Mental Health

Small Doses of LSD Can Assuage Depression and Anxiety, Say Researcher

By Kanika Gupta | Update Date: Nov 30, 2015 10:26 AM EST

Depression and anxiety are one of the most common and serious mental health problems. Both these conditions can cause serious damage when left to its own device. Even though there are multitude of treatments for both the mental conditions, they are extremely disruptive and their effectiveness varies from person to person. However, a highly suprising research recommended that small doses of hallucinogenic drugs can actually be used for the treatment of these diseases, reports Motherboard.

Even though most people would argue the recommendation of taking a drug to reduce the symptoms of anxiety, taking one-tenth of the normal dose of LSD, that is, 10-20 micrograms, rather than 100-200 micrograms, is apparently an effective treatment for this condition. If done the right way, the recipient will not experience any hallucinations or have any traumatic experiences or notice any slump in their cognitive abilities, according to IFL Science.

The researcher, James Fadiman, is also a psychologist who is known for his extensive research on psychedelic drugs is proposing this treatment, also called microdosing, reports HighExistence.

James Fadiman told Motherboard, "People do it and they're eating better, sleeping better, they're often returning to exercise or yoga or meditation. It's as if messages are passing through their body more easily." 5 years ago, Fadiman conducted an experiment and sent the instructions of microdosing to the parties who were interested on a condition that they will procure the drugs themselves as it is illegal. He then asked the people to document their experience as how their lives changed and how they interacted with people. These trip reports were duly sent by hundreds of people and the response was very positive. "This is total guesswork, but so many different conditions that I've seen are improved, it looks like it rebalances those pistons which are not in balance," he added. "This may be in your central nervous system, it may be the brain stem, it may be that it's improving function of mitochondria," reports IFL Science.

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