Psychedelic drugs can unlock mysteries of brain - David Nutt

[Swarm]

No problem, i knew the email would be full of jargon but i thought i'd do it that way for sake of brevity, and only expand on stuff if you wanted me to . Have a good one man!

 

[Jordie]

With a name like Professor Nutt what could go wrong? Haha

I think without LSD and Mushys my whole view on life and world as I knew it would have never changed, and that change was for the better. When I am frying the world seem like such a wonderful amazing place and same goes for the universe, except comprehending how amazing our universe is always overwhelms me. Such an amazing experience life is.

 

[Valkyrie]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nkw0l

Prof Nutt on 5Live at 1h:55m

(available until 7/11/12)

 

[Ceres]

Does he just talk for five minutes? What's the gist of what he says?

 

[Valkyrie]

Yep, it's only 5 mins. He says that by banning drugs like MXE, the government is stopping research into new therapies and treatments. He wants the Royal College of Psychiatrists to join his protest against the blanket banning of new analogues.

 

[Ceres]

I just listened, thanks very much for the link.

 

[Ceres]

He is spot on, like when the cathinone ban came in they have put restrictions on drugs which don't even exist or haven't been investigated for medical utility.

In this case I'd say it' s much worse, the arylcyclohexamines most certainly DO have medical utility and NMDA receptor antagonists are currently the bleeding edge of antidepressant research.

 

[knock]

But it's not stopping research, is it? If someone wants to do serious research they can get a license, like Keith Allen.

 

[Ceres]

It impedes research because of all the red tape and expense involved, when with an uncontrolled substance like a simple small amine molecule it could simply be produced onsite, on demand.

 

[knock]

Yeah I agree really, I just don't think the argument is very strong. If someone really wants to do research they can, they just need to jump through the necessary hoops.

You should know this, IT security man! Would you let people connect devices to your network without going through the correct procedures?

 

[Ceres]

getting funding for research is difficult enough for scientists, research involving controlled substances is even more difficult to fund, this is why Proff Nutt ended up getting money from channel 4 to do his ecstasy trial.

 

[Swarm]

getting funding for research is difficult enough for scientists, research involving controlled substances is even more difficult to fund, this is why Proff Nutt ended up getting money from channel 4 to do his ecstasy trial.

Hey Ceres, do you happen to know if theres a big difference between getting funding to do research on animals versus humans? My background is in experimental psychology and neuroscience so i'm fairly well versed in terms of the scope of research going on, however i do not really know too much about funding. My hunch is that its probably not too costly to set up a study with a bunch of rats in skinner boxes just to research the rapidity of dose escalation of MXE, though obviously thats not really gonna make us much the wiser on the "mysteries of the human mind front". Do you think this is a fair assessment or do you think that animal studies get hit just as hard by the politically controversial nature of the banned substance involved?

 

[Mailmonkey]

Most people who take DMT think they have met God? Are you sure?

How much of this is down to their preconceptions, or what they have read prior to the experiments?

 

[Swarm]

Thanks for answer fixingahole, and nice post. I like what you say about philosophy as it reminds me of the dark ages in psychology, between about 1920 to 1960, known as behaviourism. 40 years of hard data took us to a place so wrong (Skinner's "verbal behaviour") that the rival theory that came and surpassed it (chompsky's "universal grammer" and the ensuing cognitive science/psychology revolution) basically gave it the equivalent of a 20 nil thrashing.
I also like your point about self experimentation and the potential for collecting data on forums like this. Unfortunately i also have to agree with your statement about how many others seem content to feel like they've seen god ( or that they felt a "one-ness / interconnectedness" or some other vague or vacuous concept) without seeming to be able to elaborate on the experience any more than that. Its just such a waste considering the tools we have at our hands, namely, a vast range of of near pure substances, the truly immense intellectual and scientific insights that have been accumulating since the very first word was written down, and the ability to send practically instant electronic mail to anyone almost anywhere on the globe.