Magic Mushrooms and LSD Help Cancer Patients Overcome Fear of Death, Say Scientists

By Tom Porter
April 5, 2014 14:15 GMT

Drugs including magic mushrooms and MDMA are being used to treat cancer patients and people suffering from social anxiety by scientists in the US, in a series of groundbreaking studies.

In a recent study, cancer patient in New York were given magic mushrooms, which contain psilocybin, a powerful psychoactive drug with effects similar to LSD.

Psychologists monitoring the experiment wanted to find out if the drug could help patients overcome their pain and fear, and the results were positive.

"The worst pain and the worst fear and the worst anxiety turned into … the most precious thing I have ever known," said Estalyn Walcoff, a psychotherapist diagnosed with an untreatable form of lymphoma who took part in the study.

"I wish I could put it into words, but it was a sense of connectedness that runs through all of us," she told the Times.

New York University clinical psychologist Anthony Boss, who led the study, confirmed that participants had reported a lasting improvement in their psychological wellbeing.

"People talk about achieving a transcendence that serves as a buffer against the angst," he said.

The study follows similar tests by scientists at Johns Hopkins University, and a pilot study using LSD by Charles Grob at Harbor UCLA Medical Center in LA, in which a dozen terminally ill cancer patients took part.

It was the first study to involve LSD approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 40 years.

Psychologist Timothy Leary famously conducted experiments with LSD and psilocybin at Harvard University in the 1960s, and claimed the drugs could be used to treat alcoholics and reform criminals.

Novelist Aldous Huxley was part of Leary's Harvard psilocybin project, and took LSD on his deathbed in 1963.

FULL STORY:http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/magic-mushrooms-lsd-help-cancer-patients-o...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Psilocybin_Project

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Comment by Spydaman13 on April 6, 2014 at 11:42am: How "The Doors" derived their band name:

"when the doors of perception are cleansed, things will be seen as they truly are, infinite"

Comment by Ragnarok on April 6, 2014 at 9:15am: Sounds slimy.

Comment by Ragnarok on April 6, 2014 at 9:09am: According to the legend, when the root is dug up, it screams and kills all who hear it. Literature includes complex directions for harvesting a mandrake root in relative safety. For example Josephus (circa AD 37 Jerusalem – 100) gives the following directions for pulling it up:

"A furrow must be dug around the root until its lower part is exposed, then a dog is tied to it, after which the person tying the dog must get away. The dog then endeavours to follow him, and so easily pulls up the root, but dies suddenly instead of his master. After this, the root can be handled without fear."

Comment by Ragnarok on April 6, 2014 at 9:09am: LMAO so true DS

Comment by Ragnarok on April 6, 2014 at 9:06am

Comment by Ragnarok on April 6, 2014 at 9:02am: Well everything natural here is infamous......:-)

Comment by Ragnarok on April 6, 2014 at 9:00am: Love the name Devil's Breath we call it Angel's Trumpet here.

Comment by Ragnarok on April 6, 2014 at 8:57am: I have never tried the infamous Ayahuasca, Iboga or Peyote...I do own a peyote it's about 10-12 years old now.

The plan this year was to make a monastery garden like it would have been in the 1400-1500's not to consume the plants but mostly for the meditation aspect of creating it and something for the insects and birds to enjoy as well.

Comment by Ragnarok on April 6, 2014 at 8:00am: I know the 'witches' in northen europe made 'witches balm' (Atropa belladonna, Hyoscyamus niger, Datura stramonium, Mandragora among other ingredients..DO NOT TRY) which they robbed their body in to make 'travels' and get powerful visions............later in history they would get tortured and burnt by christians.

Comment by Ragnarok on April 6, 2014 at 7:15am: I believe that there's many uses for hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms many are being kept away from the public because of big pharma and dictatorial governments.

Freedom is for modern man to send another man in jail for cultivating nature with natures own 'gifts' because it's a threat to business and power.

Ironically enough some of the most used household/garden, produce/plants are some of the most 'toxic' and contains extreme dangerous hallucinogens if processed correctly and not taken with utmost caution.

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