research
How Psilocybin Works: Addition by Subtraction
Psychedelic Frontier gladly welcomes our first guest, Zizo! A big thanks to Zizo for today’s post about some surprising psilocybin research results. Psilocybin is the inactive precursor of psilocin, the chemical primarily responsible for the hallucinogenic effects of Psilocybe “magic mushrooms”. Though human cultures have used this entheogen for many centuries, we are only just beginning to understand the physiological mechanism by which it produces its psychedelic effects. This slow scientific progress is a result of harsh international drug policy, but I digress… The psychedelic trip is often described as profoundly mind-expanding, and the brain is popularly presumed to...
FDA Approves Lorcaserin, Diet Drug with Psychedelic Effects at High Doses
This is a landmark step towards sensible US drug policy. Since the Nixon Administration passed the Controlled Substance Act passed in 1970, nearly all psychedelic-style drugs have been automatically classified as Schedule I, which means absolute prohibition with no recognized medical potential. (LSA presents an exception as a Schedule III drug, and the case may be made for the “psychedelic” nature of dextromethorphan and ketamine.) Lorcaserin, a weight loss drug with euphoric, hallucinogenic, and dissociative effects at high doses, has been classified as a Schedule IV medicine. This marks the first time that the DEA has acknowledged the...
New Interactive Graphs Visualize Online Drug Talk
On his blog Virostatiq, Marko Plahuta has published a set of colorful interactive graphs depicting drug discussions on Bluelight.ru, the harm reduction forum. According to Marko: I analyzed around 1.2 million posts on bluelight.ru and constructed a simple diagram that tells a lot. It was constructed in such a way that drugs that are frequently mentioned together, appear together. Circle radii are proportional with frequency of appearance of the same drugs in the posts. A second graph maps the relationships between drugs and effects commonly reported in user posts. The source data covers a period from 2010 to 2013,...
Ketamine shows promise in treating “Fear of Harm”
There has been a huge resurgence of research on psychedelic and dissociative drugs recently. This is very promising because for 40 years, the study of these very promising medical compounds was shelved in the name of prohibition. Finally, after decades of hiatus, we are able to shed light on some of these compounds in controlled clinical settings. The studies may be small and few in number right now, but their positive results should help open the door to larger and ever more diverse studies. If early studies are any indication, the medical potential of psychedelics is absolutely vast....