i think acid was used for both opiate and alcohol withdrawal back when it was a legal therapeutic tool.i had a multiple orgasm on dmt last night,for the first time in my life,i wonder if effects like that are possible when your body is lacking natural endorphines?i presume it is that type of effect we are comparing to heroin,though i would say it was a thousand times more pleasure than i ever got from a hit of h.sorry for sounding agitated in previous posts,must have been having a bad day!
 
Why were you lacking endorphins? There's very limited evidence that chronic opioid usage decreases endogenous opioids... there just as much evidence (if not a little more) that chronic opioids increase endorphins.
LSD wasn't shown to be a succesful treatment for alcohol dependence, "back when it was legal".
 
LSD wasn't shown to be a succesful treatment for alcohol dependence, "back when it was legal".

Not on it's own, but Osmond using doses that produce a 'peak experience', then using psychotherapy when at the peak of the experience had a lower remission rate (success in a way) than conventional approaches. It was 'discredited' by people who used LSD without any intervention during the peak of the experience (they weren't comparable in their approach, so that why I find the term 'discredited' puzzling, or as a more visceral response, plain bollocks). It's just a shame he (Osmond) was doing work with alcoholics just at the time when LSD was becoming a social menace
 
Really? It's not mentioned in the Nichols hallucinogens review. You don't have a reference do you?
 
Well yes and no. I've got an interview with him and Sydney Cohen from a couple of programs About LSD made for the BBC series Everyman (it dealt with issues that might impact on spiritual matters - typical BBC take on making Sundays seem special. That and Life on Earth were the BBC's science and documentary depts. doing their bit for Sunday's viewing). They describe how their programme worked, as a voice over some b&w film from the period, giving details of a couple of cases and giving extracts of statistical analysis showing that their results were better than the competeing therapies by a statistically significant amount. They then describe later papers by other researchers where they get worse results, but that just involved dosing the patients, then coming back hours later to unlock their room, get them to do batteries of cognative and physiological tests to make sure they weren't having any atypical reactions, then back in their room. Of course that isn't going to help at all...

As for the actual papers, I've found other papers that reference them, but never found an online copy of them, and odd pages of photocopies from 20 years ago. I'll see if the BBC still keep trascripts of their programs as there might be something
 
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At last, something I can be a bit knowledgable about.. from my days as a historian of science...

"Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream" by Jay Stevens is a good socio-cultural history of LSD, and has lots of refs to papers etc on the success or otherwise of the psychedelic paradigm of therapy.

More specifically:

Abramson, H.A. (ed) “The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism”

B. Eisner and S. Cohen (1958) "Psychotherapy with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" J. Nervous Mental Disorders, 127, 528-539
(This is more about patients with minor personality disorders than alchoholics)

Caldwell, W.V. 1968. “LSD Psychotherapy: An Exploration of Psychedelic and Psycholytic Therapy”

The only ref I have to hand for Osmond's work is this:

Osmond, H. (1957) "A review of the clinical effects of psychotomimetic agents" Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 66(3), 418-434

There are plenty of other refs to the European model of psycholytic therapy (small doses, repeated) as opposed to the psychdelic therapy (favoured in the US, large doses, single session). The Abramson book has lots of papers by different practicioners on both sides.

Hope that helps bilz0r and FnB...
 
If bilz or fnb are still interested, this paper sounds good. Havn't read it yet myself..

Mangini, MV (1997) "Treatment of alcoholism using psychedelic drugs: A review of the program of research" Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
Volume 30, #4; 381-418.
 
Yes, that's the one I have read it concludes
"Despite the confusion about the efficacy of LSD treatment occasioned by the limitations of previous studies, the possibility that LSD could be useful in the treatment of alcoholism remains engaging. Many possible constructions of the findings of historic LSD research have been left unexplored, and many aspects of the data remain unevaluated"
 
I dosed a decently sized amount of phenibut, and smoked a little DMT a couple times, and the first time (when the phenibut was going real strong) I just about passed out, it felt the same as a "g-out" (ghb). Second time, my eyes crossed just like a heavy ghb dose and i went from my chair to lay down because i felt so sedated, wierd huh?
 
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