> How have we come to a point where we are arguing that a DEA schedule 1 drug (i.e., no accepted medical use) may be among the most promising lead therapies for psychiatric disease and a powerful probe of important brain functions?
I’ll make the observation that if recreational drugs weren’t doing interesting things to the brain, people wouldn’t use them, but psychedelics in particular do near miraculous seeming things with reproducibility that prescription drug companies would kill for in a candidate for a commercial drug.
LSD was marketed as a medicine under the name Delysid for over 10 years mid-century but only afterward did it gain a schedule 1 classification after it was declared to have no medical uses.
Those studies were pretty terribly done, with no control and other confounding factors. Maybe indicative of more study but nowhere near substantial or reproducible.
Edit: Replying with a 45 year-old study with extremely low scientific merit is silly especially on HN. I was asking specifically for references to the reproducibility op mentioned.
If you're interested in the topic of medical history of psychedelics, I would highly recommend "How to Change Your Mind" by Michael Pollan of nutrition fame. He decides to experiment with psychedelics for the first time in his late 50s, and the book describes his journey as well as changes in personal philosophy. He masterfully combines history lessons and personal experiences to paint an informative picture of where this topics might head.
It's perfectly legal to get ketamine from any doctor! The program you linked costs $650/infusion.
> A typical case would be 8-12 infusions over 4-6 weeks.
That's $7,800 for a month of treatment. That's a lot of money when considering that ketamine is not a cure and the patient will need future treatments.
I'm taking 250mg sublingual every day and paying ~$3000/year. Most of the cost is taxis, planes, and shipping because I'm out of state and have to fly in to see my doctor. If I lived in Maryland the cost would be much lower.
Also, if infusion clinic docs weren't bankrupting patients by picking the most expensive (read: lucrative) ROA the cost would be much cheaper.
That document you linked is fascinating. It's especially relevant to me because I'm currently taking a class through my university's pharmacy department on drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry. Just last week I wrote about PCP's origins as an aesthetic (similar to ketamine). This[1] is a good source on the topic.
Do you happen to know of other documents in a vein similar to the LSD one you linked? Pharmacology is one of many bizarre topics I endeavor to understand in my free time (this weird thing called "programming" also happens to be one).
Matthew, that document appeared on the first page of a Google search for Delysid, where it was the first result of 187,000 [https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&hl=en&source=hp&ei...]. I'd never heard of it until seeing the name in the comment I replied to. It's a one-off as far as my having others like it to send on. FWIW, as a retired neurosurgical anesthesiologist (38 years experience/age 70) on three antidepressants (lithium/Wellbutrin/Paxil) for life after four severe episodes of major depression, I found it (the document) as fascinating as you did. P.S. This: https://mattwie.se/ is very cool.
I’ll make the observation that if recreational drugs weren’t doing interesting things to the brain, people wouldn’t use them, but psychedelics in particular do near miraculous seeming things with reproducibility that prescription drug companies would kill for in a candidate for a commercial drug.