Can Drugs be Medicine?

Problems with large categories The category drugs includes so many different things that are vastly different that it is almost useless. for example some things that are in the category drugs: heroin, aspirin, Mushrooms, coffee, crack, alcohol, penicillin and LSD.

I would humbly suggest that one doesn't use it, instead look at every possible substance one by one, their possible bennefits and risks. And on a individual basis decide if the benefits outweigh the risk or vice versa. Many drugs are also Medicines in other words it has some sort of benefit.

Relative Harm of Psychoactive drugs Since the different compounds in the category drugs are very different its hard to compare them. There are some great studies trying to do this. They are not perfect but still valuable in understanding the risks of drugs.

Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis

• PDF: http://www.sg.unimaas.nl/_OLD/oudelezingen/dddsd.pdf

• Text: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/fulltext

• In Picture form: Types of harm, harm to user vs society, Overall Harm, Overall weighted scores for each of the drugs,

As can be observed in this study the relative harm of Mushrooms and MDMA are relatively speaking quite a bit lower. Not saying that they are without risks. These risks can be further reduced if used in a controlled setting with medical practitioners.

No link found between psychedelics and psychosis - Nature

Benefits of Psychadelic drugs/medecin

Short video summary (5 min) of benefits of psychadelic medecine /drugs: Link

MDMA

Treat treatmentressistant PTSD - Collection of papers, Study

• After 1-3 sessions of MDMA assited Psychotherapy 83 % where "Cured" . Placebo assisted Psychotherapy 25 % were "cured".
• Long term follow up (3,5 years) found that benefits persisted.

Psilocybin - Mushrooms

May Treat PTSD / unlearn fear - Link

• Researchers played a tone, followed by silence, before giving the mice a mild shock akin to static electricity. The mice linked the sound with the shock, freezing whenever they heard it. When researchers played the sound but didn’t shock the mice, the mice on mushrooms stopped being afraid of the sound much faster than the mice in the control groups.

May treat Addiction (alcoholism, smoking etc)- Link

• Johan hopkins study: For the study, five cigarette-addicted participants underwent placebo-controlled psilocybin treatment with a psychiatrist. All five completely quit smoking after their first psilocybin session. At all followup visits, which occurred up to one year later for the first four participants, it was biologically confirmed that the participants had abstained from cigarettes.

May treat Depression - Link

• "People with depression have over-active default mode networks and so ruminate on themselves, on their inadequacies, on their badness, that they are worthless, that they have failed – to an extent that is sometimes delusional. Again psilocybin appears to block that activity and stops this obsessive rumination."

• Six months later, participants showed significant reductions in depression symptoms

Treat Clusterheadaches (headaches so bad people kill them self) - Harvard Medical School

• Twenty-two of 26 psilocybin users reported that psilocybin aborted attacks; 25 of 48 psilocybin users and 7 of 8 LSD users reported cluster period termination; 18 of 19 psilocybin users and 4 of 5 LSD users reported remission period extension

End Of life anxiety (tested on people dying of cancer)- UCLA.

• The patients generally reported that the medication helped them to examine their lives and determine "how they wished to address their limited life expectancy."

Positive Personality changes - John Hopkins School of Medecin

• One high dose of psilocybin to 51 adult study participants and found that 30 of them underwent measurable personality changes that lasted more than a year.

• Increased Openness: "encompasses aesthetic appreciation and sensitivity, imagination and fantasy, and broad-minded tolerance of others' viewpoints and values."

• 70% rated the experience as one of the top five most meaningful events of their lives, comparable to the birth of a first child or the loss of a parent

• Psilocybin and meditation have same effect on posterior cingular cortex

Addiction - Really a consequence of trauma / depression

Short video explaining the real cause of addiction Link.

The old view of addiction is that drugs have hooks that almost guarantee addiction. This is based on study of rats that very keept in cages with nothing to do but take cocain. They unsurprisingly take it until they die from it. this is very artificial very few people live in similar circumstances.

The rat research was replicated with but with a rat cage that had a mate for the mouse, rat wheel etc (rat heaven). in that circumstance that rat used almost no cocain and never killed themself.

This has been replicated naturally in humans in the Vietnam war: during the war 20 % of the soldiers were using heroin regularly. When war ended and they came home the overwhelming majority just stopped.

Real story of addiction: Addiction seems to be a result of people suffering some kind of emotional trauma / depression which leds them to self medicating.