MAGIC MUSHROOMS MAY RELIEVE CHRONIC PAIN

Headache Sufferer Hopes Study Of Hallucinogens Will Help Him,
Others

OTTAWA - 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. "Chronics" experience one to
five headaches every day, day in and day out.

"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.

Not tried it yet

"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'm hoping that when the study comes up, I'll be in the cycle and
I'll be down there," in Boston. "I'd like to participate, particularly
if we can do it in a controlled, laboratory manner."

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.

MDMA, or 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine -- street names "ecstasy,
Adam, XTC, hug, beans and love drug," according to the U.S. National
Institute on Drug Abuse -- is a psychoactive. Studies on animals
suggest it works on serotonin, the brain chemical that regulates mood
and sensitivity to pain.

The work is being partly funded by MAPS, the Multidisciplinary
Association for Psychedelic Studies based in Sarasota, Fla., whose
mission is to support scientific research "designed to develop
psychedelics and marijuana into FDA-approved prescription medicines,
and to educate the public honestly about the risks and benefits of
these drugs," according to its website.

Supporting preliminary study

MAPS is supporting a preliminary study at the Iboga Therapy House near
Vancouver to test ibogaine (which is not a controlled substance) in
treating cocaine, crack, alcohol and other chemical addictions.

The group was founded by Rick Doblin, who received a PhD in public
policy from Harvard and first became interested in the science of
psychedelics at age 18 in 1971, the year he first tried LSD.

LSD "moved inner psychological energies that had previously been
frozen," Doblin wrote in an e-mail exchange from Israel, where he met
this week with officials from the Israeli ministry of health and
anti-drug authority to prepare the groundwork for a pilot study in the
use of ecstasy-assisted psychotherapy on people suffering war- and
terrorism-related post-traumatic stress disorder.

"In other words, I was all head and very little heart, and LSD stirred
up my feelings and helped me to experience emotions."

Resurgence of research

He says the resurgence of research into psychoactive drugs could ease
suffering and lead to a "new, healthier culture."

Before Leary's exhortations to a generation to "turn on, tune in and
drop out" fanned government crusades making it illegal to use -- and
test -- psychedelics, hundreds of papers were published studying
psychedelics for conditions from frigidity to infertility. Today,
Doblin says, researchers still face "skittish" hospital and university
review boards, and an absence of government funding for research into
the possible benefits of psychedelics.

Anecdotal and case reports suggest magic mushrooms or LSD may not only
reduce pain from cluster headaches, but may 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.

In Canada, the non-profit Organization for Understanding Cluster
Headache (OUCH) Canada, which Wright, of Nanaimo, helped found, is
disseminating information and links to the studies on its website
(www.clusterheadaches.ca)

"There are, I'm sure, medical doctors (in Canada) who are monitoring
it and waiting to see the outcome of the trials," Wright says.

"This is a terrible affliction. We're looking for some way to end our
pain."