Effects of LSD 100% Positive in New Swiss Study, LSD Still Awesome

January 25, 2014 / esfein / 15 Comments

LSD alters consciousness in extraordinary ways. http://www.marijuana.com/

The incredible therapeutic properties of LSD have once again been confirmed in a recent Swiss study. It was the first therapeutic study on LSD to take place in 40 years. The study specifically focused on treating anxiety associated with life-threatening illnesses. Psychotherapy was also used in conjunction with LSD to treat participants’ anxiety.

Related Article: Afraid to Wake Up? Conquering Fear and Life

What is so scary about seeing the smell of flowers? pulsatta.blogspot.com

12 participants in total were involved in the study. Amazingly, every single participant reported experiencing major decreases in anxiety levels due to the LSD-assisted psychotherapy. These decreases in anxiety persisted even 12 months after being administered the LSD. Furthermore, no negative effects were reported by any of the participants. The study was led by Peter Gasser, M.D., who stated that,

…we had in 30 sessions (22 with full dose 200 μg LSD and 8 with placebo dose 20 μg LSD) no severe side effects such as psychotic experiences or suicidal crisis or flashbacks or severe anxieties (bad trips)…That means that we can show that LSD treatment can be safe when it is done in a carefully controlled clinical setting.

Subjects receiving 200 µg LSD and psychotherapy, compared to an active placebo of 20 µg LSD, experienced a reduction in anxiety. Because the reduction in anxiety was still present at a 12-month follow up, Gasser believes that LSD has incredible potential for treating a whole array of psychological conditions. This study is particularly remarkable because unlike previous studies on the efficacy of LSD-assisted psychotherapy, this study employed a random, double blind active placebo.

Researchers noted that one of the most important aspects of the study was that the participants were able to freely contemplate and discuss their experiences while under the effects of LSD, as well as after the trip had ended. A structured and supportive environment appears to be crucial in attaining psychological benefits as well as ensuring that a “bad trip” doesn’t occur.

LSD blotter paper depicting Albert Hoffman on Bicycle Day. www.trip-dealer.com

Psychedelics of all types have been studied and found almost across the board to be incredibly safe and highly effective tools in psychotherapy. Despite this clearly illustrated fact, psychedelics continue to be irrationally feared and demonized in the same ignorant fashion as cannabis. Interested in LSD? Let’s go for a trip.

Psychedelics such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin do not cause brain damage and are considered by medical professionals to be non-addictive. Over 30 million people currently living in the US have used LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline.

Lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, was discovered accidentally by Albert Hoffman on April 16, 1943. He had actually unintentionally created it 5 years prior while attempting to synthesize potentially medicinal active constituents from ergot fungus, a fungus that grows on rye. For 5 years the synthesis collected dust until he decided to reexamine it. While reexamining the LSD a small amount was absorbed into Hoffman’s fingertip. He describes his experience:

Last Friday, April 16,1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.

Hoffman was intrigued, and three days later he tried it again, marking April 19, 1943 as the first day a human being ever intentionally consumed LSD. This day is now known as “Bicycle Day,” because Hoffman rode his bike home while he was tripping. Hoffman and his wife spent the rest of their lives advocating the use of LSD, psilocybin, and other psychedelics in the field of psychotherapy. Below is a documentary on LSD which focuses on Albert Hoffman.

The effects of LSD last for 6-11 hours on average. This time period is dependent on various factors such as dosage and body mass.

LSD Duration
Oral
Total Duration	6 – 11 hrs
Onset	20 – 60 mins
Coming Up	15 – 30 mins
Plateau	3 – 6 hrs
Coming Down	3 – 5 hrs

After Effects	2 – 5 hrs
Hangover / Day After	– – –

The effects of LSD are numerous, and are entirely dependent on set (your personality, goals, desires, mental state, etc.) and setting ( your environment, time of day, people you are surrounded by, etc.). According to Erowid, the potential effects of LSD include:

POSITIVE

mental and physical stimulation
increase in associative & creative thinking
mood lift
increased awareness & appreciation of music
sensory enhancement (taste, smell, etc)
closed- and open-eye visuals, including trails, color shifts, brightening, etc.
life-changing spiritual experiences
therapeutic psychological reflection
feeling of oceanic connectedness to the universe; blurring of boundaries between self and other

NEUTRAL

general change in consciousness
pupil dilation
difficulty focusing
increased salivation and mucus production (causes coughing in some people)
unusual body sensations (facial flushing, chills, goosebumps, body energy)
unusual thoughts and speech
change in perception of time
quickly changing emotions (happiness, fear, gidiness, anxiety, anger, joy, irritation)
slight increase in body temperature
slight increase in heart rate
increase in yawning (without being tired)
looping, recursive, out of control thinking

NEGATIVE

anxiety
tension, jaw tension
increased perspiration
difficulty regulating body temperature
nausea
dizziness, confusion
insomnia
megalomania
over-awareness & over-sensitization to music and noise
paranoia, fear, and panic
unwanted and overwhelming feelings
unwanted life-changing spiritual experiences
flashbacks

Examples of the creativity involved with LSD blotter paper. http://www.tagohio.com/

Clearly a controlled setting is essential in attaining positive therapeutic results when using LSD. While a “bad trip” is always possible, carefully controlling set and setting can virtually guarantee a positive, life altering experience. As researcher Teri Krebs from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Department of Neuroscience explains,

Everything has some potential for negative effects, but psychedelic use is overall considered to pose a very low risk to the individual and to society. Psychedelics can elicit temporary feelings of anxiety and confusion, but accidents leading to serious injury are extremely rare. Early speculation that psychedelics might lead to mental health problems was based on a small number of case reports and did not take into account either the widespread use of psychedelics or the not infrequent rate of mental health problems in the general population. Over the past 50 years tens of millions of people have used psychedelics and there just is not much evidence of long-term problems.

It is extremely difficult to describe a psychedelic experience, largely because it is so utterly strange relative to the state of consciousness we normally operate in. In a book called The Psychedelic Experience, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and Ralph Metzner describe a psychedelic trip.

A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of spacetime dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD,psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures.

Related Article: Mystery of Death Solved: DMT is the Key

LSD and other psychedelics have the potential to wildly alter a person’s life in extraordinary ways. A great example of this is illustrated by the drastic reduction in recidivism when US prisoners are given just one dose of LSD under the guidance of a trained professional. A recent study on recidivism rates among substance abusing community offenders found that the use of hallucinogens during therapy had incredible success in curbing anti-social behavior and treating addiction. This is great news since the United States has more prisoners than any other country in the world. In many states recidivism rates can be as high as 78%.

Set and setting are the key to any LSD trip. http://www.sevencounties.org/

The fact is that LSD is awesome, as long as it is used in the right way, and under the right circumstances. Then again, the same applies to everything. Hammers are awesome, unless you are using them to break toes at a 5 year old’s party. Noodles are awesome, unless you’re using them to poke people in the eye at a local library. LSD is awesome, as long as it is used by an experienced user or under the guidance of a trained professional.

Even the CIA is interested psychedlics such as in LSD. MKUltra wasn’t performed just for fun after all. Too bad the CIA was too busy trying to use LSD as a mind control device to recognize its value in giving aid to ailing minds.

Below are two interviews from the 1950s of people who were asked various questions while under the effects of LSD. Although they provide only minimal insight into the actual psychedelic experience, they are interesting to watch nonetheless.

And a more recent one for good measure:

Expand your mind, mind your expansion. Be always growing.

Sources:

http://maps.org/pdf/LDA1_FINAL_CSR_20Aug13.pdf

http://psychedelicfrontier.com/2014/01/maps-completes-first-new-therapeutic-lsd-study-in-40-years/

http://www.maps.org/research/

http://www.psychedelic-library.org/child1.htm

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_effects.shtml

http://jop.sagepub.com/content/28/1/62.abstract

http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=17

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

http://www.cracked.com/blog/five-fun-facts-about-the-cia-and-lsd/

http://www.ntnu.edu/news/2013-news/lsd-survey

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0063972

Write a Prisoner

February 23, 2013 / esfein / Leave a comment

http://www.writeaprisoner.com

Prison: Punishment or Reform?

The main reason for most prisons is supposedly to remove potential threats to the safety of society. This is what I was told growing up at least. However, I don’t think we’ve properly thought through what happens to the people when they are exiled from society. The New Yorker poses a good question to ponder:

How is it that our civilization, which rejects hanging and flogging and disembowelling, came to believe that caging vast numbers of people for decades is an acceptably humane sanction?

Where the people go and what they do when they’re removed from society are incredibly important things to consider. Of course there are things that can be done in society to prevent people from becoming criminals, but once it gets past that point, should prison be punishment or reform?

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life. Every day, at least fifty thousand men—a full house at Yankee Stadium—wake in solitary confinement, often in “supermax” prisons or prison wings, in which men are locked in small cells, where they see no one, cannot freely read and write, and are allowed out just once a day for an hour’s solo “exercise.” (Lock yourself in your bathroom and then imagine you have to stay there for the next ten years, and you will have some sense of the experience.) Prison rape is so endemic—more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year—that it is routinely held out as a threat, part of the punishment to be expected.

It’s evident that prison is often seen as punishment for those who have “wronged” society, but should prison be only a place where people are punished?

Prisons today operate less in the rehabilitative mode of the Northern reformers “than in a retributive mode that has long been practiced and promoted in the South,”

Are all people just one mistake away from being forever forsaken? Or should prison be a place where the misguided can grow into better people?

Prisoner Recidivism and How to Help Change It: Write a Prisoner

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov

In a study following two thirds of total released prisoners in the US,

67.5% of prisoners released in 1994 were rearrested within 3 years, an increase over the 62.5% found for those released in 1983

Research has shown that education and training can help stop the cycle of incarceration that has become so normal in America. There are many programs in prisons all over the world designed to help prisoners. Either by encouraging prisoners to read or promoting positive behaviors.

One such program trying to add a splash of reform to this dreary situation is Write a Prisoner. The group focuses on connecting inmates with positive influences on the outside world to help foster responsibility, good habits, and a positive attitude about life. It is meant to combat depression and create a connection to society to avoid feelings of isolation.

With millions of inmates in America’s penal system, it is important to keep in mind that nearly all of them will at some point be released. “

In the Write a Prisoner‘s list of Top Ten Ways to Reduce Recidivism it talks about the different ways people on the outside can help change the lives of inmates for the better. You can write a letter and change an inmate’s life

By encouraging a positive attitude, an attitude of realistic hopefulness, and the knowledge that someone on the outside cares. Believe it or not, your few words of sincere encouragement make a tremendous impact on an inmate

The website has inmate profiles to help you connect with an inmate and get started changing someone’s life. Here are a few testimonials from former inmates who were part of the Write a Prisoner program:

One cannot fully understand the therapeutic effects one receives from correspondence with his or her peers on the outside.” (M.J., Hagerstown, MD)

Despair, disappointment, anger, frustration, hopelessness and heartache wake us up in the morning and put us to sleep at night. We have become the forgotten, the faceless, the overlooked, the unwanted, and the unloved.” (H.S., White Deer, PA)

My friends and family outside of prison have all disappeared. Everyday is a struggle to retain an ounce of dignity. I don’t seek pity. I ask you to remember that prison is a very lonely place. Having someone willing to listen, confide in and be an outside source of strength will help to make prison life bearable.” (T.C., Shakopee, MN)

The worst solitude is to be destitute of a sincere friendship!” (R.L., Raiford, FL)

So if you want to get involved remember that helping others is good for your health!

Sources and Resources:

The New Yorker: Caging of America

Video Innovative Program Aims to Break Cradle-to-Prison Cycle

Bureau of Justice Statistics

Write a Prisoner

Young Men Are ‘Victims of Jail Cycle’

Write a Prisoner Top Ten Ways to Reduce Recidivism

Brazilian Prisoners Read Their Way to Freedom

December 13, 2012 / esfein / 4 Comments

http://www.case.edu

Brazil’s “Redemption through Reading” program has announced that it will offer to reduce prison sentences for inmates in high security prisons by four days (up to a maximum of 48 days per year) for each book they read. They will also need to submit a well written book report proving their comprehension.

The program is an effort to reduce recidivism through education and provide incarcerated men and women with a different worldview. Brazil will test out the program’s efficiency with criminals from four high-security prisons. They will have 4 weeks to read each book and write a book report.

So far there is no approved book list or detailed requirements. I can’t imagine The Anarchist Cookbook or Prison Escape would be appropriate reading material.

Sao Paulo lawyer Andre Kehdi stated that:

“A person can leave prison more enlightened and with an enlarged vision of the world.”

Many people in favor of the program argue that studies all over the world regarding prisons suggest that

“long periods of isolation with little mental stimulus contributed to poor mental health and led to intense feelings of anger, frustration, and anxiety.”

Hopefully reading and writing can provide adequate mental stimulus to ensure prisoners never return. However, reading and writing aren’t the only approach being tried on inmates to reduce recidivism. In America we’re trying some new techniques too. From puppies to entrepreneurship, recidivism is being tackled head on.

Sources:

The Globe and Mail: Brazilian Inmates Offered Reduced Sentences for Reading Books

Huffington Post: Prison Programs Take Innovative Approach To Reducing Recidivism