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Philosophy & Science / Re: The Therapeutic Value of Psychedelics and other drugs
« on: September 13, 2013, 02:29:18 pm »Quote
You may sense a slight bitterness to my post. I'm just suffering from Junkie bias: being surrounded by dim witted hedonists and new age hippies for so long one becomes desensitised to the correlation between stupid enthusiasm for narcotics and the rate of psych ward institutionalizations and wrecked lives.
Having said all that I hope to see the day when a sound understanding of the possible therapeutic effects of certain drugs becomes uncontroversial.
Actually, I'm glad to have you in this thread. It's easy to become so optimistic about a treatment you miss the other side. I've a friend who strongly feels people should be able to self-medicate with psychedelics and I'm very much against that.
I also lack personal experience because I've not done any recreational drug save alcohol, and even then I've never been drunk. I'm just looking at the potential for treatment.
For example:
Mind-altering drug could offer life free of heroin
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Several clinical trials have shown that low doses of ibogaine taken over the course of a few weeks can greatly reduce cravings for heroin and other drugs. There was extensive research on it in the 1990s, with good evidence of safety in animals and a handful of studies in humans. The US National Institute on Drug Abuse invested over $1 million, but then abandoned the project in 1995. A study had shown that at high doses, ibogaine caused some brain cell degeneration in rats. Lower doses similar to those used in human addiction trials showed no such effect, however....
But anecdotal accounts suggest that a single treatment is just as effective as multiple low doses. The dose is much higher, although still nowhere near the levels found to cause harm in rats. A single treatment is less expensive than standard addiction therapies, and the intensity of the experience is not a recreational high that users seem to want to repeat....
"There have been claims by the government that there's a high potential for abuse and no medical use, and claims from ibogaine advocates that one dose is a miracle cure. We're trying to gather some scientific evidence to better evaluate it," says Rick Doblin, executive director of MAPS. A similar study is also being carried out in New Zealand.