Tag: lsd

LSD and Magic Mushrooms Dramatically Rewire the Brain, New Study Reveals

From ketamine drips to microdosing on LSD, psychedelics are shaking up the way we approach and treat mental health. A growing body of scientific evidence shows that these long-stigmatized substances could be potential antidepressants, alleviating symptoms by slipping into areas of the brain traditional SSRIs can’t reach, and encouraging new neural connections.

Despite these advances, psychedelics remain fairly mysterious. Researchers haven’t yet pinned down the various mechanisms through which they work inside our bodies. But now, they might be one step closer.

An international team of scientists led by the University of Helsinki in Finland believes they’ve struck biochemical gold. In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the researchers found that psychedelics psilocin (the primary chemical in magic mushrooms) and LSD exert an antidepressant effect by binding to a protein, receptor tyrosine kinase beta (TrkB), which then activates brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that plays a crucial role in the growth, development, and maintenance of neurons; kind of like Miracle-Gro for the brain.

“I think [this study] is very exciting,” Greg Fonzo, co-director of the Center for Psychedelic Research and Therapy at The University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School, who wasn’t involved in the study, tells Inverse. “It establishes a potential common mechanism for psychedelics along with other kinds of antidepressant treatments.” The researchers hope that this new information could potentially lead to creating more effective treatments for mental health disorders.

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NEW RESEARCH REVEALS LSD’S MIND-ALTERING POWER TO ENHANCE LEARNING AND EXPLORATORY THINKING

Researchers report they have uncovered remarkable new effects of the potent psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on human cognition, according to findings detailed in a new study. 

Published in Psychological Medicine, the study sheds light on LSD’s ability to accelerate learning when coupled with feedback and promote exploratory behavior. 

Researchers say the findings may hold the key to unraveling the enigmatic cognitive mechanisms that underlie the potential therapeutic benefits of LSD. 

Many recent studies have shown LSD-assisted psychotherapy to offer promising results in treating mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Though LSD remains illegal in many countries when administered in a controlled setting under the guidance of a trained therapist, the psychedelic drug has shown the potential to enhance individuals’ capacity to explore and process challenging emotions and experiences. Studies have found that this process can often lead to profound insights and lasting breakthroughs in therapy.

Jonathan Kanen, the lead author of the study and a Gates Cambridge Scholar, postulates that the potential therapeutic effects of LSD may stem from the drug’s ability to foster new beneficial patterns of learning about the world by forming new mental associations. 

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Celebrating The 80th Anniversary Of Bicycle Day: A Different Kind Of Trip

Every year, on April 19, an important anniversary rolls around that you may never have heard of. To those in the know, it’s called Bicycle Day, and it commemorates the first-ever intentional LSD trip. 

It all started when a Swiss chemist called Albert Hofmann had a very peculiar time while cycling home from the lab. Hofmann was the first person to synthesize LSD back in 1938. He did it by isolating chemical compounds found in a fungus called ergot, which infects grasses like rye and can have some profound effects on any humans unfortunate enough to accidentally consume it.

It’s safe to say that Hofmann didn’t think much of his discovery to begin with. What we now know as LSD was actually the 25th in a long line of similar compounds that he’d been experimenting with, and Hofmann’s research notes from the time reportedly reveal how no one was particularly enthused by it: “The new substance, however, aroused no special interest in our pharmacologists and physicians; testing was therefore discontinued.”

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THE CIA’S APPALLING HUMAN EXPERIMENTS WITH MIND CONTROL

ON APRIL 10, 1953, ALLEN DULLES, THE NEWLY APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF THE CIA, delivered a speech to a gathering of Princeton alumni. Though the event was mundane, global tensions were running high. The Korean War was coming to an end, and earlier that week, The New York Times had published a startling story asserting that American POWs returning from the country may have been “converted” by “Communist brain-washers.”

Some GI’s were confessing to war crimes, like carrying out germ warfare against the Communists–a charge the U.S. categorically denied. Others were reportedly so brainwashed that they had refused to return to the United States at all. As if that weren’t enough, the U.S. was weeks away from secretly sponsoring the overthrow of a democratically elected leader in Iran.

Dulles had just become the first civilian director of an agency growing more powerful by the day, and the speech provided an early glimpse into his priorities for the CIA. “In the past few years we have become accustomed to hearing much about the battle for men’s minds–the war of ideologies,” he told the attendees. “I wonder, however, whether we clearly perceive the magnitude of the problem, whether we realize how sinister the battle for men’s minds has become in Soviet hands,” he continued. “We might call it, in its new form, ‘brain warfare.’”

Dulles proceeded to describe the “Soviet brain perversion techniques” as effective, but “abhorrent” and “nefarious.” He gestured to the American POWs returning from Korea, shells of the men they once were, parroting the Communist propaganda they had heard cycled for weeks on end. He expressed fears and uncertainty–were they using chemical agents? Hypnosis? Something else entirely? “We in the West,” the CIA Director conceded, “are somewhat handicapped in brain warfare.” This sort of non-consensual experiment, even on one’s enemies, was antithetical to American values, Dulles insisted, as well as antithetical to what should be human values.

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The story of how the CIA conducted secret LSD experiments on unwitting US citizens

After World War II, the possibility of gaining control over a person’s mind became one of the top pursuits for intelligence services. Amid never-ending spy games, the capacity to make someone tell the full truth during an interrogation, or to wipe out a subject’s personality and impose another – perhaps, a controlled one – became quite attractive to secret services.

In 1979, former US State Department officer John Marks published a book called “The Search for the ‘Manchurian Candidate’,” which focused on the CIA’s mind-control experiments and is based on agency documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The term ‘Manchurian Candidate’ emerged from a title of a novel by Richard Condon, first published in 1959, which tells the story of a US soldier brainwashed and turned into an assassin by the Communists. Back then, the fear that America’s rivals might use such techniques was not only a fictional fantasy, but a matter of very serious concern.

This is how John Marks describes it: “In 1947 the National Security Act created not only the CIA but also the National Security Council – in sum, the command structure for the Cold War. Wartime [Office of Strategic Services] leaders like William Donovan and Allen Dulles lobbied feverishly for the Act. Officials within the new command structure soon put their fears and their grandiose notions to work. Reacting to the perceived threat, they adopted a ruthless and warlike posture toward anyone they considered an enemy – most especially the Soviet Union. They took it upon themselves to fight communism and things that might lead to communism everywhere in the world.”

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THE CIA’S APPALLING HUMAN EXPERIMENTS WITH MIND CONTROL

ON APRIL 10, 1953, ALLEN DULLES, THE NEWLY APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF THE CIA, delivered a speech to a gathering of Princeton alumni. Though the event was mundane, global tensions were running high. The Korean War was coming to an end, and earlier that week, The New York Times had published a startling story asserting that American POWs returning from the country may have been “converted” by “Communist brain-washers.”

Some GI’s were confessing to war crimes, like carrying out germ warfare against the Communists–a charge the U.S. categorically denied. Others were reportedly so brainwashed that they had refused to return to the United States at all. As if that weren’t enough, the U.S. was weeks away from secretly sponsoring the overthrow of a democratically elected leader in Iran.

Dulles had just become the first civilian director of an agency growing more powerful by the day, and the speech provided an early glimpse into his priorities for the CIA. “In the past few years we have become accustomed to hearing much about the battle for men’s minds–the war of ideologies,” he told the attendees. “I wonder, however, whether we clearly perceive the magnitude of the problem, whether we realize how sinister the battle for men’s minds has become in Soviet hands,” he continued. “We might call it, in its new form, ‘brain warfare.’”

Dulles proceeded to describe the “Soviet brain perversion techniques” as effective, but “abhorrent” and “nefarious.” He gestured to the American POWs returning from Korea, shells of the men they once were, parroting the Communist propaganda they had heard cycled for weeks on end. He expressed fears and uncertainty–were they using chemical agents? Hypnosis? Something else entirely? “We in the West,” the CIA Director conceded, “are somewhat handicapped in brain warfare.” This sort of non-consensual experiment, even on one’s enemies, was antithetical to American values, Dulles insisted, as well as antithetical to what should be human values.

Keep reading

THE CIA’S APPALLING HUMAN EXPERIMENTS WITH MIND CONTROL

ON APRIL 10, 1953, ALLEN DULLES, THE NEWLY APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF THE CIA, delivered a speech to a gathering of Princeton alumni. Though the event was mundane, global tensions were running high. The Korean War was coming to an end, and earlier that week, The New York Times had published a startling story asserting that American POWs returning from the country may have been “converted” by “Communist brain-washers.”

Some GI’s were confessing to war crimes, like carrying out germ warfare against the Communists–a charge the U.S. categorically denied. Others were reportedly so brainwashed that they had refused to return to the United States at all. As if that weren’t enough, the U.S. was weeks away from secretly sponsoring the overthrow of a democratically elected leader in Iran.

Dulles had just become the first civilian director of an agency growing more powerful by the day, and the speech provided an early glimpse into his priorities for the CIA. “In the past few years we have become accustomed to hearing much about the battle for men’s minds–the war of ideologies,” he told the attendees. “I wonder, however, whether we clearly perceive the magnitude of the problem, whether we realize how sinister the battle for men’s minds has become in Soviet hands,” he continued. “We might call it, in its new form, ‘brain warfare.’”

Dulles proceeded to describe the “Soviet brain perversion techniques” as effective, but “abhorrent” and “nefarious.” He gestured to the American POWs returning from Korea, shells of the men they once were, parroting the Communist propaganda they had heard cycled for weeks on end. He expressed fears and uncertainty–were they using chemical agents? Hypnosis? Something else entirely? “We in the West,” the CIA Director conceded, “are somewhat handicapped in brain warfare.” This sort of non-consensual experiment, even on one’s enemies, was antithetical to American values, Dulles insisted, as well as antithetical to what should be human values.

Keep reading