Johns Hopkins just published an interesting summary of the research recently on treating mood disorders with hallucinogens. In the most recent Depression and Anxiety Health Alert, the author chronicles the history of hallucinogens and how they affect the central nervous system to release the right kind of neurotransmitters. As per the Johns Hopkins report:
Hallucinogens (also called psychedelics) were a promising area of research in the 1960s and early 1970s, when they were being developed as possible treatments for a number of conditions, including depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. These drugs were banned in the ’70s and ’80s, however, after their recreational use became a widespread problem.
In 1990, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) again began allowing researchers to study the effects of drugs like MDMA (also known as the street drug “Ecstasy”), psilocybin (“magic mushrooms”), and ketamine (“Special K”). These drugs are thought to change the way the brain normally processes information and may provide people with mood disorders a new way of looking at the world and their problems
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For the random chance 5% or less that might potentially have the therapeutic response to these above substances, it is absurd and outlandish that clinicians are publicizing them as treatment interventions. I have met too many patients, still in active addiction, who are just trying to validate getting access to these substances to continue to abuse them.
Gee, with the growing abuse population of controlled II-V substances in this country, do we as doctors have to now apply for controlled I substance licenses to further ruin peoples’ lives!?
I would like to meet these colleagues who offer these solutions!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20660494 So, new research from the NIH (US Govt) says just the opposite & all of a sudden we have this anti-cannabis article. This has always been the way prohibitionists fight medical advancements that prove cannabis has truly unique medicinal uses. If we rely on poorly constructed research with bought & paid for results like that from prohibition sources we’ll never be able to take advantage of the highly valuable cannabis plant. Most people don’t know that cannabis extracts of 40% potency were successfully used in 50% of all American meds to treat over 100 illnesses prior to being unjustly banned in 1937. Take it up with the NIH (US Govt)If you don’t like the truth that cannabis can & does help schizophrenics.
i find using medical marijuana (i’m from CA) a godsend. its been the only thing that has helped me trying to shed a 15 year self-injury habit. i realize its to each their own but sometimes you have to think out of the box, esp if nothing else works.
I hear you, I have the same issue.
I also use it to manage chronic pain from a degenerative bone disorder in addition to my depression.
This amazing plant is a GODsend and I am so glad I can use something natural that is not deadly or that won’t eventually cause kidney/liver failure like those long time users of pain pills aquire.
I spent several years without it to be sure I didn’t need it.
It was horrible.
I tried all kinds of brain changing meds [creepy legal drugs].
It was horrible.
I am a regular user of this strong medicine which has a bad rep thanks to the glamorization of thug life by media/music artists or @#%$ing hippies.
I once read an article about how rats show the same sort of distribution as humans (from teetotalers to drunks) in their use of alcohol. So I am neither pro or con about use–you take your chances. But for those families or individuals with a history of chronic depression and drug-related schizophrenia, pot and alcohol can be very destructive. One thing I’ve learned is that we don’t know enough about human genetic makeup to take drugs wildly–have a doctor prescribe and monitor usage is one way to help people who are already having difficulties or will likely have difficulties.
Has the world gone mad and those of us who live will mental illness actually the sane ones. I can’t believe that people are advocating using hallucinogenic drugs to treat people who may be using these drugs already as a negative coping strategy and may be addicted to these, to people who are predisposed to having hallucinations as their symptoms already and who may already experience them. I have lost count on how many courses I have both delivered and and attended where such drugs are deemed a cause either by themselves or in tandem with other issues. Just the very fact that they are hallucinogenic makes them unusable how the heck are you going to control whether someone suddenly believes they can fly and nose dive out the nearest window or that they can take on any adversary whether they are human or a moving vehicle on a motorway oh and there is the problem of one pill one death as with ecstasy, MDMA, and others assuming of course that someone isn’t mixing it with other drugs illicit or legal and likely to get behind the wheel or god forbid live in the US or somewhere else where it’s legal to own firearms!!!!!!!!
When you know it works you don’t have to debate it.
It should be legal so more people could be helped. More Doctors should be open to it. Each person deserves to live and grow to be better people, live productive, authentic, healthy and happy lives.
Love & Light
Ive used weed to overcome some anxiety issues myself. Its really liberated how I feel and I know when its finally legalized that the stigma around marijuana will melt and people will be more open about its positive effects.
Move to California or Maine to get an MD to legally prescribe it for a medical condition.
Also, hope the doctor’s letter will explain and validate your positive drug screen at your employment.
Also, hope the doctor’s letter will explain your DUI charge should you be irresponsible and drive while intoxicated. Gee, those things aren’t really thought about when all the focus is on accessing an inconsistent substance to allegedly treat an illness that has a myriad of interventions outside controlled I substance application.
Let’s be honest, people, most whom I have met who pine for these drugs have not exhausted other less invasive or more predictable interventions first. Does say a lot about the rationalizing and minimizing of abusing or dependent behaviors though, eh?
Are there any research centers still testing Ketamine treatment for severe depression?
This is all very interesting to me. I do not have an addictive personality. I have had treatment resistant depression for 12 years. Nothing has worked. I have tried everything and have the best known psychiatrist in my area and he cannot help me either. At one time I was given adderall. Don’t ask me why the FDA approved this amphetamine but they have. I was on it and felt great! I had two great years of depression free life because I could DO things instead of laying around the house all day. I was prescribed to take it twice a day. Some days I did, but most days I did not. After two years I began to think, “What am I doing? This is so artificial — it’s an amphetamine. I quit taking it. Worst mistake of my life. I plunged right back into depression. I feel it’s better to take adderall than go through the agony of mental illness.
Depression has been a common thing is our family. Weed really has been the only thing that has had a positive lasting effect… other man made drugs have just suppressed the problem and made it worse!!
Joel Hassman, MD. you are a mindless tool.
this article is about studying hallucinogens and their effects for people who suffer from disorders that are very nearly never successfully treated. why are you pitching a fit
you sir are simply a tool to big pharm. you will sling paxil or prozac all day, but someone mentions studying a mushroom’s effect on a person with depression and you very nearly move your bowels in your under garments. boob. do yourself and the rest of the world a favor, unlearn everything you have convinced yourself you have learned, sit in a corner wait to be called upon.
Hey folks,
Lets be realistic about this, any medication formulated from these substances would obviously be in a VERY low therapeutic dose.In my humble opinion we should never close our minds to clinical studies that may produce substances that will improve peoples lives(and perhaps provide hope to the hopeless)because,speaking from experience life can truly be terrible for someone who see’s no color or pleasure from life.I know Methylphenidate(concerta) is considered dangerous because it supposedly slightly mimics the cocaine effect,I have been on 54 mg for about six months and after the first week my whole outlook changed for the better,my point being all the current prescription meds are prescription only because the are considered abuseable or dangerous So as far as possible new meds go keep an open mind.You don’t see goody 2 shoes going after alchohol,and thats one of the most dangerous drugs going, just ask all the families that get destroyed by it.Folks who do not suffer from these maladies cannot possibly understand being trapped by your own mind and not having any control over whether or not you feel joy or have hope for the future.Dr.Hassman has a right to his opinion but as I said ,unless you have experienced thinking death may be better than continueing without hope,You truly cannot nix research that may save lives.Thanks for listening
It’s understandably tempting for some people to cope with anxiety by smoking marijuana or drinking alcohol. These options offer short term solutions to feelings of anxiety. However they are extremely unlikely to help you learn to cope better with anxiety in the long run.
Yes, panic, tempting to smoke cannabis, or take hallucinogenics. All those are super horrible for you, aren’t they. Because countless people die from pot and shrooms every year. And none die taking those lovely legally pushed drugs, cue: xanax, klonapin, hydrocodone, and the list goes on and on. Thanks, but no thanks, been there, tried those. If you think either cannabis or marijuana are ‘short term’ solutions, then you, my good friend, are merely one of the wonderfully misinformed/lied to segments of our populous.
As a recovered meth addict I must say that marijuana is not for everyone. However, to me it is like a glass of red wine to a nonalcoholic-nice and relaxing. I use on a daily basis, and after overcoming years of medical and non-medical drug addictions I have to say that for the first time ever I have a 4.0 GPA. Prior to this throughout my high school education my gpa was a 0.9. I feel that the facts stated in your article are sadly misinformed. The government has worked long and hard at conditioning society that marijuana is a dangerous hallucinogenic. It is not a danger the danger is in the addict who abuses anything. We are for the majority a chemically dependent nation thanks to the pharmaceutical and governmental influences. It is time we break away, learn our own facts and support this resourceful multifaceted plant. The national institute for drug abuse is a governmentally funded program, the hands in the pocket so to speak. Its bullshit but you’re right everyone has their own path to rehabilitation
it makes me laugh when people talk about people getting addicted to hallucinogens, or how people can hallucinate that they can fly. that’s not how it works…do your research before you say stuff like that.
Marijuana definitely has helped with my anxiety– after 3 years of smoking, I can get back to that relaxed place without smoking anything.
Hallucinogens are a little more complicated: there is nothing inherently about them that can cure depression, but they can lead to some really positive and life-affirming experiences, which will of course lift most unpleasant feelings. It definitely helped with my depression by making the world so much more beautiful, but there’s lots of people who it won’t help.
I have suffered from depression and anxiety for some 20 years( I am 37), and was a chronic drug abuser for 15 of those years. I am not blind to the fact that this may in no small measure this was responsible for my troubles. In this time, including the last 5 years when I have abstained from the use of “street” drugs, I have taken SSRI’s , snri’s, lithium , none of which have helped more than fleetingly. As I write I am chronically depressed and anxious, and read the above article with great interest. So desperate have I become that I am seriously considering returning to periodic marijuana use as like the author states(and I ((mis)) quote), “getting high is preferable to taking one’s life”. I am already socially withdrawn and am not so much amotivated as extremely fearful of any social interaction whatsoever. I don’t feel that my condition could really deteriorate anymore than it already has, so I am willing to give this a shot.
Until research can be done with marijuana, this is purely conjecture.