Lsd And The Effects On Themind Essay

, Research Paper

Lysergic Acid Diethyl Amide 25 and the Effects on the Human Mind

LSD (lysergic acid diethyl amide) is one of the major drugs making up the hallucinogen class. LSD was discovered in 1938 and is one of the most potent conscious-altering chemicals. It is manufactured from lysergic acid, which is found in ergot, a fungus that grows on rye and other grains. LSD, commonly referred to as acid and sid, is sold in tablets, capsules, thin squares of gelatin, or “hits”, generally consisting of a single color commonly referred to “windowpane , and occasionally liquid form, which is usually contained in small glass vials. It is odorless, colorless, and has a slightly bitter taste and is usually taken by mouth. Often LSD is added to absorbent paper, such as blotter paper, and divided into small, decorated squares, with each square representing one dose. These squares are usually on decorated paper, with characters such as Mickey Mouse, Beavis and Butthead, The Dancing Bears, and other well-known characters sometimes appearing on them.

The effects of LSD vary wildly from one user to the next. They depend on the amount taken; the user’s personality, mood, and expectations; and the surroundings in which the drug is used. Usually, the user feels the first effects of the drug about 30 minutes after taking it. The physical effects include dilated pupils, extremes in body temperature (either very cold or very hot), increased heart rate and blood pressure, sweating, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, dry mouth, and tremors.

Sensations and feelings change much more dramatically than the physical signs. The user may feel several different emotions at once or swing rapidly from one emotion to another. If taken in a large enough dose, the drug produces delusions and visual hallucinations. The user’s sense of time and self changes. Sensations may seem to “cross over,” giving the user the feeling of hearing colors and seeing sounds. These changes can be frightening and can cause panic.

Detractors of the use of LSD generally cite the harmful effects of acid . Some LSD users experience severe, terrifying thoughts and feelings, fear of losing control, fear of insanity and death, and despair while using LSD. Some fatal accidents have occurred during states of LSD intoxication. While these effects are far less common, it is a valid danger. LSD itself has some “body-kinks” on some people some times. Nausea is one of them. It s usually mild and transient. It also has speed like (i.e. adrenergic stimulation) effects, etc.

Another danger of lysergic acid diethyl amide 25 is that users experience flashbacks, recurrence of certain aspects of a person’s experience, without the user having taken the drug again. A flashback occurs suddenly, often without warning, and may occur within a few days or more than a year after LSD use. Flashbacks usually occur in people who use hallucinogens chronically or have an underlying personality problem; however, otherwise healthy people who use LSD occasionally may also have flashbacks. Bad trips and flashbacks are only part of the risks of LSD use. LSD users may also manifest relatively long-lasting psychoses, such as schizophrenia or severe depression. It is difficult to determine the extent and mechanism of the LSD involvement in these illnesses.

While the negative effects of acid seem to be overwhelming, there are many people who believe that LSD has great benefits. . According to a 1992 report by Richard Yensen, Ph.D., and Donna Dryer, M.D., director and medical director at the Orenda Institute, a 1960s’ study of 135 alcoholics found that six months after treatment with LSD, 53 percent of a high-dose group reported abstinence compared with 33 percent of a low-dose group. Alcoholics receiving conventional therapy had a 12 percent improvement rate. Also, in a study of 31 cancer patients suffering from anxiety, depression and uncontrollable pain, 71 percent showed improvement in their physical and emotional status after each LSD session.

These events are obviously linked. There is a definite positive correlation between decrease of depression and addiction and the use of hallucinogenics. An article in the winter 1995 edition of MAPS, published by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, reports success with another hallucinogen, ibogaine, in the treatment of chemical dependencies. The article’s author, Howard Lotsof, founder of NDA International Inc.–a private organization based in Staten Island, N.Y., that treats drug addicts overseas–discusses several treatment successes, including a medical doctor whose addiction to a pain medication vanished after receiving four doses of ibogaine. Lotsof reported in the article that “29 of 35 patients successfully treated with ibogaine had numerous unsuccessful experiences with other treatment modalities.” However, the FDA does not sanction Lotsof s studies, and he is not authorized to treat patients in the United States.

During tests administered by Dr. Albert Hoffman, the man who discovered LSD, he found that when administered in small doses acid created a predominantly euphoric feeling. This differed greatly from his first experiment on himself in which the mood was marked by grave side effects resulting from over dosage and, of course, fear of the uncertain outcome.

Also, according to Albert Hoffman, The psychic effects of LSD, which are produced by such minimal quantities of material, are too meaningful and too multiform to be explained by toxic alterations of brain function. If LSD acted only through a toxic effect on the brain, then LSD experiences would be entirely psychopathological in meaning, without any psychological or psychiatric interest. On the contrary, it is likely that alterations of nerve conductivity and influence on the activity of nerve connections (synapses), which have been experimentally demonstrated, play an important role. This could mean that an influence is being exerted on the extremely complex system of cross-connections and synapses between the many billions of brain cells, the system on which the higher psychic and intellectual functions depend. This would be a promising area to explore in the search for an explanation of LSD’s radical efficacy.

Research done by Sandoz Ltd., who owns the patent to Lysergic Acid Diethyl Amide 25, has shown that LSD has its uses in analytical psychotherapy. In Albert Hoffman s LSD My Problem Child, he states that In LSD inebriation the accustomed world view undergoes a deep-seated transformation and disintegration. Connected with this is a loosening or even suspension of the I-you barrier. Patients who are bogged down in an egocentric problem cycle can thereby be helped to release themselves from their fixation and isolation. The result can be an improved rapport with the doctor and a greater susceptibility to psychotherapeutic influence. The enhanced suggestibility under the influence of LSD works toward the same goal.

Another significant, psychotherapeutically valuable characteristic of LSD inebriation is the tendency of long forgotten or suppressed contents of experience to appear again in consciousness. Traumatic events, which are sought in psychoanalysis, may then become accessible to psychotherapeutic treatment. Numerous case histories tell of experiences from even the earliest childhood that was vividly recalled during psychoanalysis under the influence of LSD. This does not involve an ordinary recollection, but rather a true reliving; not a reminiscence, but rather a reviviscence, as the French psychiatrist Jean Delay has formulated it.

LSD does not act as a true medicament; rather it plays the role of a drug aid in the context of psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic treatment and serves to channel the treatment more effectively and to shorten its duration. It can fulfill this function in two particular ways.

In one procedure, which was developed in European clinics and given the name psychotytic therapy, moderately strong doses of LSD are administered in several successive sessions at regular intervals. Subsequently the LSD experiences are worked out in-group discussions, and in expression therapy by drawing and painting. Ronald A. Sandison, an English therapist of Jungian orientation and a pioneer of clinical LSD research, coined the term psycholytic therapy. The root -lysis or -lytic signifies the dissolution of tension or conflicts in the human psyche.

In a second procedure, which is the favored treatment in the United States, a single, very high LSD dose (0.3 to 0.6 mg) is administered after correspondingly intensive psychological preparation of the patients. This method, described as psychedelic therapy, attempts to induce a mystical-religious experience through the shock effects of LSD. This experience can then serve as a starting point for a restructuring and curing of the patient’s personality in the accompanying psychotherapeutic treatment. Humphry Osmond, a pioneer of LSD research in the United States, introduced the term psychedelic, which can be translated as mind-manifesting or mind-expanding,

LSD’s apparent benefits as a drug auxiliary in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy are derived from properties diametrically opposed to the effects of tranquilizer-type psycho pharmaceuticals. Whereas tranquilizers tend to cover up the patient’s problems and conflicts, reducing their apparent gravity and importance: LSD, on the contrary, makes them more exposed and more intensely experienced. This clearer recognition of problems and conflicts makes them, in turn, more susceptible to psychotherapeutic treatment.

As with any hallucinatory substance, detractors are quick to pass judgment on the beneficial use of LSD. The suitability and success of LSD in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is still a subject of controversy in professional circles. The same could be said, however, of other procedures employed in psychiatry such as electroshock, insulin therapy, or psychosurgery, procedures that entail, moreover, a far greater risk than the use of LSD, which under suitable conditions can be considered practically safe.

However, because forgotten or repressed experiences, under the influence of LSD, may become conscious with considerable speed, the treatment can be correspondingly shortened. To some psychiatrists, however, this reduction of the therapy’s duration is a disadvantage. They are of the opinion that this precipitation leaves the patient insufficient time for psychotherapeutic working-through. The therapeutic effect they believe, persists for a shorter time than when there is a gradual treatment, including a slow process of becoming conscious of the traumatic experiences.

Many people have reported that they feel almost a sixth sense while on LSD. They seem to know what other people that are tripping are thinking and feeling without it being said. There is an incredible empathy and wide reports of the their hallucinatory experiences being remarkably similar for how unpredictable the drug is considered to be. There have also been reports from people of visions .

Casual users of acid are not alone in these feelings. . Among some Indians in southern Mexico, American researchers had discovered mushrooms that were eaten in religious ceremonies and that produced an inebriated condition accompanied by hallucinations. There are indications that ceremonial use of such mushrooms reaches far back into pre-Columbian times. So-called mushroom stones have been found in El Salvador, Guatemala, and the contiguous mountainous districts of Mexico. These are stone sculptures in the form of pileate mushroom, on whose stem the face or the form of a god or an animal-like demon is carved. Most are about 30 cm high. The oldest examples, according to archaeologists, date back to before 500 B.C. The use of hallucinogenics as a mind-expanding tool has been around probably even longer than this, as there was an Aryan tribe who referred to a mystical plant that brought them to their gods.

Dr. Timothy Leary, a recently deceased ex-professor of Harvard, who was a strong advocate of LSD put forth a theory that there were 7 levels of Energy Consciousness. With what could be gleaned from the information that was shown, each step up on scale was towards a higher enlightenment. Each of these has a religious center and a drug which induces the level of consciousness desired.

Level 7 was the Void, which is studied typically by Death Cults and uses narcotics and poisons to reach this level of consciousness. Level 6 is Emotional Stupor, which is studied by Catholicism/Fundamentalism and uses alcohol to achieve their level of consciousness. At level 5 we reach the Mental-Social stage, which is studied by Judaism/Protestanism Level 4 is Sensory, which is studied by Zen and early Christianity, and this level is reached through marijuana. Level 3 is Somatic, which is studied by the Tantra, while MDMA and Hashish are used to reach this level of attunement. Level 2 is awareness on the Cellular level, and is studied by Hinduism, and reached through the use of Peyote and Psilocybin. Finally at Level 1 is the consciousness on the Atomic level. This level is studied by Buddhists, and most importantly, reached through the use of LSD.

Users of LSD commonly experience a feeling of center. A common experience is to perfectly in union with everything, yet viewing it all from a remote perspective. Users experience a feeling of oneness with the entire universe. There is obviously far more to this drug than we understand at the moment, and it could possibly be a saving point of human society. There s already been examples of LSD curing drug addiction, depression,

traumatic events that were repressed being fully experienced again. These are only the purely psychiatric/psychological uses. The unexplained phenomenon that occurs for people under the influence of this drug. Everything from telepathy to clairvoyance has been claimed to have been experienced. While none of this is yet proved, there must be a further extent to a drug that literally changes a persons entire reality. Cousins of LSD have been being used in religious ceremonies for thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of years. While LSD is definitely a powerful and dangerous drug, the merits that we may be able to gain from understanding this powerful hallucinogen far outweigh the risks. It is my personal belief that if we begin to understand this drug, we may begin to fully utilize and understand the human brain. A perfect example of realization through is from an unknown quote. , Today young men on acid realize that all matter is really energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness and view themselves subjectively. Life is only a dream with the imagination of ourselves.