LSD Spring Grove Experiment

From Data discovery Health:
  • While annual rates of ED visits involving hallucinogens were stable between 2008 and 2012, they increased by 86% between 2013 and 2021.
  • Within three years of an ED visit involving hallucinogens, 4% of individuals were diagnosed with schizophrenia, compared to 0.15% for members of the general population followed for the same period—a risk 21 times higher.
  • Individuals with ED visits involving hallucinogens were at 4.7 and 1.5 times higher risk of schizophrenia respectively, compared to individuals with ED visits involving alcohol and cannabis.
My son was in his 3rd year of college with a 4.0 average, on the Dean's list, and plans to go on to med school. Then he started doing drugs, first marijuana and then LSD. Soon he was hearing voices and having hallucinations. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had to drop out. His life was essentially ruined. There's no history of it our families.
 
My son was in his 3rd year of college with a 4.0 average, on the Dean's list, and plans to go on to med school. Then he started doing drugs, first marijuana and then LSD. Soon he was hearing voices and having hallucinations. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had to drop out. His life was essentially ruined. There's no history of it our families.

Sorry to hear that, Della. I hope he has recovered.
 

Never tripped. I was a solid pot-head.
I had to Google pot-head, what a sheltered life I have led. Pot-head conjured up an image of those women that carry a pot of water on their heads. Once Google explained about smoking marijuana I remembered pot from my student days. Not that I ever indulged, I never even smoked tobacco, what a bore I must have been.
 
My son was in his 3rd year of college with a 4.0 average, on the Dean's list, and plans to go on to med school. Then he started doing drugs, first marijuana and then LSD. Soon he was hearing voices and having hallucinations. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had to drop out. His life was essentially ruined. There's no history of it our families.
I am sorry to hear this .

In the 60s/70s plenty did drugs as did not know how lethal they were .

I was a hippie after drafted but never did pot / drugs however many had no idea how lethal .

I am glad your son from reading your last post is doing better .
 
I had to Google pot-head, what a sheltered life I have led. Pot-head conjured up an image of those women that carry a pot of water on their heads. Once Google explained about smoking marijuana I remembered pot from my student days. Not that I ever indulged, I never even smoked tobacco, what a bore I must have been.
Cigars are huge in Miami , its a culture thing for many and as you know one fat cancer causing nightmare .
 
It certainly appears that way from within the perspective of our conscious, deliberating minds. But I don't think that indicates a lack of meaning but only a kind of meaning not communicable from our practical perspective. There may be a higher logic in play that we can't generally access.
DW and I have a dear woman friend, a senior, who has had clinical depression for around 35 years. She's had counseling, of course, and been on one daily anti-depressant drug after another. She still goes into suicidal depression every time one of these prescribed drugs stops working for her. By now she's met several people who have had the same troubles she has, and she's been impressed with the lasting positive changes these individuals have experienced with guided psilocybin sessions.

Our friend has signed up for legal (in Canada) psilocybin therapy, which will involve counseling & professional preparation prior to the session, and counseling afterward. This is allowed by our federal government, through a special program (offered in several of our provinces). The government tracks all of these cases & sessions as medical research. One day it may be possible for psychiatrists across Canada to utilize this approach.

Back in the 1950s and '60s, several Canadian hospitals and clinics were on the leading edge of international sanctioned research into psychedelic drugs. But Canada followed the US in legally banning this psychological & psychiatric research in the late '60s, and made possession of the substances illegal within Canada. Personally, I wouldn't like to think that the rise of conservatism in the U.S and Europe will foolishly suppress legitimate research & therapy again.
 
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Thanks Mark. It's incurable, but after ten years of ups and downs, psychotic episodes and suicide attempts, he finally got stabilized on the right medication. He lives with us and has a useful, decent life, but not what it would have been.

I also view schizophrenia as a devastating illness. Apparently many young people come down with it early on in college. I’ve heard the majors most affected are engineering and philosophy. Again sorry this happened to him and in your life.
 
DW and I have a dear woman friend, a senior, who has had clinical depression for around 35 years. She's had counseling, of course, and been on one daily anti-depressant drug after another. She still goes into suicidal depression every time one of these prescribed drugs stops working for her. By now she's met several people who have had the same troubles she has, and she's been impressed with the lasting positive changes these individuals have experienced with guided psilocybin sessions.

Our friend has signed up for legal (in Canada) psilocybin therapy, which will involve counseling & professional preparation prior to the session, and counseling afterward. This is allowed by our federal government, through a special program (offered in several of our provinces). The government tracks all of these cases & sessions as medical research. One day it may be possible for psychiatrists across Canada to utilize this approach.

Back in the 1950s and '60s, several Canadian hospitals and clinics were on the leading edge of international sanctioned research into psychedelic drugs. But Canada followed the US in legally banning this psychological & psychiatric research in the late '60s, and made possession of the substances illegal within Canada. Personally, I wouldn't like to think that the rise of conservatism in the U.S and Europe will foolishly suppress legitimate research & therapy again.

I imagine depression might be a condition which therapeutic hallucinogens might be able help. Alas I don’t think Schizophrenia would be. It is a much more debilitating condition though my mother was severely depressed and that is not a walk in the park.
 
I was always terrified of hard drugs. I smoked weed for a couple years, in my late teens and early 20s, but that's the extent of it.

I saw some guys take acid, and saw guys in the army share needles, (this was right before AIDS), and I'm still thankful to this day I never joined in.

I tried cocaine exactly one time. As soon as the taste of it hit the back of my throat, a started hawking it out. How can anyone do that stuff? it tastes awful.

On the other hand, I could go toe to toe with anybody with alcohol.
 
I imagine depression might be a condition which therapeutic hallucinogens might be able help. Alas I don’t think Schizophrenia would be. It is a much more debilitating condition though my mother was severely depressed and that is not a walk in the park.
Was your mom constantly depressed or bouts of depression ?

One of my friends daughters think in her mid 40s after years finally found a med combo which keeps her steady and now back to work as a cook in a hospital . She is finally happy .

I have been fortunate in life but strongly subscribe to real government aid for disabled people and in the end plenty can be helped and they become contributing members of society but again they need help .
 
Was your mom constantly depressed or bouts of depression ?

One of my friends daughters think in her mid 40s after years finally found a med combo which keeps her steady and now back to work as a cook in a hospital . She is finally happy .

I have been fortunate in life but strongly subscribe to real government aid for disabled people and in the end plenty can be helped and they become contributing members of society but again they need help .
Yes, people need help! It's been estimated that as many as 80% of the homeless are mentally ill or addicted.
We also need serious research for cures. Schizophrenia is the number one disabler of young people and yet we spend more money researching causes of dental caries than this disease.
 
Was your mom constantly depressed or bouts of depression ?

One of my friends daughters think in her mid 40s after years finally found a med combo which keeps her steady and now back to work as a cook in a hospital . She is finally happy .

I have been fortunate in life but strongly subscribe to real government aid for disabled people and in the end plenty can be helped and they become contributing members of society but again they need help .

No not constantly but pretty frequently. When I was a kid she’d get blue when my father was away for long stretches in the navy. But I never heard a diagnosis until he retired and they moved to Southern California. Bipolar or Manic Depression as they called it then. She passed in her sixties sadly. In some ways she was the very best person in our extended family to be around and they all visited her.

My niece has that now too but the treatment is much better. She takes the prescribed drugs reliably since she sees her own mother, my former SIL who also has it repeatedly going off them and getting in more and more trouble. Also she has some online group therapy everyday. She is great. Just 19.
 
When, in mature years, I looked back on my mother's life, I realized she battled depression for years. The only way she seemed to be able to cope with it, during some stretches, was sleeping during the day. She also absorbed herself in reading.

She was intelligent, had two years of college, and before marriage had a career as a secretary. Then she married my dad, who had a bad temper — never hit her, though, he saved that for his sons. And while dad worked, she had two male children to raise. She was very caring and a good cook and all the neighbors liked her.

I guess she realized she had depression. In my mid teens, she liked to have discussions with me. I was about 15 when I'd come home from school one day and she mentioned she'd seen an interview program on TV during the day. It was about people having profound, life-changing guided experiences with lysergic acid (LSD). She said she'd like to have that. But that was a very rare opportunity at the time, and anyway I'm pretty sure she expected my dad would've disapproved.
 
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I have schizoaffective depressive disorder that came about in my mid-twenties. Although I took LSD, MDA and other drugs prior to my diagnosis I never attributed the drugs as the cause of the illness. Nowadays, although retired, I lead a full and contented life with my family, friends and pets. I started college and worked part-time after 30 years of heightened symptoms in which all I could do was smoke cigarets, listen to music and avoid social encounters.

In 2005, I was mixing medication with a variety of herbal supplements that caused severe psychosis and a vision of hope. It was near Easter time, I got undressed to take a shower and entered at the front of the bathtub, lathered up, rinsed and exited from the rear of the bathtub. It was like a rebirth into a new life. My wife committed me into the psych ward for 3 weeks while my medication was being readjusted.

I was a pill popper prior to admittance into the hospital, so after my discharge from the hospital my wife locked my medication into a box for my own safety. I had to go to her each time to receive medication. After sometime and several attempts I was able to convince my wife I was capable of taking my medication responsibly and the box was unlocked. To this day, in spite of all of my accomplishments including working part time, attending college and earning my degree my greatest accomplishment was gaining control of my medication.

I've experienced psychosis 3 times in my life and each time my mind and memories were wiped away into oblivion.I had to relearn basic living skills, how to make decisions and care for myself like a newborn baby into a harsh and relentless world. This time was different, I was not afraid of the world or people because as a result of my death and resurrection prior to my commitment into the hospital, my mind had developed into a new consciousness of being as an individual but also in a connected sort of way with life and universe.

I am fortunate to live the life I have.
 

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