BACKGROUND: Genital self-mutilation is a well-known phenomenon in patients with schizophrenia and has occasionally been described in patients with personality disorders or transsexuality. However, literature just provides few cases of genital self-mutilation related to the use of psychotropic substances. CASE DESCRIPTION: A previously mentally healthy man (age, 32 years) performed manual...
Before LSD became infamous as a psychedelic in the late 1960s, it had an earlier career as a psychotomimetic--a drug which could produce a “model psychosis” or “artificial schizophrenia.” This paper focuses on the use of LSD in psychiatry in this often overshadowed period. I examine experiments that use LSD as a prosthetic tool to produce “disability immersion” experiences of schizophrenia in...
The phenethylamine and indoleamine classes of hallucinogens demonstrate distinct pharmacological properties, although they share a serotonin(2A) (5-HT(2A)) receptor mechanism of action (MOA). The 5-HT(2A) receptor signals through phosphatidylinositol (PI) hydrolysis, which is initiated upon activation of phospholipase C (PLC). The role of PI hydrolysis in the effects of hallucinogens remains...
Psychedelic drugs have long been known to be capable of inducing mystical or transcendental experiences. However, given the common "recreational" nature of much present-day psychedelic use, with typical doses tending to be lower than those commonly taken in the 1960s, the extent to which illicit use of psychedelics today is associated with mystical experiences is not known. Furthermore the mild...
The decline in therapeutic research with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in the United States over the course of the 1960s has commonly been attributed to the growing controversy surrounding its recreational use. However, research difficulties played an equal role in LSD psychotherapy's demise, as they frustrated researchers' efforts to clearly establish the efficacy of treatment. Once the...
In schizophrenia patients, optimal treatment with antipsychotics requires weeks to months of sustained drug therapy. However, single administration of antipsychotic drugs can reverse schizophrenia-like behavioral alterations in rodent models of psychosis. This raises questions about the physiological relevance of such antipsychotic-like activity. This study evaluates the effects of chronic...
The objective of this work is to characterize genetic and proteomic changes in a novel rat model of schizophrenia. Three‐month treatment with low doses of the hallucinogenic drug, LSD, induces a range of abnormal behaviors including social deficits, hyperactivity, and anhedonia. These behavioral changes persist in the absence of drug , and likely result from neuroadaptive changes in the medial...
Assessments of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in the treatment of alcoholism have not been based on quantitative meta-analysis. Hence, we performed a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials in order to evaluate the clinical efficacy of LSD in the treatment of alcoholism. Two reviewers independently extracted the data, pooling the effects using odds ratios (ORs) by a generic inverse...
RationaleAfter decades of social stigma, hallucinogens have reappeared in the clinical literature demonstrating unique benefits in medicine. The precise behavioral pharmacology of these compounds remains unclear, however.ObjectivesTwo commonly studied hallucinogens, (±)-1-(2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodophenyl)-2-aminopropane (DOI) and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), were investigated both in vivo and...
Ecstasy and LSD use is widespread in large Brazilian cities, but there is limited information on their use among young, middle-class, club goers in Brazil. We conducted standardized face-to-face interviews with 200 male and female ecstasy and/or LSD users, focusing on drug use and sexual history, current risk behaviors, and psychiatric symptomatology. Participants with early sexual debut...