PhD psych student here, interested in substance use to help mental illness (psychopharmacology)

PhD psych student here, interested in substance use to help mental illness (psychopharmacology)

>any fun/unique ideas for research with drugs?

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yeah, leave your worthless waste of a field and contribute to society. a street cleaner provides more than you.

willing to provide evidence or just be a dick?

If you're being serious, LSD is one of the more prominent "drugs" that help alter mood and block out mental illness in a sense.

yea I've been looking a lot into dissociative psychedelics. Ketamine has recently gotten very popular for PTSD due to a large number of reasons but one of the main ones is re-consolidation of fear memory.

Have you heard the research some psychiatrists are doing with ketamine and the seriously depressed? They are finding great success with small amounts of ketamine in these people's lives when administered intravenously. Might be worth researching on your end OP

Trips! But yeah I think dissociative identity disorders are kinda horse shit, they are more like such statistical rarities and malingering is such an easy way to get away with things. My only problem with PTSD is that the DSM is having a hard time pinpointing down a definition right now

Look up the town where they just let the mentally ill roam, work and live with sane people... as if they were normal. Apparently there's not much helping for the mentally ill but to accepting them for what they are helps society deal.

I've considered it, but I'd prefer to not jump on a bandwagon. I have done a lot of thinking on how dimethyltryptamine may work for anxiety and depression, but possibly looking at the interaction of psychotic disorders and dissociative substances

are you confusing DID dissociative identity disorder (DID) with dissociative psychadelics (aka LS, Shrooms, DMT)

And further along the psychedelic trail, DMT is what you can consider unprecedented healing territory. Like what you're probably looking for. Recreational use of it is a no no.

I take OxyContin to deal with my depression. It works for me. Maybe look into stuff like that.

In general I think dissociation is horse shit, I have experienced psychedelics and many others I've talked to haven't really had that effect. It is my subjective opinion though

Don't tell me what to do, daft cunt.

The thing is that it isn't just jumping on a bandwagon, if you manage to generate the same findings then it is corroborating ketamine as a potential therapeutic medicine, but if you find the opposite then you discredit them

I would recommend weening off that asap and moving towards nicotine and (cannabidiol) CBD

This is what works for me though. I have a steady supply and shit. I'm in control.

certainly a valued opinion, I am curious as to if you actually gave yourself a dissociative-threshold-level dose though, because from a pharmacological perspective, dissociation is an attainable state with the correct amount of a substance

certainly, however I would prefer to find something even more statistically significant than a horse tranquilizer to help with mental illness

whatever works is good, but ultimately you will develop a tolerance over time, thus causing you to up the dosage, and since pills are harder and harder to find I would just be worried about not having enough to sustain the therapeutic effects after the dosage has increased significantly

I mean through meditation it is also possible to attain a dissociative like status as well, but I just think it is more about the human will to force something into action not so much a mental disorder or abnormality.

Hmm. I can get it pretty easily now but I see what you mean. Seriously though, everyone in my area is on one opioid or another. Lot of them are using it to deal with depression or similar. Worth looking into.

The problem is with the whole federal scheduling of drugs will make it unlikely that you'll be granted any money for research that isn't already allocated depending on where you're getting your PhD. Know what I mean? Some schools won't give money to that no matter what because of the classification of drugs

Wasn't there something recently about doctors being able to artificially treat the substance in "magic mushrooms"? I think it was about a ,moth ago or so

I just realized how broken that sentence was. I meant to say artificially creating the substance in the mushrooms

that makes complete sense yea
Under the use of a certain dosage of a psychedelic substance, dissociation is coerced upon the user, meaning they feel disconnected with their body due to a type of sensory deprivation. This deprivation is onset by the substance interfering with normal neuronal communications and altering neurochemical messages

my specialty is actually in opioid use disorder (more heroin, but definitely opioids

i completely agree, which is why I can hopefully get them through post-doc grants and research but I can get the majority of the paper proposal written out now

Ah. I might end up one of your statistics if fuck up then. In any case, you're doing good work.

I'm sure it is likely, but because there is so little that is still understood about the brain and how certain substances should react in the brain and the results, fundamentally there just isn't always an accurate answer. It is why there are so many different antidepressants, I just cannot see a university funding an experiment with illegal narcotics, especially IRB, don't think they would at all

Psilocybin? We can already make it. Recently doctors were able to use it in a study or something.

OP:
mdmaptsd.org/
Also being used to treat stronger cases of autism and such. (not even kidding)
how are we this far down this thread and nobody has said mdma lol.

correct, the active substance in magic mushrooms is psilocybin which provides the therapeutic effects
it's actually been used with a high success rate to treat cigarette addiction

I just don't know how you'll get around university ethics boards and IRB either

LSD is not a dissociative psychedelic, it's a hallucinogenic psychedlic you fucking pretentious dick

let's hope not! If you are using opioids though, go to your local walgreens or CVS and pick up a prescription for Naloxone
it reverses opioid overdose and you can save someone's life with it (and possibly yourself if you feel that you took too much and catch it quick)
also make sure to get the intranasal spray, its much better than the needle form

Oh yea, lets combine drug use an mental illness together, that works.

Here's the deal.
Mild drugs like pot, mushrooms, and ketamine can help with depression.
But when you start involving that shit w/ pyschosis or schizophenia you're asking for trouble. That shit makes it worse, and youre gambling.

ultimately I need to work with a hospital
universities like johns hopkins and Yale have gotten these substances for research so I think I'll be fine

Will do, thanks.

ethics boards are usually swayed easily with a strong literature review and strict safety protocol
the IRB is the same, but may require an MD to supervise
it's usually the DA that I would have trouble with

OP: mdmaptsd.org/
look up MAPS

its literally this exact project lol

appreciate the comment
and correct, my fault for not making it clear, but I meant LSD can induce a state of dissociation

yes, usually the use of substances can make mental illness worse or onset mental illness, but it's possible to treat mental illness with substances too (antispychotics anyone?)

have you ever actually tried LSD?

I base my assumptions off of empirical literature, so no I have not

I'm referring to hallucinogens and the such.
What you've said was possibly the stupidest thing ive ever read

have you had a first hand experience or are you just spouting bullshit you've read from some ''psychological'' paper?

I've never done it myself but have done quite some shrooms and people compare it as one being analog and the other digital so if i take that into account, i never had any dissociative experience on shrooms and that's coming from someone who once done 8 grams in one sitting

Get some weed and Jesus for people with mental illnesses.

But really try something with DMT, it actually comes from a plant that grows naturally here in the Midwest. (Try doing some research with DMT to see if microdosing can help anything.) Same with laughing toads. Shrooms and LSD are always an interesting means of medication, especially in low dosages.

appreciate the honesty, but the pharmacology literature behind some substances disagrees with your idea that some substances won't help

examples of "overloading" the brain with information essentially leads to a neurological reset
example of this is experimental treatments of ketamine for chronic pain (psychosomatic)

The common misconception is that all psychological research uses purely psychological literature. I use a combination of chemistry, pharmacological, neurological, and psychological literature

alright, fair enough, LSD is the furthest thing from a dissociative lol.

i would suggest actually trying these yourself before picking one to research.

i've tried both, it's more accurate to say that shrooms are more introvertive and LSD is more extrovertive.

certain psychedelics can help. microdosing LSD can help. ketamine can help. MDMA can help. a full on LSD trip will definitely not help, and even healthy people have bad trips. please don't do that.

now this is the kind of shit i was looking for with this thread, thanks user

I second ketamine considering it already has it's uses in hospitals and such as an anesthetic. I'm in just wrapping up my undergrad in neurology so I'll just assume you know as much or more than myself in terms of where to go with the study once you've picked a drug, but anyways ketamine isn't under the microscope as much as other psychedelics are lately (this is not to say that going with any psychedelic for research purposes in treating depression and whatnot is a bad idea, or that ketamine isn't also under more observation than it has been in the past, however ketamine isn't entirely as well known/studied as psychs).

Furthermore I've tried most drugs across the spectrum, and psychedelics are the only recreational substances that aren't already conclusively documented/studied, relatively speaking (i.e compared to stimulants, opiates etc). Ketamine stands out above all others as a drug with viable potential for research.

Keep in mind that my opinion is biased; as far as I'M aware, it is the case that psychs are being studied much more frequently and seriously lately. I do not go out of my way to frequently keep myself updated on every single published research paper.

Whoever this is seems to be pretty on the money. You'll get a great insight on your research by actually having experience with what you're researching (i.e trying it).

yea that ultimate difficulty is controlling the physical and psychological environments to ensure a good trip (as well as consistent test environment), which is near impossible

>I use a combination of chemistry, pharmacological, neurological, and psychological literature
nothing wrong with that but as a matter of fact, you should experiment yourself sometimes just for the sakes of having a clear picture

as much as I want to try all these substances, I have had significant problems in my past that lead to paranoia and severe anxiety (multiple bad trips) so I can't do any more substances so I don't onset any lasting psychological problems

it is impossible to 'ensure' a good trip. it's possible to 'improve the chances of' a good trip eg set/setting/mindset (and given you're trying to treat someone sick, controlling their mindset will be difficult), but i've literally seen people freak out for no reason at all. psychedelics do that.

if you aren't willing to do it to yourself it's unethical to try and perform that exact experiment on someone else.

so ultimately from this thread I have gathered that I will be looking to do more research into:

Ketamine, psilocybin, and microdosing DMT

mdma dude

you prob think i'm trolling but go google MDMA assisted psychotherapy. i'm completely convinced this is the most promising one because it's pretty hard to have a bad trip on MDMA.

benefits outweigh the risks with regards to research like that
it is perfectly ethical if a person is informed of possible risks and effects of the study and that they are under no duress to participate or continue to participate in the study, that they can terminate at any point in time

Interesting thread

gotcha, capping this

>i'm trying to treat people who have mental disorders using substances

>because of my own mental disorders of "significant problems in my past that lead to paranoia and severe anxiety" i'm unwilling to use substances because it may turn out bad

if you already don't believe in the results of your own project you aren't going to get very far.

Totally understandable. In that case I'd perhaps still consider something along the lines of a dissociative/psychedelic considering that there's enough information out there to grasp the gist of what they feel like. Also in my experience (and from what I've gathered from friends who've also tried it), ketamine seems to be a lot less 'wild' in how it affects each individual; psychedelics tend to affect everyone differently, and they can really exasperate other underlying mental illnesses while trying to use them to treat mental illnesses such as depression and whatnot (which is completely plausible since mental illnesses are comorbid, and your test subjects may have other ones that neither they nor you are aware of, ultimately skewing the test results). I cannot say for sure whether the same goes for ketamine, but yeah, in my experience/what friends of mine have said, ketamine is a much more consistent 'high' with RELATIVELY fewer risks. Emphasis on relatively.

This is also true, and would be very easy to research, so one thing to consider is whether you want your research study to be something easier AKA something that's already quite prevalent in research communities nowadays, or if you want to task yourself with a harder, lesser known topic in hopes of it being successful and helping you to attain some notoriety

Sorry, meant to say since mental illnesses are commonly known to be comorbid**********

The majority of people who have access to pharmic treatment are drug seekers who have the time and energy to play the game and get their fix while people who really suffer have a very hard time adhering to steady appointments, which doctors respond to by treating less as a higher calculated risk to their drug license.

It isn't necessarily the doctors or the patients fault but it results in repeat business, and so has been encouraged and reinforced over time.

The most successful psychiatrists I have ever attended never used a prescription pad in their career. Which basically makes them professional therapists. Which would be an obsolete profession if society didn't teach us not to talk, trust, or share our feelings with each other.

If you are a decent shrink this makes pretty decent sense and although not an absolute truth, is no exaggeration.

On the other hand if you decide to be a real practicing psychiatrist and donate your time to the community social societies that could really use you then you are my hero. But you almost never run into someone with that much progressive forward drive who is also willing to work for smiles.

I do believe in them, however I don't want to take the substances because of the following
1. I have no psychological disorders anymore but do not want recurrent symptoms to reappear
2. I can help people with a substance without trying it myself (do you see any doctors voluntarily taking buprenorphine or undergoing radiation therapy for the sake of empathy with the patient?)
3. ultimately, your disagreement with me is based on ethics, and not objective truths, therefore this discussion is pointless unless you're willing to take a course on research ethics

>This is also true, and would be very easy to research, so one thing to consider is whether you want your research study to be something easier AKA something that's already quite prevalent in research communities nowadays, or if you want to task yourself with a harder, lesser known topic in hopes of it being successful and helping you to attain some notoriety

the problem of doing the latter is the cost. go and google MAPS's finance sheets. doing a project like this takes multiple decades and a ridiculous amount of money. just to get a license to be able to talk to a manufacturer about ordering some pharmaceutical, GMP certified schedule 1 drugs is going to cost several million dollars.

it's not something one person does. there's not 1 person behind MDMA assisted psychotherapy getting as far as it did.

How long until Xanax causes brain damage?

Is the brain damage reversible?

Thank you in advance.

Also tell me the same about propofol, if you happen to know.

i appreciate your point of view there, you make some good points
ultimately, my goal is to achieve significant notoriety due to a novel study and have enough money to retire and provide my services and expertise in the substance use community for free to the communities that need it most

>2. I can help people with a substance without trying it myself (do you see any doctors voluntarily taking buprenorphine or undergoing radiation therapy for the sake of empathy with the patient?)

if my doctor wasn't getting vaccinated themselves but still tried to convince me to get them i'd demand a new doctor by yesterday lol.

if me and my doctor both had comparable illnesses and my doctor wasn't themselves going through a similar treatment plan i was on i'd demand a new doctor by yesterday.

it's not just an ethics thing it's more of a how can you convince a research board that your project is worthwhile if you're not personally completely convinced in its success. why pick illegal drugs, why not go research something else? if it's just to be edgy and say "oh my thesis is on drugzzzz" you aren't going to get far.

This is really just an opinion though. In YOUR experience, the most successful psychiatrists you've had sessions with never used a prescription pad.

It is certainly not the case that a MAJORITY of people who have access to pharmaceutical treatment are drug seekers. That's an assumption. I'm not at all criticizing what you said, I just believe it's important to remain as unbiased as possible and to remain open to both sides of the spectrum, as individualistic experiences do not constitute conclusive facts about topics such as this.

Oh yeah please don't get me wrong, I don't mean to imply that researching MDMA is a bad idea by any means, or that it's easy or not as fruitful just because research in it is more prevalent lately. If I were tasked with performing a study, I personally would choose MDMA or ketamine without a doubt. I was more so just appealing to the either possibility; that OP wanted to do a fun, cheaper, still arguably as useful study AKA one on MDMA, or if they were trying to lean more towards an obscure, harder to come by and more pioneer like study.

I'm totally well aware of how much research studies cost, and furthermore if the study is even successful, the process by which the drug would have to be tested, produced, patented, etcetcetc.

xanax is a benzodiazepine, which essentially means it's alcohol in pill form
it's possible to overdose, or develop neurocognitive disorders after years of heavy abuse (think significant brain damage, like dementia)
>google wernicke-korsakov's syndrome

>my goal is to only sell enough of my soul to become qualified that I'm still a human once I have the ability to help people

Best of luck man. People need a lot less drugs not because they don't work, but in this day almost none of the people who "need" them have the support/feedback network to make them work properly.

I certainly agree, my bad on the faulty metaphor.
The thing is, I don't have any of the mental illnesses I would be trying to treat with these substances, and to self-induce any of them would be idiotic as there aren't many substance abuse researchers out there.
I picked illegal drugs because of the emergence of the statistically significant effects some illegal drugs can create when treating mental illness.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269881114548296

I agree, however sometimes a handful of substance-induced experiences can provide insight to provide relief and meaning to a meaningless/hopeless life

I experimented with psychedelics as a means of therapy when everything else simply didn't give me what I wanted. After several intense and some horrific experiences, I can say that there is absolutely some validity to these substances as therapy. My strange existential depression has been pretty much quelled.

extremely interesting, mind greentexting your experiences? (or just type them)

Your opinion that it's an opinion, is an opinion.

The part where I offered my experience, was an experience, and was never given as indicative proof of anything.

The part where I showed the logical operation of an over used system, is accurate. Idealistic views do not make it unso. Thinking drug seekers are only people who itch themselves and drool is obtuse. The war on drugs is not fabricated, there is quite a modern epidemic occuring.

Do I ever get tired of people having to mindlessly repeat that nothing said or posted is proof of anything. No shit, it's a discussion board.

But go ahead and tell me how the medical community actually works backwards and people who participate less in it receive more from it. Because it would be nice for you to present an equal effort counterview instead of just saying, "No what you said is just an opinion". Which sounds like a psuedointellectual cop out.

dxm as an MAO system kickstarter along with psychotherapy from someone who isn't full on retarded
(instead of MAOIs as antidepressants)

I don't disagree. The support/feedback network has to be present during those experiences

of course, all part of the proposed treatment protocol i'll be making

Got any of it you'd like to share?

fair enough, i guess what i'm trying to say is, if you yourself have never tried these substances there's no way you'd be able to relate to someone on them because you don't actually know what they're thinking at the time, and that would be necessary if you wanted to direct someone's trip for therapeutic purposes.

i actually tend to have a bad trip if i'm the only person around me who's on something for that reason and pretty much all of my druggie friends would agree.

I actually did a paper on dextromethorphan and it's effect on epinephrine/norepinephrine for PTSD so I completely get where youre coming from

E to strengthen already existing patterns.
Lsd to figure out what they are and how they feel. Or to gain completet awareness of your bodies sensory organs.
E + a lot of weed to numb your body and make your brain soar.
Just weed for relaxation during meditation.
Do any of these while meditating and thinking about yourself.

This is a decent point.

unfortunately its almost 5am so I am going to have to get some sleep
thanks everyone for the awesome thread, definitely learned a ton from people's input

Now i understand where you're coming from
that's an important thing to keep in mind, I'll do my best to stay on top of qualitative literature to have an understanding of their mindset as much as possible without taking the substance itself

Ibogaine combined with an anxiolitic to cure physical addiction to opiates.

>no I was just hoping for some lukewarm dicking around and nothing too deep

Sleep tight user

haha I actually use it and have a pretty solid understanding of biology and psychology (not like I'm a phd candidate, but)
I like to look at my shit in life, which there's plenty of, head on. In my experience this has done it for me.
Well, combination DXM and thinking hard anyways

No problem. Try to keep it natural, though. I think introducing overly processed anything to our bodies is unhealthy (i.e. foods, Rx, and street drugs like meth). Please don't forget that spirituality and being closer to God can heal people. Through His grace, people can see the light and find their way to healing when they have something going on with them that can rarely be explained exactly. I know first hand that doctors never know exactly what is going on in each individual when it comes to diagnosing mental illnesses. I was once on 18 prescriptions at one time and they never did figure out a diagnosis for anything. It swtiched from literally 5 different diagnosis. I gave them all up, and went back to pot and seeking God. I have never felt better in my life. I feel like I have purpose.
Please keep in mind the real goal, which is to help people better themselves. Good doings are what make real wealth in the end. You can't take Xanax or gold to the grave.

Sorry for my small, odd speech. I just felt like you should know that I mean well and really hope you and everyone you help takes care of themselves.

careful with your liver unless you have an isolated version of the drug itself

heh I can google toxicology and understand metabolism, I genuinely appreciate the heads up though (:
some of the stuff out there really is poison

>I'll do my best to use literature on still experimental substances as a replacement for experience, while I distribute the experimental substances

Could you let me know the state you think you'll be practicing in so I can avoid it?

How does inducing anxiety help with addiction?

that was honestly a really powerful paragraph, I will definitely be aware of it in the future, consider it taken to heart
I have considered a private practice with a holistic approach to it, where the idea of the typical in an office kinda therapy is thrown out, and activities take its place to provide a culturally (and interest-based) sensitive approach

LSD and vidya, preferably a first-person experience that's not too traumatic. No ultraviolent games, but atmospheric and engaging with great music.

Space engine, Soma, portal, Stanley's Parable, Oblivion/Skyrim might be pushing it for the average person... deffo no Fallout for someone not experienced with psychodelics and postapocalyptic gaming... FEZ maybe, or even go old skewl for something like Mist.

Monkeyball and Mario can be cool, but I'd imagine they'd be difficult for someone that's tripping.

I went down a crazy amazing rabbit hole with X3: Terran Conflict and it was incredible but I can play that game with my eyes closed, far too complex for anyone starting out, lsd or not.

Generally, anything where you can wander around without having a difficult and complex objective with good visuals can be something incredible. I'd love to see how different people react to that, especially non-gamers.