century. There was a divide between legal and illegal drugs but this
wasn't a real divide, just a construct. The line between the two has
become blurred. There's been a resurgence in research into the potential
of LSD as a mental health treatment. After years of suppression a few
studies have been allowed and these have shown promising results.
Ketamine is another illegal drug which is showing very good results in
psychiatric research trials. I believe there's investigation of MDMA too
- it was experimented with as a therapeutic tool in the 70s too.
They've not looked into cannabis much. The research has focused on
powerful illegal drugs. Cannabis is a pretty mild one compared to LSD
and letamine but lots of people use it to get happy. There's a lot of
psychiatric research about the dangerous of cannabis. Those who use it
rarely read those papers and have better tools to understand the drug:
they've tried it. There's preliminary data from an RCT showing certain
components of cannabis are antipsychotic. Delta-9-THC has been shown to
induce psychosis-like symptoms in lab settings but this mild
hallucinogen is why people smoke high grade skunk - it makes them happy
when they're in natural settings with their smoking buddies. Delta-9-THC
is licensed in America as an appetite stimulant but I've not come across
the paper which investigates how and how much this component makes users
happier.
Delta-9-THC is no where near as strong a hallucinogen as LSD. It can be
used in the right way to help certain people with their unhappiness. It
is clear that many people already self-medicate using cannabis more than
any other illegal drug. Psychiatry and society dismiss this while they
accept the SSRI as the ok high. It may work for some people but the THC
antidepressant effect is different. If psychiatrists and psychiatric
researchers tried these drugs - the legal and the illegal ones - they'd
have a much better understanding.
Instead they research on subjects and that's what they publish. I'm sure
some of the researchers and professors have probably tried the drugs but
won't admit it for fear of their reputation. I know many doctors who
have tried drugs and people in other professions. Anyone who's tried
these drugs would see that LSD, ketamine and MDMA are strong drugs
compared to cannabis. Yet the research into the application of illegal
drugs in mental health has focused on these strong chemicals instead of
a relatively mild plant. Though research into cannabis has offered leaps
forward in the understanding of the human body and nervous system (the
endocannabinoid system was found through cannabis research if I remember
right) and offered new treatments for physical health problems (Sativex
and Marinol are the two licensed drugs. There's also cannabis for the
symptoms of MS) I've yet to see the research on the application of THC
in mental health.
It's a shame because it's a bloody good antidepressant. Perhaps not as
strong as LSD and psychiatrists prefer to use heavy handed tools.
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