Entactogens such as 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "molly", "ecstasy") appear to have unusual, potentially therapeutic, emotional effects. Understanding their mechanisms can benefit from clinical experiments with related drugs. Yet the first known drug with such properties, 3,4-Methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA), remains poorly studied and its pharmacokinetics in humans are unknown. We...
Psychedelic plants and fungi have been used in indigenous medicinal traditions for millennia. Modern psychedelic research began when Albert Hofmann first synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25) in 1938. Five years later, became the first person to ingest LSD. Hofmann was unaware of the significance of his actions, and the effects they would set in motion. After a burgeoning period of...
BMJ Case ReportsMarch 7, 2019Geoffrey Peter Ronan, Nicola Ronan, Siobhan Mcgettigan et al.4 citations
A 26-year-old cachectic man presented with an altered mental status. He was agitated, tremulous, hyperthermic and diaphoretic with largely dilated pupils. Collateral history revealed acute ingestion of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine on a background of chronic drug abuse. His condition deteriorated requiring sedation and intubation with transfer to the intensive care unit. A diagnosis of...
Over the last decade, many new psychostimulant analogues have appeared on the recreational drug market and most are derivatives of amphetamine or cathinone. Another class of designer drugs is derived from the 2-aminoindan structural template. Several members of this class, including the parent compound 2-aminoindan (2-AI), have been sold as designer drugs. Another aminoindan derivative,...
Background: Recent studies have suggested therapeutic benefits of psychedelics for a variety of mental health conditions. The understanding of how single psychedelic administrations can induce long-lasting effects are, in large, still lacking. However, recent studies in both healthy and clinical populations suggest a role for personality changes. Aim: To test support for some of these plausible...
An evident experience of God's presence is the basis for all religion. Mysticism is considered to be piety in so far as primary importance is attached to inner religious experience, to religion as occurring in the soul. Mysticism is pure religious introversion. The special religious experience of mysticism, its epistemology and its ascetic ethics or technique, occur with startling likeness in...
Contributing to recent scholarly interest in the cognitive and perceptual ideas that informed Romantic interest in transcendence, this paper argues for a common self-experimental method underlying Humphry Davy’s medical experiments with nitrous oxide and the composition of lyric poetry by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Romantic poets and scientists adopted the formal method of...
4-Iodo-2,5-dimethoxy-N-(2-methoxybenzyl)phenethylamine (25I-NBOMe), commonly called "N-Bomb," is a synthetic phenethylamine with psychedelic and entactogenic effects; it was available on the Internet both as a legal alternative to lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and as a surrogate of 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), but now it has been scheduled among controlled substances. 25I-NBOMe...
Psychedelic drugs, often referred to as hallucinogens, are quite distinct from other classes of psychotropic drugs. Although the subjective and behavioral effects they induce are quite dramatic, they possess little addictive potential when compared to nicotine, alcohol or opiates. Since the discovery of ketamine antidepressant effects, there has been growing interest for these molecules....
International research is increasingly demonstrating that psychedelic‐assisted psychotherapy can enhance psychotherapeutic outcomes and be effective for some treatment‐refractory mental illnesses; however, there is an absence of any such research in Australia. A review of psychedelic science has been conducted with a focus on psychedelic‐assisted psychotherapy to highlight the degree to which...