“With so many veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a widely accepted need for a new treatment of PTSD,” said Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of the psychedelic studies group. “These are people whom we put in harm’s way, and we have a moral obligation to help them.”
Ironically, the criminalization of the possession of psychedelic drugs in 1970 and the attendant passion of the authorities’ anti-drug crusade did little to slow the spread of recreational abuse, but effectively shut all research into possible beneficial uses down cold. The cost to the American taxpayer of giving these vets the medical care they’ve earned will be in the range of a trillion dollars over the next 30 or 40 years. If PTSD could be reliably cured with a short-term treatment using an inexpensive drug like MDMA, those costs could be slashed dramatically. And yet, though the Department of Defense is spending lavishly on speculative development all sorts of untested therapies – including planting microchips in veterans’ brains – it has yet to budget a dime for MDMA research, in part, clearly, because the cultural wars of 1970 continue to hold the image of psychedelics hostage.
La psilocybine contenue dans certains champignons hallucinogènes pourrait aider des fumeurs de longue durée à arrêter de fumer. C’est le résultat d’une petite étude pilote qui a obtenu 80 % de réussite sur un échantillon de 15 fumeurs.
La répression des toxicomanies au nom de l’ordre et de la santé publique contredit les principes libéraux de liberté individuelle et d’accroissement de l’offre ; elle se voit à son tour contredite par les conséquences psychiques, physiques et criminelles de la clandestinité qu’elle implique. Il convient donc de réapprécier les risques et les responsabilités.
Research into the therapeutic potential of illegal "psychedelic" drugs to treat an assortment of mainstream mental health conditions is undergoing a modern-day renaissance.It's a new world and there is a greater need than ever for more effective treatment models for individuals for whom our conventional treatment models are often sorely lacking.