Posted by Gringo on March 10, 1999, at 1:50:47
In reply to LSD therapy & stuff, posted by Elizabeth on March 9, 1999, at 23:14:18
Hey there!
This was like a warm breeze on my soul, seeing that there actually are people having information. And also I'd like to thank you Elizabeth for addressing most of the uncorrect expressions in above messages. (Excellent point about "other" drugs like prozac etc...)
I was not going to go on with this because sometimes you simply cannot make things clearer and people won't see. I only wanted to add that being rude and sarcastic in responses to the question of a man in depression is probably the best to describe the attitude of those people. Anyway, let them walk in peace.
Just to add a little bit to your message, there is excellent theoretical basis for lsd *therapy* in a book with the same name, I mentioned it in previous message. Maybe I did not make it clear enough in my first post so that it might have seemed that I meant to try lsd on people's own... which is in no way recommended!
I was just trying to speak about *directed* psychotherpay, even David mentioned in his post that he was looking for a psychotherapist eager to perform a psychedelic therapy.(there are such people, though ballancing on the edge of illegal activity, but eager to do that, don't you know why...? there is a psychotherapist using illegaly ibogaine to treat opiate addictions, because she got rid of such addiction after one directed session with ibogaine...of course she is not in the usa...)
Of course, do not try to take any of the psychedelics on your own, especially when you're depressed and alone. That is the worst condition for such activity ever.
In short, when in psychedelic therapy, the very first time people are introduced and informed with possible effects of the substance and patients are diagnosed by a psychotherpaist, there are certain condiitons not allowing a person to undergone such a therpay - these people are not allowed to participate. People are chosen depending on their diagnosis and other criteria, for example a "certain intellectual capacity" is required. People can base their opinion on what they have heard and decide whether to chose or not such a therapy. If a person choses it, the session is conducted in a peaceful and relaxed atmosphere, person
lying on a bed under a cover, with "ambient" relaxing music in the background...and speaking to the therapist from time to time, although there are variations to this. It actually is true that the mechanisms of "protection" (sorry, non-english person i am and do not know all these words in english) are totally weakend, they are weakend to the rate which spoken psychotherapy reaches *very rarely*. In such a therapy a therapist is bringing a patient slowly step by step to the age of let's say three years, to the age of a strong emotional deprivation, to make him remind it, face it
and finally "solve it" (someone breaks into tears, someone may be angry etc.) One wrong step and all the effort is gone, there's too much rational mind in it, a patient protects him even before himself. These mechanisms are put aside and with minimum effort the patient can come to such areas of his own life, that ordinary thereapy would reach after half a year or even longer. Anyway, some of you will say I am too fascinated by a drug use, but I say this is more radical but more effective way of solving one's own miseries. The patient is not there to see colorful illusions, he's there to go deep inside himself
and with a help of unordinanry state of consciousness that "sinking inside" and releasing that material is much easier. Of course there certainly are disadvantages of this type of therapy, aggressive reactions of uninformed people here being the first one... One of the most frequent objections is that lsd intoxication lasts fot too long but there are ways to bring the patient back when something turns wrong. So there are efforts in researching other, less powerful substances allowing deep introspection and insights. And whether some of you will go to panick or not, swiss institutes are actually on the way of researching mdma, which most of you probably heard of as "ecstasy", which is misused and abused by
teenagers and youngsters in rave parties. Speaking about the drug policy is not an issue here. And swiss scientists have got the "bliss" of their government, if Switzerland was depending on the international business contacts with the usa (it is not), I'd worry about that research because it might be well forbidden in near future...well, but that's also not an issue.I could go on with this for longer but there's quite nice amount of information there and if somebody's interested, get the facts. Try to search for new ways of treatment, standing on different basis. Your ever-all-knowing science doesn't even exactly know why you're in depression because it looks for the reasons where there are no explanations. And, as I said before, today's science understands depressions and other disorders as sicknesses having organical reasons in one's brain. Actually, depression is a state when a person in their life came to the point where unreleased unconscious underlying material is sponatneously released to certain, usually small extent. Instead of allowing you to release that material always affecting your life considerably science gave you
drugs to "push it back", while therapist encourages you to speak about it, which makes a pretty mess, don't you think? After all, you're not only victims of emotional lackness in your lives, you're victims of today's science and profit-based healthcare services. Is that ok?OK, that's all from me, if you have comments, I'd appreciate them. Please, think about things and try to imagine that you're not so fully relying on the "wisdom" of the western science (I am not denying the successes of it, but these days it turned out somehow wrong, but to realize that you'd have to grow up somewhere else than in usa)
Regards,Gringo
poster:Gringo
thread:3400
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990301/msgs/3543.html