Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, whether that’s one of the best beatles songs of all time
or just a weird song about LSD is up for debate.
But what is LSD and is it actually dangerous?
Hey guys Julia here for DNews
When you hear LSD you might think of a Beatles song or a little piece of white paper that’ll
take you on a trip, man.
While both heralded as a mind-expanding wonder drug or derided as dangerous and triggering
delusions, LSD holds some power in our collective imagination.
But what is it?
LSD is a derivative of ergot.
If that’s familiar to you, it’s because ergot is a fungus that frequently grows on
rye and wheat.
And sometimes that’s baked into bread that people eat and some young girls start trippin
on the fungus and then suddenly the villagers decide to kill a whole bunch of people for
being witches.
Seriously ergot probably caused the salem witch trials.
ANYWAYS
in small doses, ergot was used as medicine for centuries.
It was used to aid childbirth to quicken delivery and stop bleeding afterwards.
So naturally a pharmaceutical company looked into it’s potential benefits in the early
decades of the 20th century.
One guy at the company, chemist Albert Hofmann, was tasked with isolating the compounds and
trying to synthesize it by other means so that maybe it wouldn’t kill you.
In 1938 he tried a few variations, but not with much success.
On a few animal experiments he noticed that one variation, Lysergic acid diethylamide
-25 or LSD-25 had a strange effect on the mice.
They acted excited for some reason.
But still the company didn’t think much of the compound and mostly forgot about it.
Hofmann, however, couldn't’ stop thinking about it and those excited animals.
A few years later he tried to recreate the compound.
But one day, while working on it, he felt a little strange.
He went home and laid down.
And well.. he tripped the heck out.
But he couldn’t figure out what did it- he knew it could be poisonous so he took extra
precautions to avoid ingestion.
So he concluded that he absorbed a tiny tiny amount of LSD through his fingertips.
So well… he made the compound and proceeded to experiment on himself.
And the rest, is history.
LSD became a centerpiece of the counterculture movement in the 60s after the patents expired.
Millions saw it as a way to expand their spiritual horizons.
But soon, there was a cultural and literal crackdown on any sort of drug and LSD became
illegal in 1968.
Since then it’s been really difficult to study in a lab because of legal restrictions,
I mean it’s hard to get funding for something that’s technically illegal.
It’s still classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule I drug, labeling
it one of the "most dangerous drugs" with "no currently accepted medical use and a high
potential for abuse."
But from early experiments and a few recent ones, we know some things about the drug.
It works in a few ways.
One study published in the journal Cell Press found that hallucinogens like LSD work on
serotonin receptors in the brain called 5-HT2A receptors (2ARs).
While you might know serotonin as the “feel good drug”, it actually has a number of
uses in the brain.
Clare Stanford, a psychopharmacologist at University College London thinks that "serotonin
helps keep a handle on perception and actually stops us from hallucinating,".
So by blocking the serotonin receptors in your brain, your brain just kind of loses
its grip on perception.
Or another idea, Andrew Sewell, a Yale psychiatrist who studies psychedelic drugs, thinks that
LSD enhances some part of your perception.
That such drugs lower activity in your thalamus.
It sits in the center of your brain and filters your sensory information from all your nerves.
Sewell thinks that by dampening down this filter, you become more aware of the information
actually coming into your system.
So sights and sounds become louder or brighter, and you might start seeing things you never
noticed before.
Or you might just start seeing things period.
But anyways, is this mind altering drug dangerous?
Well, one study, published in the journal Lancet found that it’s actually one of the
least harmful drugs, both to the user and to others.
I mean when people do take it, they tend to be overly cautious, like being aware that
there’s a time and a place for it.
Like festivals in the middle of a desert.
And there’s no link between the drug and mental illness, according to one study published
in the journal Psychopharmacology and in fact it might be beneficial for those who suffer
from depression.
Okay but before this sounds like a wonder drug, there are some downsides.
Like bad trips or one common charge aimed at the drug is that it will induce “acid
flashbacks”.
Or the idea that the drug changes a person’s brain so much that days, months, or years
later, you’ll momentarily get the hallucinations associated with the drug.
Which in a recent case study published in the Israel Journal of Psychiatry led to one
person from 'Alice in Wonderland Syndrome'.
No he doesn’t keep falling down rabbit holes, but he does keep seeing things and people
as bigger or smaller than they really are.
But on the other hand one study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol dependence
concluded that such flashbacks or Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder as it’s formally
called, is incredibly rare.
So either way it’s clear more research is needed on this drug and in the past five years,
more research is being greenlit so hopefully we’ll have more to talk about in future
DNews episodes.