The first LSD study in 40 years concludes that use of the drug, combined with intensive psychotherapy, can help alleviate fear and anxiety in patients on the verge of dying.
Despite decades of horror stories by prohibitionists, it instead turns out that, as many in the psychedelic community have long known, LSD is an amazingly powerful and beneficial wonder drug when it’s not abused or used in clandestine government experiments, like MK-Ultra.
The study’s results, published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, shows the 12 people taking part were given different doses of the drug. One group received 200 micrograms, while the placebo group took a barely noticeable 20 micrograms in two different sessions, which were administered at the University of Bern in Switzerland, home of LSD discoverer Albert Hofmann, who the study is dedicated to. MAPS sponsored the study.
In the Discussion section, the study's authors explain: "All research with LSD-assisted psychotherapy in the 1950s and the 1960s came to a halt by the early 1970s. Our study, the first in more than 40 years to evaluate safety and efficacy of LSD as an adjunct to psychotherapy, was conducted in participants with anxiety after being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. In contrast to the shortcomings of older studies, we used a controlled, randomized and blinded study design to meet contemporary research standards. LSD was given in a psychotherapeutic context to facilitate a deep psychedelic state, allowing the participant to encounter his/her own inner realities during an emotionally intensified dream-like 'journey'."
They conclude: "This pilot study in participants with anxiety associated with the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness has demonstrated safety in 22 psychotherapy sessions assisted by 200 mg of LSD with no drug-related severe adverse events. Group comparison results support positive trends in reduction of anxiety after two sessions of LSD-assisted psychotherapy, with effect size estimates in the range of 1.1 to 1.2. In view of promising historical studies with adjunctive LSD treatment in this population and a recent promising study using psilocybin (Grob et al., 2011), as well as the urgent need for more effective treatments of anxiety in these participants, further study is warranted into the potential of LSD-assisted psychotherapy."
Who’s to begrudge these deathbed patients their final glimpse of a nirvana - an altered state they could already have been experiencing if the governments around the world hadn’t outlawed LSD for the common citizenry and kept it for their own nefarious operations? Prohibitionists have been deceiving us for far too long, and it’s way past time they answer for those lies.
