RESEARCHERS TESTING LSD SEEK PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT

The pain strikes without warning in the middle of the night, an explosive
shot of pain on one side of Doug Wright's head that feels "like a red hot
poker suddenly stuck through my eye."

He bolts from bed. He can't lie down, he can't sit still; he paces and
moves, and if he can't abort the headache instantly by inhaling high-dose,
high-flow oxygen from the tank he keeps in his house, he drops to his
knees, screaming in agony. Twice he has blacked out from the pain.

Wright, who turns 49 this year, has suffered from cluster headaches for 30
years. His are "episodic": three to five headaches per day, for eight to 10
weeks duration at a time.

"One of the old terms, if you go into medical sites for cluster headaches,
is 'suicide headaches.' "

Wright treats his using oxygen therapy and medicines that constrict the
blood vessel walls in his head.

Psilocybin -- the key ingredient in "magic" mushrooms -- could be next.

"Let me state up front that I have not tried this treatment, yet, myself.
It's illegal. The last thing I want is some person banging on my door,
questioning what I'm doing, or what's going on," the Nanaimo, B.C.,
chiropractor says.

But as Harvard University doctors prepare to test the hallucinogenic
fungus, as well as LSD, against cluster headaches, Wright hopes to be
involved. "I'd like to participate, particularly if we can do it in a
controlled, laboratory manner," he says.

Decades after another Harvard alumnus proselytized the healing powers of
hallucinogens, research into psychedelic medicine is experiencing a
reawakening.

But Timothy Leary wasn't advocating pain control: he pushed psychedelics as
the path to enlightenment.

Today, hallucinogens are on a path to redemption, with a small group of
researchers studying LSD, magic mushrooms, MDMA (the drug used to make
ecstasy) and even ibogaine, a psychoactive derived from the root bark of an
African plant, as treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder,
obsessive-compulsive behaviours, drug and alcohol addiction and anxiety and
physical pain from terminal cancer.

"It may not be long before doctors are legally prescribing hallucinogens
for the first time in decades," a recent article in New Scientist magazine
predicted.

In addition to testing LSD and psilocybin for cluster headaches,
researchers at Harvard University won U.S. Food and Drug Administration
approval in December to test MDMA-assisted psychotherapy on eight people
with advanced cancer.

Anecdotal and case reports suggest magic mushrooms or LSD may not only
reduce pain from cluster headaches, but also stop the cycling course of
attacks. According to Dr. John Halpern, an instructor in psychiatry at
Harvard Medical School who is heading the LSD-psilocybin cluster headaches
study, no conventional medications exist that can do that.