text: Swiss scientists broke a four-decade-long informal ban on LSD research yesterday when they announced the results of a study in which cancer patients received the drug to curb their anxiety about death. 
   
   The study, which was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, looked at the safety and efficacy of LSD when used in combination with talk therapy. The researchers used the semisynthetic psychedelic drug to facilitate discussions about the cancer patients' fears of dying. The patients who took LSD, most of whom were terminally ill, experienced 10-hour-long supervised "trips." One patient described the trips to The New York Times as a "mystical experience," where "the major part was pure distress at all the memories I had successfully forgotten for decades." 
   
   These periods of distress are regarded as therapeutically valuable because they allow patients to address their memories and the emotions they evoke. The patients underwent 30 such trips over the course of two months. 
   
   A year after the sessions ceased, the patients who had received a full dose of LSD — 200 micrograms — experienced a 20 percent improvement in their anxiety levels. That was not the case for the group who received a lower dose, however, as their anxiety symptoms actually increased. They were later allowed to try the full dose after the trial had ended. 
   
   "We want to break these substances out of the mold of the counterculture." 
   
   Because of the small number of study participants, the researchers are reluctant to make any conclusive statements about the LSD treatment's effectiveness. Indeed, the results were not statistically significant. But the fact that the study took place at all bodes well for psychedelic drug research, as the drug caused no serious side effects. Rick Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a foundation that has funded many of these studies, thinks that revisiting LSD-based treatments is worthwhile. "We want to break these substances out of the mold of the counterculture," Doblin told The New York Times, "and bring them back to the lab as part of a psychedelic renaissance." ||||| Login Login with your LWW Journals username and password. Login with your LWW Journals username and password. Username or Email: 
   
   
   
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target: – Researchers experimented with LSD in psychiatric treatment until such research was effectively banned in the US in 1966—but now a Swiss psychiatrist has conducted the first controlled trial of the hallucinogenic drug in more than four decades, with US FDA approval. Dr. Peter Gasser's study involved 12 people who were dying, most of terminal cancer, and suffering from "deep anxiety," the Seattle Times reports. After undergoing talk therapy, eight of the patients were given a 200-microgram dose of LSD designed to "produce the full spectrum of a typical LSD experience" on two occasions; the other four received a 20-microgram "active placebo" that wasn't expected to have an impact. They took their 10-hour "trips" in Gasser's office, and, he says, "Their anxiety went down and stayed down." Specifically, subjects who received full doses of LSD saw a 20% improvement in their anxiety symptoms, and for those who were still alive a year later, the improvement had lasted, the New York Times reports. Those who took the placebo reported increased anxiety. It doesn't sound like a comforting experience at first: The Verge says the purpose of administering the psychedelic drug was to "facilitate discussions about the patients' fears of dying," and one patient reports that "the major part was pure distress at all these memories I had successfully forgotten for decades. These painful feelings, regrets, this fear of death." But he talked about all that with Gasser, something he'd found difficult prior to the trip; the Times refers to such distress as "therapeutically valuable," and many subjects had similar experiences. Other than that, no serious side effects were seen.