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LSD the answer to alcohol abuse?
Recently revealed studies from a Norwegian university in the 1960s show that the hallucinogenic drug LSD could be a cure for alcoholics.
Presented in the “Journal of Psychopharmacology” the research looked at data from six trials involving 500 patients and found there was a “significant beneficial effect” on alcohol abuse which lasted several months after the drug was taken.
The studies in Norway were conducted between 1966 and 1970 and appeared to show that a single dose of the drug between 210 and 800 micrograms led to 59% of the test subjects showing reduced levels of alcohol misuse.
The effect on alcohol abuse was strongest for six months before it wore off completely after a year and it was suggested that more regular doses might lead to a more sustained benefit.
The report’s authors, Teri Krebs and Pal-Orjan Johansen, said: “A single dose of LSD has a significant beneficial effect on alcohol misuse.
“Given the evidence for a beneficial effect of LSD on alcoholism, it is puzzling why this treatment approach has been largely overlooked.”
LSD is one of the most powerful mind-altering hallucinogens ever identified. It changes the way serotonin – which affects perception, behaviour, hunger and mood – works in the brain.
I was very interested to read about the Norwegian’s study. My uncle, Professor Humphry Osmond, started trials on the treatments of alcoholics using LSD in 1953 with his colleague Abram Hoffer, around a decade before the Norwegian research. Born and trained in the UK, Humphry Osmond moved to Saskatchewan in Canada then on to the USA where he treated both alcholics and schizophrenics, amongst other patients. It is a great pity that his work was halted due to the increased misuse of LSD for recreational purposes. People outside the field will know him best as the person who coined the word “psychedelic”. Truly an uncle to be proud of.
LSD was once considered a completely mainstream and promising treatment for alcoholism. Johns Hopkins University Press recently published a book about Humphry Osmond and his research.
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Psychedelic Psychiatry is the tale of medical researchers working to understand LSD’s therapeutic properties just as escalating anxieties about drug abuse in modern society laid the groundwork for the end of experimentation at the edge of psychopharmacology. Historian Erika Dyck deftly recasts our understanding of LSD to show it as an experimental substance, a medical treatment, and a tool for exploring psychotic perspectives-as well as a recreational drug. She recounts the inside story of the early days of LSD research in small-town, prairie Canada, when Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer claimed incredible advances in treating alcoholism, understanding schizophrenia and other psychoses, and achieving empathy with their patients.
In relating the drug’s short, strange trip, Dyck explains how concerns about countercultural trends led to the criminalization of LSD and other so-called psychedelic drugs-concordantly opening the way for an explosion in legal prescription pharmaceuticals-and points to the recent re-emergence of sanctioned psychotropic research among psychiatric practitioners. This challenge to the prevailing wisdom behind drug regulation and addiction therapy provides a historical corrective to our perception of LSD’s medical efficacy.
books.google.com/books/about/Psychedelic_psychiatry.html?id=deRwsiiE8FgC&redir_esc=y