Entries from January 2008 ↓

Psychedelic Medicines

Scientific American posted an article entitled “Psychedelic Healing?” about the potential medical and psychiatric benefits of a number of different psychedelics. While the staff of humemes does not support the widespread, unrestricted use of any psychedelic compounds, psychedelic research has been going for for nearly 50 years and has shown incredible signs of being effective in helping to curb or stop many different mental ailments. As discussed in Dr. Rick Strassman’s book DMT: The Spirit Molecule it has become increasingly hard for researchers to get their hands on a number of these compounds due to their legal status. It strikes me as odd that we allow our war on drugs to extend to only a certain number of compounds while so many others are left open to scrutiny and testing.

An excerpt from the article:

The past 15 years have seen a quiet resurgence of psychedelic drug research as scientists have come to recognize the long-underappreciated potential of these drugs. In the past few years, a growing number of studies using human volunteers have begun to explore the possible therapeutic benefits of drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, ibogaine and ketamine.

Much remains unclear about the precise neural mechanisms governing how these drugs produce their mind-bending results, but they often produce somewhat similar psychoactive effects that make them potential therapeutic tools. Though still in their preliminary stages, studies in humans suggest that the day when people can schedule a psychedelic session with their therapist to overcome a serious psychiatric problem may not be that far off.