LSD Is Ready for a Comeback

[Jopa]

 

In his new book “Acid Test,” author Tom Shroder tells the story of Nick, a veteran haunted by PTSD. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Shroder explains why LSD is so important to veterans, and the roadblocks researchers face getting it to them.

LSD, an illicit drug with a serious stigma, was once the darling of the psychotherapy world.

Synthesized by Swiss chemist Alfred Hofman in 1938, the two decades following its birth were populated with study after study showing positive effects. With its ability to reduce defensiveness, help users relive early experiences, and make unconscious material accessible, it proved tremendously successful in therapy.

In a plethora of studies from the 1950s, researchers found the drug, and other hallucinogens in its family, to be successful in treating victims of psychosomatic illnesses ranging from depression to addiction. With fear and hesitation stripped away, psychologists could help their patients dive headfirst into a painful memory, feeling, or thought, and work through it. For some, it sped up a process of awakening that may have taken years. For others, it opened a door that may never have been found otherwise.

But with the widespread recreational use of LSD beginning the 1960s, came both fear from both the general public and the government. When the drug was placed on the schedule 1 substance list in 1970, it not only became illegal to use medically, but to perform the research necessary to prove it had medical value.

More than 40 years later, the criminalization of Hofman’s drug still persists. The means and approval to research the hallucinogen on humans is few and far between. The freedom of sufferers who may benefit to access it is all but nonexistent.

Nowhere are the negative effects of LSD’s fate more pronounced than in the story of America’s veterans. Of the many illnesses for which the hallucinogen proved potentially life saving, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was one of the most profound. An estimated 500,000 Iraq-Afghanistan military veterans are suffering from PTSD, an excruciating illness that is believed to fuel the estimated 20 suicides that result from that demographic per day. Under the protection of scientific studies of LSD, veterans with PTSD are being saved. Why has no one noticed?

In a book out September 9 called Acid Test, author Tom Shroder follows one veteran named Nick on his journey to face the evil visions that haunted him long after fighting in the Middle East. The author spoke with The Daily Beast about his research.

 

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Edited September 8, 2014 by Jopa

[EmtHipple]

hopefully this can get a keep the ball rolling, Nothing, and I really mean nothing should be "Illegal" just because some people choose to abuse it, there should be reasonable limits on the availability of some things that can be hazardous when used outside the patient/ clinician environment, But to completely ban certain things when there are other much more dangerous things in the world that are perfectly legal and not at all regulated is completely and totally asinine.