The U.S. Army’s Experiments with LSD in the Cold War : The New Yorker

/103801

  • Les recherches sur l’usage médical des #hallucinogènes reprennent aux États-Unis :

    http://www.vox.com/2014/8/3/5960343/the-case-for-medical-lsd-mushrooms-and-ecstasy

    Les études sont autorisées et ont lieu dans des environnements contrôlés. Les résultats sont prometteurs pour aider à soigner la #dépression chronique et ont beaucoup atténué l’anxiété de malades du #cancer.

    The promise of hallucinogens, Grob explains, is that they could produce a psychological effect in one or two doses that would take months or even years to reproduce with other drugs.

    “When you’re talking about psychiatry, the medications we use that I prescribe all the time usually have to be utilized on a daily basis — for weeks, for months, sometimes for years,” Grob says. “When you’re talking about a hallucinogen treatment model, the drug itself might only need to be applied on one occasion or perhaps a couple of occasions spread out by many weeks or many months — all within the context of ongoing psychotherapy.”

    Pas des médicaments, donc, mais la tentative d’essayer une autre forme de #médecine, dans laquelle le patient est clairement partie prenante.

    They found some subjects who went through what was often only one session of treatment within the context of psychotherapy had a powerful mystical experience. That experience appeared to be predictive of a better therapeutic outcome down the line.

    Pour référence, le portrait d’un pionnier des recherches sur la #drogue avant leur interdiction (ses recherches portent moins sur les usages thérapeutiques que sur la stimulation de la créativité) :

    http://www.themorningnews.org/article/the-heretic

    • At the moment, we’ve got two Nobel Prize winners who’ve copped to the fact of where they got their ideas.”
      Francis Crick is one and the other: Kary Mullis, who was intermittently under the influence of LSD as he developed the polymerase chain reaction, a genetic sequencing technique through which scientists can detect certain infectious diseases, map the human genome, and trace ancestral heritage back thousands of years.

      #recherche #santé

    • In one anecdote that made the cut, he recounts a night spent with Ken Kesey on a feral embankment between the shoreline and the town dump of sleepy Pescadaro, Calif. Peaking on a relatively high dose of LSD shortly before dawn, Dorothy, one of Ken’s girlfriends, lay down in the dirt to better observe one particular wild violet. Stardust waltzed off its purple petals into the embankment, the ocean, even the dump. Stranger still, the violet budded, blossomed, withered, and died, both forward in time and in reverse.

      When Dorothy tried to explain it all to James, he didn’t scoff. Instead he got down beside her and, utilizing insights he’d developed as an IFAS guide, urged her deeper into the experience. Dorothy became aware that stardust was also coursing through her neural network. The universe wasn’t random chance, she thought that morning, but ebullient choice. She didn’t need to go anywhere because she was everywhere.

      If you ask her today, she’ll tell you the effects from her trip lasted long after she came down. For starters, she’d say, this was the pivotal moment that led her to become a filmmaker. (Her short documentaries have earned numerous accolades, including an Emmy, an Oscar nomination, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Gold Medal.) But, she’d add, that’s not all. That morning, she ditched Hunky Ken for Interstellar James, and for 47 years and counting, they’ve lived together in an open marriage.