The use
of hallucinogens as a therapeutic drug has gained interest in the recent
years. Psilocybin has been used to help individuals
who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Researches are now looking at using
hallucinogens to help cure drug addiction.
A group of researchers recently look at lysergic acid diethylamide, also
known as LSD, affect in treating alcoholism.
They did this taking a quantified look of the effects of LSD on alcoholism
by getting their data from randomized controlled clinical trials.
They
retrieved there data by searching for key words in PubMed and PsycINFO like “lysergide”,
“alcohol”, or “addict”. They then read
the abstract of these articles to weed out any publications not relevant to
their study. In the remaining articles
they only looked at studies that used up to 50 micro grams of LSD to treat
alcoholism. From those remaining studies
they then removed any study where the participants had schizophrenia or any
other psychosis. They then categorized the
data from the studies on alcohol misuse as either improved or not
improved. They classified improved as
clear and substantial improvement in alcohol misuse. Participants that were not able to be found a
follow up were also lumped into the not improved category.
The
research found that there was a significant improvement on alcohol misuse from
the use of LSD in the short term and midterm.
However LSD’s long term effects on alcohol misuse were found to not be
statistically significant. Some participants felt adverse effects during
their experiences on LSD and some expressed confusion in the days following
their LSD use. However no long term
adverse effects were reported.
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment