LOW-DOSE PSILOCYBIN BRINGS RELIEF TO CLUSTER-HEADACHE SUFFERS

Anita Wiseman knows pain. She's given birth and endured a brain
aneurism. None of these, she says, comes close to a cluster headache.

"I was always viewed as a drama queen, like I couldn't handle pain.
It's just a headache, that's what a lot of people thought," says
Wiseman, a substitute teacher from Los Lunas. "Then I had a brain
hemorrhage. That was a whole different kind of pain, but I handled
it. I don't think I ever cried when the aneurism burst. But a
cluster headache can have me rolling on the floor in tears."

Cluster headaches, or, "suicide headaches,' as they're nicknamed due
to treatment resistant sufferers who have killed themselves, are a
little understood neurological disorder, cropping up in a diverse
cross section of the population. No clear pattern along genetic lines
is evident as yet, and there are currently few potent, low
side-effect pharmaceutical treatment options.

The pain has been described as, "Taking a blunt stick and slowly
pushing it through your eye, then continuing to do that for one or
two hours."

"I guarantee you that you have friends and co-workers with cluster
headaches, you just don't know about it," says Dr. Andrew Sewell, a
psychiatrist and neurologist who worked extensively with cluster
headache suffers while on a three-year research fellowship at
Harvard. "It's as common as muscular dystrophy; a quarter as common
as multiple sclerosis."

In the world of neurological disorders, clusters are by far the most
painful according to Sewell. They exceed the mental anguish imparted
by migraines by orders of magnitude, and their nickname is not a glib
overstatement. Not even the physical pain of amputation is comparable.

"[Migraines] are totally unrelated, except inasmuch as they're both
one-sided pains in the head," says Sewell. "Migraine is associated
with nausea and light sensitivity; CH with runny nose, droopy eyelid,
tearing. Migraine goes away with sleep; CH tends to come on with
sleep. People with migraines have to lie still in a dark room; people
with cluster headache feel compelled to pace around, rock, and bang
their heads against things."

In 2004, after reading numerous accounts testifying as to their
ability to send cluster headaches into complete remission at low,
regular, non-escalating doses, Wiseman tried psilocybin mushrooms for
the first time. In the United States psilocybin, LSD, mescaline,
DMT, and virtually every other entheogen are Schedule 1 substances
with no recognized medical use.

But Wiseman says that the psilocybin mushrooms not only worked, they
worked better than any prescription or non-prescription remedy she'd
tried: The first time she took the psilocybin the headaches went
away, completely, for three days.

Then, a month of relief without taking anything other than
psilocybin. She tested herself in that time period, taking the
mushrooms only when she felt the headaches coming on. By the end of
the month, she was able to take psilocybin once every 60 to 90 days,
experiencing complete remission without having to elevate the dose.

Most cluster headache sufferers only require sub-hallucinogenic doses
to achieve remission. Wiseman's case was consistent with this
finding, in that every time she's taken psilocybin it's been at
sub-hallucinogenic levels, and, at most, "makes the colors on the
Home and Garden channel very pretty."

"I had little to no quality of life prior to that," Wiseman says. "I
was afraid to do things. I wasn't able to work. We couldn't go on
vacations. Whenever I went to a soccer tournament for my kids, I had
to run to the car or go hide because I was in pain. I just wished we
could go home. How awful is that?"

Anita's experience and turnaround on hallucinogens isn't unusual in
CH circles. It's estimated by the Clusterbusters organization that 80
percent of the cluster headache sufferers who try psychedelics find
near-complete relief and the attendant improved quality of life.

Though Dr. Sewell - who conducted the first comprehensive case series
on cluster headache suffers who use hallucinogens therapeutically -
and other researchers don't know why psilocybin, LSD, and other
entheogens work, their preliminary research suggests that some people
experience remarkable therapeutic effects, if illegally.

There is a caveat, says Sewell, and that is that there have been no
randomized placebo-controlled trials. While Sewell is in the final
stages of a large study looking into the efficiency of LSA - a
natural LSD analogue found in Morning Glory and Hawaiian baby
woodrose seeds - against cluster headaches, it's an independent effort.

"It's hard to imagine a company interested in marketing a drug that's
long out of patent and only has to be taken once every three or four
months," says Dr. Sewell.

"Its not something pharmaceuticals are interested in because people
can grow their own medicine," says Bob Wold, a 54-year-old carpenter
and business owner who's suffered from cluster headaches for 27
years. "So we aren't going to see any research dollars coming out of
that industry."

Wold is the founder of the Clusterbusters organization and
www.clusterbusters.com website, which for the last eight years has
been dedicated to pursuing medical research that documents the
efficacy of psychedelics against cluster headaches.

The website is a comprehensive reference of treatment options for
cluster headach sufferers, and includes cautionary notes and medical
considerations for those considering using hallucinogens for relief.

While funding for the disorder is still highly limited, Wold hopes to
see good research come with the assistance of his
organization.

"You can get a prescription for cocaine in the United States. Heroin
is still used in parts of the UK for treating pain. We are not
looking to legalize drugs," says Wold. "What we're looking for,
hopefully, is research that proves this works. Then we want to push
the medical community to allow this to become a prescription
medication, just like anything else. That's our goal."