[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times November 29, 2011, 6:24 p.m.


Janeen Delany describes herself as an "old hippie" who's smoked plenty of marijuana. But she never really dabbled in hallucinogens — until two years ago, at the age of 59.

A diagnosis of incurable leukemia had knocked the optimism out of the retired plant nurserywoman living in Phoenix. So she signed up for a clinical trial to test whether psilocybin — the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms" — could help with depression or anxiety following a grim diagnosis.

Delaney swallowed a blue capsule of psilocybin in a cozy office at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She donned a blindfold, a blood pressure cuff and a headset playing classical music. With two researchers at her side, she embarked on a six-hour journey into altered consciousness that she calls "the single most life-changing experience I've ever had."

What a long, strange trip it's been. In the 1960s and '70s, a rebellious generation embraced hallucinogens and a wide array of street drugs to "turn on, tune in and drop out." Almost half a century later, magic mushrooms, LSD, Ecstasy and ketamine are being studied for legitimate therapeutic uses. Scientists believe these agents have the potential to help patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, drug or alcohol addiction, unremitting pain or depression and the existential anxiety of terminal illness.

"Scientifically, these compounds are way too important not to study," said Johns Hopkins psychopharmacologist Roland Griffiths, who conducted the psilocybin trial.

In their next incarnation, these drugs may help the psychologically wounded tune in to their darkest feelings and memories and turn therapy sessions into heightened opportunities to learn and heal.

"We're trying to break a social mind-set saying these are strictly drugs of abuse," said Rick Doblin, a public policy expert who founded the Multidisciplinary Assn. for Psychedelic Studies in 1986 to encourage research on therapeutic uses for medical marijuana and hallucinogens. "It's not the drug but how the drug is used that matters."

Regulators and medical researchers remain wary. But among at least some experts at the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, the shift in attitude "has been dramatic," Doblin said.

Researchers explored the usefulness of hallucinogenic agents as an adjunct to psychotherapy in the 1950s and '60s. But allegations that hallucinogens were used in government-funded "mind control" efforts, freewheeling experimentation by proponents like Dr. Timothy Leary, and the drugs' appeal to a generation in revolt quashed legitimate research for decades.

The thaw has been slow in coming. In 2008, Griffiths co-wrote a report in the Journal of Psychopharmacology comparing psilocybin with a placebo for people dealing with incurable diseases. Psilocybin resulted in "mystical experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance," according to the study, the first since 1972 to explore a hallucinogen's therapeutic value.

In January, a team led by UCLA psychiatrist Charles Grob reported in Archives of General Psychiatry that psilocybin improved the mood of patients with "existential anxiety" related to advanced-stage cancer. The benefits lasted at least three months.

Janeen Delany is a typical case: The insights she gleaned during her encounter with psilocybin continue to shape her attitudes toward life and death.

Delany said her "trip" awakened a deep and reassuring sense of "knowing." She came to see the universe and everything in it as interconnected. As the music in her headphones reached a crescendo, she held her breath and realized it would OK — no, really easy — not to breathe anymore. She sensed there was nothing more she needed to know and therefore nothing she needed to fear about dying.

And that, paradoxically, has allowed her to live.

"When you take the veil of fear away from your life, you can see and experience everything in such a present way," she said. "I don't have to know what the future is. Every day is the day of days."



Such mystical insights are central in another potential use for psilocybin — as an addiction treatment. Griffiths is conducting a pilot study combining psilocybin with cognitive behavioral therapy to help smokers quit. Four people have completed the program, and so far none has returned to smoking, Griffiths says.

At the University of Arizona in Tucson, addiction specialist Dr. Michael P. Bogenschutz has proposed a clinical trial to test whether psilocybin can help ease alcohol dependence. If the NIH agrees to fund the study, it would be the first instance in decades of government financial support for a trial involving any drug of abuse.

Psilocybin's effect on the brain can be described, if not explained. It increases the activity of serotonin, a chemical that affects mood. Brain networks associated with emotions are highly active in the presence of psilocybin, as are structures involved in higher reasoning and judgment, MRI scans show.

Griffiths says that subjects routinely describe their psilocybin experience as one that "helps reorganize their thinking." For those facing death, that can bring new perspective on loved ones, on life and on what lies beyond; for those stymied by addiction, it can cut the addictive substance down to size. "Their enslavement to cigarette smoking will be almost funny," Griffiths said.

Psilocybin isn't the only drug on the cusp of a medical renaissance. Ketamine, best known as "Special K," has shown promise as a fast-acting antidepressant. It induces euphoria, hallucinations and "out of body" experiences when smoked or snorted. When administered intravenously at low doses, it can lift symptoms of deep depression in a matter of hours.

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-...882,full.story

For some of us this is a "duh" moment, for others it may be transcedentally life changing and validating. Mushrooms were my "right of passage" and mystically how I came to make sense of the world (for better or worse) and I am glad to see many folks in the "square" community are again taking notice as they had in the 1950s. Psilocybin is a miracle for those blessed to experience such. Life becomes clear, the meaning becomes obvious, priorites get properly aligned.

[stu666]

Interesting, I'll read it all later....

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by stu666

Interesting, I'll read it all later....

worth the trouble, Jung was especially a fan of psilocybin therapy. the article is not joking or exaggerating, the positive after-effects of psilocybin last for days and even months and are nothing short of miraculous.

[EVOLghost]

Hmm....I dig. I've always loved mushrooms. I haven't had any for a while...I knew someone who had chocolate with psilocybin in 'em but I haven't had a chance to grab any.

One thing I do not understand is the so called "bad trips". A friend of mine had one and just couldn't get the thought of death out of his mind. he said he constantly thought he could die at any moment, and at first I tried to understand him, but then one Friday night I decided to stay in and take a few grams(awesome night listening to De-Loused in a Comatorium). I tried to engage the thought of death and stuff, but it did not bring me down one bit. I simply wasn't afraid of not existing anymore.

I would say the closest thing to a bad trip for me was simply not knowing what to do next. One day I was suppose to trip with a few friends, but it only ended being me and another. We were in a house with friends and stuff but as the night went on, we were left alone in the basement. I was blissfully ignorant listening to ATL on my computer, when my friend asks me, "so...what do we do now?" This question was everything to us from that point on. We simply could not comprehend the meaning behind any action, phrase, sentence, or thought. And while we were "coming down" everything still kept going back to that single thought. Being moreso in our "right mind" we did not contemplate much on that thought, however it still stood in the back of our minds.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by EVOLghost

Hmm....I dig. I've always loved mushrooms. I haven't had any for a while...I knew someone who had chocolate with psilocybin in 'em but I haven't had a chance to grab any.

One thing I do not understand is the so called "bad trips". A friend of mine had one and just couldn't get the thought of death out of his mind. he said he constantly thought he could die at any moment, and at first I tried to understand him, but then one Friday night I decided to stay in and take a few grams(awesome night listening to De-Loused in a Comatorium). I tried to engage the thought of death and stuff, but it did not bring me down one bit. I simply wasn't afraid of not existing anymore.

I would say the closest thing to a bad trip for me was simply not knowing what to do next. One day I was suppose to trip with a few friends, but it only ended being me and another. We were in a house with friends and stuff but as the night went on, we were left alone in the basement. I was blissfully ignorant listening to ATL on my computer, when my friend asks me, "so...what do we do now?" This question was everything to us from that point on. We simply could not comprehend the meaning behind any action, phrase, sentence, or thought. And while we were "coming down" everything still kept going back to that single thought. Being moreso in our "right mind" we did not contemplate much on that thought, however it still stood in the back of our minds.

I used to not believe in the bad trip horror stories, I thought they were Reaganomic fear tactics or simply psychedelic cheveunism by the OGs when I was a youngster coming up. Then I discovered bad trips, not my own, but others with me. I have had hundreds of mushroom sessions with dozens of people, and 99.9% of the time it went perfect, however there have been three distinct horror stories which are indeed terrifying. My friend Jeremy lost his mind completely, utterly, absolutely, and it took two hours for him simply to understand that "he was Jeremy" and during such he was wild, kicking, spitting, yelling histeric and incoherent statements that were still quite insightful when analyzed later. Then another time my friend Demond also lost his mind, he became English, with a full cockney accent for about three hours. I tried to send him home because he needed to rematerialize in his own house with his own family and pictures of himself on the wall, because unlike jeremy, demond's dissassociative condition was only escalating and he was becoming even dangerous and hostile, aside from having completely lost his mind. that being said, I rarely through mushroom parties anymore because like the article suggests, psilocybin experiences draw out only scars and psychological wounds like a salve to a nasty boil, and sometimes the rupture can be disturbing and smelly like the actual wound.

My own horror stories are not with psylocybin, mushrooms are my Ally, but with Daturas I have had serious problems. On hells bells, the initial trip was quite pleasant. I actually hallucinated, not visuals or trails, but a real hallucination, that there was sitting with me in my front yard every friend I have ever had, and they all were sitting in the same green lawn chair that I was, and I was walking around telling jokes with all of them smoking cigarettes. After somebody I hadn't seen in years said a funny joke, I recall laughing, and then realizing I was standing alone in my yard at 3AM. So I go inside laughing, and plopped down on my bed. When I felt the bundle of plankets I jumped up thinking I had just jumped on my sleeping girlfriend. The only catch was that she had left, in fact the whole reason I drank that nasty brew was because she had left earlier that night so I went across the street to hang out where they offered me that brew. Next I had dyslexia for two solid days, terrifying auditory hallucinations, and a constant stream of visuals and trails, which lasted for 8 consecutive days, and didn't fully subside for 14 days. I had to go to court the next morning, which was a surreal experience. I couldn't think straight, I couldn't read, I was paranoid, bug eyed blinging, and seeing trails on everything. The worst part was my brain would literallly just stop and pause, midsentance and I'd be stuck there with my mouth hanging open like certain schizophrenic disorders, my mind was fully aware of what was happening, but my body simply couldn't respond. The weirdest part was that after about 30 seconds hanging there, I would suddenly just pick up talking exactly to the syllable I left on, even though my mind had been still aware, the tape rewinded to the original thought.

By the seventh day, I had come to accept a colorful world of trails and visuals as my ordinary reality, and that I must have fucked up. Of course, the true psychonaut that I am, I drank that noxious brew again with less drastic results. Then a few years later I smoked Salvia. The first time was nice, pleasant, like a candy fry with mickey mouse visuals, trails. So I smoked a different batch. The strongest trip ever. I actually hallucinated. Fully. I left all reality and went into another, terrifying dimension filled with characters more bizarre then a Clive Barker novel. This seemed to be an absolute eternity, however the actual durration I am told was about 2 minutes. They said I suddenly dropped the bong and started spinning uncontrollably and with increasing speed on the floor like the three stooges. I recall coming to in the front yard, when I noticed the sun again, and celebrated life coming back to me, because in the vision the most frightening thing I heard was one of the characters in the vision said:

"Oh shit, fuck.. another one of them has woken up, now he is going to be like the others and swear he comes from some world where he is a person, and walks, and talks, and has this God named Jesus.."

to which another interrupted and said, "Damn, just like all the others.."

and a third then spoke to me when he noticed I was overhearing this dialogue and told me, "Its ok. This is the real world. There is no such thing as humans with legs who talk. All of that was just a bad dream you were having, its not real, this is whats real."

In true psychonaut style, I also smoked this batch again, surprisingly with the EXACT same results, took me to the EXACT same dimension, inhabited by the EXACT same characters. The only thing that had brought be back to reality? Chanting the one thing that made me feel a bit of control and cognition, the Jesus Prayer "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me." That is what transported me into the front yard to reappear in our reality.

The vision of that world has never left me. it looked exactly like those Reebok shoes with all the faces on the bottom, thats what all those characters were, with vertical zippers for mouths, and we were all cogs in a wheel, like a tank, and there was a pulsating "tread" which rhythmically rolled over me, which felt like being tossed by a wave at the beach. This I understand is The Wheel.This is why I am a Christian by the way, but its not a story I can share with my sunday school class

[DeadDiscoDildo]

Originally Posted by EVOLghost

Hmm....I dig. I've always loved mushrooms. I haven't had any for a while...I knew someone who had chocolate with psilocybin in 'em but I haven't had a chance to grab any.

One thing I do not understand is the so called "bad trips". A friend of mine had one and just couldn't get the thought of death out of his mind. he said he constantly thought he could die at any moment, and at first I tried to understand him, but then one Friday night I decided to stay in and take a few grams(awesome night listening to De-Loused in a Comatorium). I tried to engage the thought of death and stuff, but it did not bring me down one bit. I simply wasn't afraid of not existing anymore.

I would say the closest thing to a bad trip for me was simply not knowing what to do next. One day I was suppose to trip with a few friends, but it only ended being me and another. We were in a house with friends and stuff but as the night went on, we were left alone in the basement. I was blissfully ignorant listening to ATL on my computer, when my friend asks me, "so...what do we do now?" This question was everything to us from that point on. We simply could not comprehend the meaning behind any action, phrase, sentence, or thought. And while we were "coming down" everything still kept going back to that single thought. Being moreso in our "right mind" we did not contemplate much on that thought, however it still stood in the back of our minds.

Well, what's not to understand? He is afraid and you are not, so it heighhtened his insecurities and really...everyone has one bad trip like that, it's called ego death.

Funny you should post this, I've done lsd every weekend this month after a 2 year break. did a quarter hit the first and second weekend, then a full hit the third, and a half the 4th. What a great month. This stuff was super strong too.

My friend also has psilicin extract, I was thinking of trying that too.

He said it lasts 4 hours and is like a mixture of dmt visuals/3 hits of acid, and that music sounds amazing on it. I may try to record some, or just chill.

But yeah, psyched

[tesla69]

Originally Posted by EVOLghost

One thing I do not understand is the so called "bad trips". .

You never really know what is in people's heads - one who appears to be a calm high-performer may really just be a series of desperate coping strategies...maybe thats all we all are anyway...

But also you can't discount that on the black market who even knows what is and where it came from and how many lower intestines it had been smuggled in before you got it.

But in the 50's people like Huxley felt only the cultural elites should use these hallucinogens. Then Kesey and Ginsberg and Leary came along and helped to roll them out to the masses...

<<Daturas I have had serious problems. >>
I smoked a little of this about 20 years ago and decided it would be a good idea to walk to Tower records. It was a little weird because I lost the ability to perceieve dimensions, everything became flat, and all the edges of the buildings looking down the street all seemed to be one flat surface. I didn't like it and threw the shit away. Its absolutely devastating stuff...I suspect it was one of the most active ingredients in Don Juans brew..

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by tesla69

You never really know what is in people's heads - one who appears to be a calm high-performer may really just be a series of desperate coping strategies...maybe thats all we all are anyway...

True, and surprisngly, whether its myself or those friends I referenced, the person who has the bad trip in the end and hindsight will not really call it "bad" in the negative connotation so much as "intense" and it is only really "bad" to the outside observer. The trip is always what it is, it is neutral and has no moral value, it simply is what it is, and the pattern seeking animals that we are, we try to make sense of it later. the advantage of the trip, like the article suggests, is that it takes the user beyond their cognitive comprehension. It is a neurochemical and psychological adventure, and it takes you where it will, aside from your own intentions. It is what it is. I love mushrooms, but LSD is way to intense, its not "bad" so much as less manageble, mushrooms are my Ally, LSD is a just a trip.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

"Men's perspectives become flat, comprehending only the light-reflecting, tangible surfaces of existence; the vista into depth closes over. "

[EVOLghost]

Oh! I am reminded of another time, my first time actually, that my friend basically became a vegetable. He wouldn't respond, but he was awake. He would walk, for a little while before he was just collapse again. He was like that for about an hour and a half or so...

[EVOLghost]

Hopefully I'll have some good LSD within the next month or so.


Daturas...I don't know what that is...I'll have to check erowid...

[ilduclo]

I know LSD and other psychedelic drugs made me a better person. Mushrooms seemed to just accentuate my sense of humor.

[EVOLghost]

^ lol. Yeah...another reason why Shrooms are brilliant.

The beginning of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie made me die of laughter. Also Big Trouble in Little CHina....god...

[ann ashtray]

I think I've heard something about this at least once a year for the last several years. Of course those of us that have indulged, already know it's true.

[!@#$%!]

más peyote por favor

[EVOLghost]

mas payasos por favor.

[static-harmony]

All I remember from my only trip is, chattering teeth and a lightbulb in the center of the room.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by EVOLghost

mas payasos por favor.

¿no te asustan?

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

más peyote por favor

good luck with that. it's been so over-cultivated in Texas that if caught, they slap you with the crime of picking an endangered species as well as the drug charge.

but, fuck Tejáss. tell me you've got a hookup!

[EVOLghost]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

¿no te asustan?

No, ya soy grande.