Tune In and Turn On

(First published a month ago on Kiltr)

Following on from last year's study, led by the government's former drugs advisor, Prof. David Nutt and colleagues at Imperial College, London, there has been a resurgence of medical interest (but crucially not in funding or research investment) in LSD and psilocybin, the active ingredient in 'magic' mushrooms, as treatments for mental health conditions ranging from depression to PTSD. According to Nutt, government and funders in the UK remain unwilling to engage with the potential clinical benefits of psychoactive drugs.

In the study, which was, of necessity, partly completed through crowdfunding sources, twenty healthy volunteers who had experience of LSD were injected with 'moderate', 75 microgram, dosages before having their brains monitored using fMRI techniques. Robin Carhart-Harris, also from Imperial College, said the dose produced 'quite profound effects' in brain activity, mood and mental state of the participants, with the overwhelming response being positive. None reported having a 'bad trip', with only three reporting some anxiety or paranoia. Carhart-Harris noted that even those few who had a slightly more challenging experience joined the others in seeming 'somehow psychologically refreshed' afterwards.

A previous related psilocybin study by the group showed that it alongside other psychoactive substances decreased bloodflow to 'hub structures' in the brain, thus having innate potential to help patients overcome mental health conditions where pathological patterns of thought are otherwise entrenched and difficult to reverse. The team began a new study on the effects of psilocybin on patients with depression in May.

A Home Office standard response to the first study's findings was exactly the same as that which I was sent after signing a petition to the government asking for a widening of the medical uses of marijuana in the UK. I signed because I have refractory Frontal Lobe Epilepsy, meaning I am resistant to medication and still have between 40 and 120 seizures every day depending on my seizure threshold and where I am in my cycle. I also have early onset osteoarthritis, due in part to a botched NHS operation. When the arthritis is bad, and it can be debilitatingly so, the pain exacerbates my seizures, clustering them tighter. I have come to from secondary generalised seizures on a few occasions with the bones down the left side of my body all locked and immovable without snapping arthritic spurs In some European countries and in a growing number of US states, as well as in many enlightened countries the world over where medical opinion is reaching something of a unanimous position, both of my medical conditions are top of the list for prescription of medical marijuana and it has been scientifically proven in numerous peer reviewed studies to be by far the most effective drug at treating both conditions with far fewer side effects than any of the prescription drugs available in the UK. UK funding and licensing remains obstinate in the face of scientific evidence and despite the growing prevalence of heartening stories like this:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/medical-marijuana-helps-epileptic-child-suffering-100-seizures-day-1446463

I cannot take any of the most effective painkillers which act against my arthritis because of how they are proven to interact with AEDs (anti epileptic drugs) my neurologist insists I still need to take as a precautionary measure, despite having never reduced my seizure count in the five years I have been taking them and having a plethora of almost unbearable side effects to boot! Despite what active police practice may be, it is illegal in the UK for me to buy or grow medical grade marijuana as treatment for either of my conditions. That Home Office standard response reads:

'Drugs are illegal where scientific and medical analysis has shown they are harmful to human health. We have a clear licensing regime, supported by legislation which allows legitimate research to take place in a secure environment while ensuring that harmful drugs are not misused and do not get into the hands of criminals.'

Come on, really? Who does that protect when studies across the globe show the drugs in question, issues over which the response is being given, are of some provable scientific benefit to human health and harmful, illegal versions of them remain in the hands of those who that statement means when it refers to 'criminals', whilst legal versions, as well as contingent new research studies into them and their funding, are controlled by 'criminals' with only profit in mind and not the health and well being of the patients the drugs are intended for. Jeez, it's not conspiracy theory, it's neoliberal big pharma theory 101!

Before the anger gets the best of me and lowers the seizure threshold even further, at this juncture I'd also just like to point out I'm no Timothy Leary or Albert Hoffmann, nor even any kind of 'blazer', just an occasional, necessary medicinal user of nothing more than marijuana. Stimulants of any kind as well as alcohol are not advised as part of my prescribed medicinal regime or even just for how they interact with the condition in general, even caffeine. Amidst the trajectory, narrative and language of the 'War on Drugs', it's always destined to failure echoes still playing across our society despite changing global social mores, there have been far too many casualties of 'friendly fire', left to suffer in criminalised ignominy through the complacency and glacial (in)action of drug research funding and licensing in the UK.

With that in mind, I'd like to take a wee moment to remember a time before that war was engaged in earnest, or at least when there was a culture of detente, when one of those Great British Cultural Institutions, The Beatles, was fuelled by recreational, never mind medicinal, drug use. What was, to my mind, the greatest of their albums, 'Revolver', turned fifty back on Aug 5th this year, with barely a peep in the Great British Meeja, noting how it was largely inspired and motivated by John Lennon and George Harrison's first (surprise) LSD trip!

The story goes that in 1965 (as told to Rolling Stone in 1971 by John Lennon and the original interview recordings recently animated by them and shown below), Lennon and then wife Cynthia, with Harrison and his wife Pattie, were having dinner at the London home of their friend and dentist John Riley. Riley insisted they have and finish a sweetened coffee after dinner, then admitting to the sugar cubes being laced with LSD, which both Beatles had previously claimed they would try if they didn't know they were ingesting it! The story of their experience is in the animation here, enjoy:

https://youtu.be/-jbTCyvKAKo

Now, I'm clearly not advocating the manner, amount and/or settings used here for any use of psychotropics for mental health issues, that's being done by medical professionals, but for Lennon and Harrison, it led to them seeing the world in a whole new way and then advocating LSD use to Ringo and a reluctant Paul. Of course, writing, performing and recording 'Revolver' took a lot more than that but to begin the process it took, just like the subjects in the Imperial College study, a kick start which made the band feel 'somehow psychologically refreshed' enough to make perhaps the most significant work of their career.

If just a drop of the right psychoactive substance can help shift the pathological burden of mental health issues in the right medically determined patients isn't it preferable to a lifelong reliance on big pharma produced anti depressants with dependency designed in? Shouldn't we all be tuning in and turning on to the deficit in funding language and resources, asking who they serve? Or should we just accept that the folks in the white coats with the big pharmaceutical logo on the pocket have our best interests at heart?

(A wee addendum/footnote, I wonder what Owen 'Pfizer' Smith's stance is on the issue, anyone heading to any hustings anytime soon able to pop him a question or two?)