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Neurotoxicity of serotonergic psychedelics??

ebola?

ebola?

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Hey.
A friend's teacher in a bio class he's taking made the claim that LSD will cause long term dammage to the raphe nuclei...bracketing aside the fact that he used the term "scramble up the neurons in there" (what would THAT be?) as well, is there any basis to his claim? A medline search of the literature came up with nothing, but also no studies detailing a null result either.

ebola
 
Sounds like shit to me. If you ask any anti-drug people for reasons why people shouldn't do Marijuana brain damage will be right at the top of the list, though like most psychadelics it causes almost no brain damage. Its a scare tactic they use that most kids will never research for themselves. I've read hundreds of posts on BL and if anyone knows what they're talking about on here you won't suffer brain damage from LSD.

Ask your teacher this..."Why are you telling us about the neurotoxic effects of LSD when half the kids in this classroom are probably on Amphetamine or Methylphenidate?" those 2 substances will fuck your brain up more in a year then 1,000 acid trips, imo.
 
Rcin said:
I've read hundreds of posts on BL and if anyone knows what they're talking about on here you won't suffer brain damage from LSD.

Ask your teacher this..."Why are you telling us about the neurotoxic effects of LSD when half the kids in this classroom are probably on Amphetamine or Methylphenidate?" those 2 substances will fuck your brain up more in a year then 1,000 acid trips, imo.
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A) Abuse of acid will cause permanent brain damage in many persons. Ever hear of someone being "perma-fried"? Obviously not, but I have, and it's very real.

Not sure if there are any studies on this or not, but I'm sure many Blers also personally know of someone who abused acid and payed for it.

B) One year on prescribed doses of ritalin will fuck you up more than 1,000 acid trips? Spewing crap like this makes you look like a blind pro-illegal-drug monkey, which IMHO is just as bad as the blind all-illegal-drugs-are-evil monkeys.
 
ebola! said:
...bracketing aside the fact that he used the term "scramble up the neurons in there" (what would THAT be?)
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LMAO

Reminds me of a biology major I know who claimed that Ketamine "flattens some brain cells" :D

HIB: So what kind of "brain damage" is that? "perma-fried" sounds like it could be anything, and probably psychological rather than physiological damage....
 
Re: Re: Neurotoxicity of serotonergic psychedelics??

Jamshyd said:
HIB: So what kind of "brain damage" is that?
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As I implied, I have no idea. All I know is that I know a few people who abused acid exclusively who have brain damage from said abuse. By putting brain damage in quotes, are you disputing that LSD is at all neurotoxic?
 
Jamshyd said:
"perma-fried" sounds like it could be anything, and probably psychological rather than physiological damage....
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Psychology - The science that deals with mental processes and behavior.

Physiology - The biological study of the functions of living organisms and their parts.

I think you're splitting hairs here. Psychology and Physiology are not mutually exclusive.
 
>>As I implied, I have no idea. All I know is that I know a few people who abused acid exclusively who have brain damage from said abuse. By putting brain damage in quotes, are you disputing that LSD is at all neurotoxic?>>

Until a physiological mechanism for such damage has been established, I think it more prudent to fall back on the null hypothesis that the "perma-fry" stems from psychological trauma (or, in many cases, psychedelics triggering underlying psychotic tendencies).
...
The main point of my question here is to see if anyone has seen literature addressing directly psychedelics' potential to cause permanent organic damage (or lack thereof).

(oh...and I know that the question of chromasomal damage has been answered long ago.)

ebola
 
Rcin said:
HobbyIsBowling

Show me a study that proves your point and I'll be glad to shut up.
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LSD is illegal in most civilized countries, there aren't many studies at all to prove or disprove the fact that LSD causes brain damage with extended heavy usage. Such studies would be unethical in humans, and also illegal.

If you want to continue to believe that you can trip on acid everyday for years on end and not be damaged just because there are no studies that say it is damaging, then more power to you.
 
Timothy Leary tripped on acid thousands of times and he wasn't a raving derilect. He countinued to be a very smart man. And let me ask why it is unethical to study LSD in humans (which has been done by the way) and not unethical to give preteens amphetamine everyday.
 
Timothy Leary tripped on acid thousands of times and he wasn't a raving derilect.
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I think that is a matter for debate. lol. The 8 circuts of conciousness?

In short, do most tryptamine hallucinogens cause brain damage? No.

In long however, I certainly know people who, after abuse of tryptamine hallucinogens, are now, for all intents and pruposes, insane. They wouldn't fit into any classical psychotic symptomatology, but nonetheless, anyone who talked to them would know that they talk absolute crap, all the time. They hold beliefs that are blatantly logically unsound, and can not produce rationally constructed conversations.
However, I know people who have taken just as much hallucinogens as that, and are perfectly fine.
I suspect that 5-HT receptor mediated neurotrophic factor release can leave the brain in a highly plastic state. Perhaps, after a long or particularly engraining trip, if one doesn't try to ground oneself, or only hangs out with other people tripping, you could somehow alter the nature of your brain, leaving your somehow permanently "fucked".
 
anyone who talked to them would know that they talk absolute crap, all the time. They hold beliefs that are blatantly logically unsound, and can not produce rationally constructed conversations.
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There are plenty of people out there that fulfil one or all of those criteria - whose to say that these people are essentially unchanged in themselves, but after the connection with psychedelics, the two are linked, for no other reason than suspicions about the class of drugs

Hands up everyone who knows a gobshite, religeous nutter, or socially dysfunctional person: Now like the population in general, a certain percentage will take psychedelics. What amazes me is that we don't notice the ones who haven't taken psychedelics more readily...

And please don't use me as the gobshite that you know of! =D
 
Yeah, but most religous theories are completely untestable, their not blatantly illogical. I'm talking about the kinda people who will all of a sudden say shit like "All matter, like, it's thought, I mean, the thought waves that the matter thinks, they are what makes it matter, and we can sense the thought waves, and like, thats how we can see them, and we sense them with the pineal gland"
...and then when you ask them to explain themselves, how they can up with that, they tell you some story about a documentary they saw where some Indian monk could meditate and not feel pain... i.e. something with no causal link at all.
 
>>In short, do most tryptamine hallucinogens cause brain damage? No.>>

I'm kind of wondering if the proper studies have been conducted, returning null results. My medline search suggests that they have not.

ebola
 
Yes, I suppose your right, but they've never been demonstrated too... and no ones noticed it during chronic dosing experiments... I mean, it's impossible to say that a drug isn't neurotoxic in some way, because there are so many systems it could effect. But is has been demonstrated that the small increase in intracellular serotonin (cause by 5-HT1A agonist) during acute dosing, is the same when the animal has been given chronic dosing. I.e. LSD has no long term effect on serotonin.
 
They wouldn't fit into any classical psychotic symptomatology, but nonetheless, anyone who talked to them would know that they talk absolute crap, all the time. They hold beliefs that are blatantly logically unsound, and can not produce rationally constructed conversations.

Yeah, but most religous theories are completely untestable, their not blatantly illogical.I'm talking about the kinda people who will all of a sudden say shit like "All matter, like, it's thought, I mean, the thought waves that the matter thinks, they are what makes it matter, and we can sense the thought waves, and like, thats how we can see them, and we sense them with the pineal gland"
...and then when you ask them to explain themselves, how they can up with that, they tell you some story about a documentary they saw where some Indian monk could meditate and not feel pain... i.e. something with no causal link at all.
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There are plenty of people who go through changes of bizzare illogical religious beliefs who have never used psychedelics. I also know plenty of people who talk crap all the time who never have used psychedelics.

Simply because someone's religious experiences or other beliefs seem illogical to you doesn't mean its pathological. At least read up on transpersonal theory before you play Nurse Ratchet and pathologize people's religious experiences and claim its possible evidence of nuerotoxicity. I've seen at least of few people come out of their religious experiences healthier and wiser.
 
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My friend had quite a good theory why LSD might be worse for the brain than other hallucinogens. "Why do you think it is called acid?" he asked me one day.
 
I suppose psychedelics could work as catalysts for psychological and/or sociological processes. This is not my invention but taken from Acid Dreams by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain.
 
>>Yes, I suppose your right, but they've never been demonstrated too... and no ones noticed it during chronic dosing experiments... I mean, it's impossible to say that a drug isn't neurotoxic in some way, because there are so many systems it could effect. But is has been demonstrated that the small increase in intracellular serotonin (cause by 5-HT1A agonist) during acute dosing, is the same when the animal has been given chronic dosing. I.e. LSD has no long term effect on serotonin.>>

Okay...so this would suggest that it is non-toxic, but there could be studies done which address this question more directly. Regardless, graduate teachers in biology, like my friend's, shouldn't dress up ignorance in jargon.

>>My friend had quite a good theory why LSD might be worse for the brain than other hallucinogens. "Why do you think it is called acid?" he asked me one day.>>

LOL, he's right! "It melts your brain, man!"

ebola
 
Originally posted by BilZ0r
"All matter, like, it's thought, I mean, the thought waves that the matter thinks, they are what makes it matter, and we can sense the thought waves, and like, thats how we can see them, and we sense them with the pineal gland"
...and then when you ask them to explain themselves, how they can up with that, they tell you some story about a documentary they saw where some Indian monk could meditate and not feel pain... i.e. something with no causal link at all.


Funniest Bilz0r quote ever!!! :D
 
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