Posted by bleauberry on June 11, 2018, at 12:16:56
In reply to New book about antidepressants, posted by Hugh on June 5, 2018, at 10:05:28
I agree with the controlled use of psychedelic drugs for mood issues. The doses would have to be minuscule, just enough to twerk the chemistry, but not enough to get side effects. Cocaine is similar to Ritalin and I think Ritalin is the best, and most underused, antidepressant out there. PCP and LSD could rescue a person from suicide at the right controlled dose.
The greatest cause of death is not heart attacks or car crashes. It is death from overdose. My opinion is that the psychiatric medical community plays a role in that by not making good diagnosis and not providing appropriate treatments. For example, hundreds of thousands and probably millions of Lyme patients are missed and shipped off to the psychiatrist.
So maybe some new psychedelic meds at controlled doses might actually be more helpful than reuptake inhibitors.
> It's called Blue Dreams. Its author, Lauren Slater, has been taking psychotropic drugs for 35 years. One of the reasons she wrote the book is that, while plenty of details about these drugs are available, nobody has ever written a good narrative about the subject, with a beginning, middle, and end.
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> The first chapter is about thorazine, the second about lithium. Then she moves on to the early antidepressants, and then the SSRIs.
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> Slater believes that the most promising future treatments for depression are psychedelics. She writes a chapter about psilocybin, and another about MDMA (Ecstasy). She writes briefly about ayahausca. (Thousands of westerners have traveled to Peru to take it.)
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> Slater visits a therapist who uses psilocybin to treat depression. After hearing about the cocktail of drugs Slater is taking for her depression, the therapist declines to treat her, saying that Slater's drugs would block the effects of psilocybin.
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poster:bleauberry
thread:1099071
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20180521/msgs/1099131.html