Science
Seguine
the October 12 issue of Nature reports that the hallucinogen Ketamine,
renowned a few decades ago as one hell of a mind-bender, may have uses
as a drug for depression. A small study looks quite promising.
Tom Reingold
Maybe there is a connection between depressives and cravings for
hallucinogens. I happen to know, however, that marijuana makes things
worse, unless one can somehow control the quantity. I wasn't able to do
that.
Tom
Seguine
My father was a severe depressive. Not even a slight exaggeration to
say that SSRIs saved his life. But he never drank to excess--he may
have gotten drunk once in his youth or something--and he never used
drugs that were not prescribed for him, let alone hallucinogens. In
fact, I think he would have run from a hallucinogenic experience like
his hair was on fire.
I've known depressives who gravitated toward speed, coke, and/or heroin
and the like. Not so much mushrooms or acid...
> I happen to know, however, that marijuana makes things
> worse, unless one can somehow control the quantity. I wasn't able to do
> that.
Maybe it's worse for you and not worse for others? I've never found
weed remotely addicting, but I've known plenty of people who lived most
of their young adult lives high. Of those, I'm not sure how many
started out being depressed--probably very few, really. But I wouldn't
be surprised if getting high constantly didn't make some of them more
prone to depression over time.
Weed just puts me to sleep, so not only could I never consume much of
it at once, I never developed the desire to.
Actually, I started becoming absurdly sensitive to drugs (including
caffeine and a number of OTC and prescription drugs) some time in my
late twenties and early thirties. Began getting all kinds of unpleasant
side effects or reactions. So now I avoid all drugs other than the few
l can deal with, and those all happen to be legal.
Rastro
research on hallucinogens, including psilocybin. To date, they say, it
is the only category of drugs that have not shown specific health
benefits. There is a belief that they can be used for treating
depression, OCD, and even comfort terminally ill patients.
Other than psilocubin, studies are being done on other hallucinogens.
Even X (MDMA).
Seguine, do you find the drugs you are least sensitive to are more
natural compounds vs completely man-made molecules?
Tom Reingold
I agree strongly that the addictiveness of pot varies from person to
person. It's not chemically addictive but it can be behaviorally
addictive. I am an addictive type of person, so I had to stop
completely, long ago.
I also managed to whittle down my tolerance to alcohol, so drinking is
pretty much pointless for me. It's a good thing, since alcoholism runs
in my family.
Tom
Seguine
> Other than psilocubin, studies are being done on other hallucinogens.
> Even X (MDMA).
X actually started outr being a therapeutic drug, I believe. It was
intially used in couples counseling or something.
> Seguine, do you find the drugs you are least sensitive to are more
> natural compounds vs completely man-made molecules?
Oh, not at all.
I'm sensitive to stimulants and any drugs that can produce some sort of
cholinergic response. Caffeine, cocaine, kava-kava, ephedrine, certain
Chinese teas--it doesn't make them any less troublesome that they are
naturally occurring substances.
Needless to say, synthetics aren't any better. I can't use
pseudoephedrine, for instance. I get an initial speed high, accompanied
by trembling and a pounding and/or irregular heartbeat that, within a
few hours, becomes combined with exhaustion.
Most people will "crash" off of strong stimulants like methamphetamine.
I'll have a similar response from two cups of filtered coffee. I cannot
even imagine how people can drink multiple caffeinated soft drinks in a
day. I'd be jerking mess.
That said, I can manage (and seriously depend on) a cup of tea in the
morning.
Another thing I can't take is statins, drugs prescribed for reducing
cholesterol. They act like stimulants on me--that is, I get the sde
effects of stimulants, but not the stimulant effect! Plus, the side
effects are essentially disabling: splitting headache, unbelievable
irritability and anxiety, sudden crushing fatigue.
Each time I reported these to my doctor (having discontinued taking the
drugs immediately) he reacted as though I were being stubborn or
neurotic, as these symptoms were supposedly not within his realm of
experience. But just recently I stumbled onto a website,
http://www.askapatient.com, where I read report after report of
symptoms exactly like mine. (I counted 35 instances before getting a
third of the way down the page.) The interesting thing is that, I think
without exception, all these people had been taking Lipitor or Zocor
for a much longer period of time--weeks, months, or even years--before
noticing symptoms. Mine occurred within hours. Also, all these people
reported that the drug was otherwise very beneficial. That is, they all
saw really significant drops in their cholesterol (like, 30% or more)
and regretted no longer being able to take the drug.
Moreover, on a page at AskAPatient devoted to another cholesterol drug,
Niaspan (which is just slow-release niacin), people reported some of
the same symptoms as I or others get with statins. But I can (usually)
take Niaspan without any difficulty, and in fact I've found it actually
helps me sleep. Don't know that it does a whole lot for my cholesterol
profile, though. And I suspect that this might be key: for some people,
perhaps it's the lowering of cholesterol itself, and not the drug per
se, that causes problems.
What else can't I take...oh yeah, penicillin. Used to be able to take
it. Then one day, after a surgical infection, bingo: flushing, itching
hands, tachycardia. Also, I think perhaps I've got a problem with
Benadryl. Wound up in the ER one night after taking it a couple of
years ago, but it's hard to say whether it was the antihistamine
itself, the inhaler I used a few hours later, or the beta-blocker that
had been prescribed for me years ago for a condition that it was later
decided I didn't have--or a combination of those things which, in most
people, should not have been problematic.
Needless to say, I no longer trust much of what doctors tell me
regarding medicines. They're simply ignorant. They know only what they
read from government agency summary recommendations, or what drug reps
tell them. In fact, when I dug into the American Heart Association
guidelines for prescribing cholesterol medications for women, guess
what I found? Having no risk factors other than moderately elevated
cholesterol, I'm only at "average" risk for a heart attack (whatever
that means). The AHA doesn't even recommend rx'ing drugs for most women
until after menopause anyway, and its target LDL levels are higher than
mine are already!
So I think the necessity of my taking any drugs for cholesterol is
quite dubious. I eat a balanced diet, take my (probably ineffective)
Niaspan since it apparently does me no harm, and submit to my fate,
whatever it will be. Not going to play the "Perfectible You" game.