L.S.D. Anhang

[werner werner stangl]s arbeitsblätter

Halluzinogene

Unter Halluzinogene versteht man Stoffe natürlicher oder chemischer Herkunft, die geeignet sind, die Bewußtseinslage und die Sinnesempfindungen für eine bestimmte Zeit zu verändern: LSD, Mescalin, Psilocybin.

LSD (Lysergsäurediethylamid)

Alkaloid enthalten in: Sec. + Ip. Erstmalig 1938 von Albert Hofmann in den Labors von Sandoz (Basel) extrahiert und 1943 in seiner Wirkung von demselben entdeckt. Ist die Substanz mit der stärksten bekannten psychoaktiven Wirkung. Liegt zumeist als LSD-getränkte Löschpapier-Blättchen ("Trips"), seltener als Pillen ("Micros") vor.

LSD ist bereits in sehr geringer Dosierung wirksam. Rausch: etwa 0,1 mg). Einnahme: oral oder intravenös. Akute Wirkung

Körperlich: Helles Licht wird als störend empfunden. Brechreiz, Erbrechen oder Übelkeit kann auftreten. Störungen des Herz-Kreislaufsystems.

Psychisch: Zu Beginn des Rausches veränderte Farbwahrnehmung, v.a. vor dunklem Hintergrund werden unterschiedliche Muster gesehen, die sich bewegen und verändern.

Es treten auf:

Denkstörungen

Wahnvorstellungen

Befremdungserscheinungen im Bezug auf den Körper

Wechselnde Stimmungslagen

Gefahren des LSD-Konsums

Horrortrip: Während der Drogeneinnahme kann es zu massiven akuten Angstanfällen kommen.

Flash-back-Phänomen: Dieser Zustand kann oft Monate nach der letzten LSD-Einnahme auftreten und wird von intensiver Angst und Desorientierung begleitet.

Auslösung von Psychosen: Es kann schon bei einmaligem Gebrauch von Halluzinogenen bei Personen mit leicht brüchiger Persönlichkeit zur Auslösung von Geisteskrankheiten kommen.

Für den Notfall 1 bis 2 Tabletten Diazepam bereithalten, die den Konsumenten recht schnell wieder beruhigen und das Schlimmste verhindern.

Halluzinationen unter LSD-Einfluss. Menschen unter dem Einfluss von LSD wissen (sofern nicht heimlich verabreicht), dass ihre Halluzinationen durch eine psychotrope Substanz

verursacht wurden und verwechseln sie im Allgemeinen nicht mit der Wirklichkeit - in der Regel auch nicht auf dem Höhepunkt der Drogenwirkung. Dies unterscheidet drogeninduzierte Halluzinationen von den Halluzinationen etwa der Schizophrenien. Aber auch den Betroffenen wird nach Abklingen der akuten Phase häufig bewusst, dass sie halluziniert haben. Experimente haben gezeigt, dass Schizophrene die Wirkung von LSD und anderen Halluzinogenen von der schizophrenen Symptomatik klar unterscheiden können.

Seit Jahrhunderten ist das Mutterkorn bekannt, ein Pilz und Schmarotzer (Claviceps Purpurea), der sich an Getreideähren ansiedelt und in feuchtwarmen Sommern ganze Kornfelder und Ernten verderben kann. Überlieferte Bezeichnungen für das Mutterkorn sind: 'Antonius-Feuer' oder 'Gottesrache'. Früher geriet der Pilz häufig ins Brot und führte zu epidemischen Vergiftungen. Diese äußerten sich bei den Vergifteten in starken Krämpfen und Durchblutungsstörungen (Gefäßverschlüßen), die ganze Gliedmaßen absterben ließen. Dieses als 'Brand' bekannte Symptom erklärt die

[Misha Norland]

Ergot is produced by the fungus Claviceps purpurea growing on grains and wild grasses. Kernels infected develop curved brown pegs (sclerotia) that grow in place of the grains. Medicinally used, is Sec (= ergot of rye).

Keynotes include: sense of great heat/haemorrhages of thin, fetid, watery black blood/senility/menstrual colic/burning pains/gangrene/puerperal fever.

Ergotism was known as St. Anthony's Fire (= 3rd Century anchorite saint/lived 105 yrs./spending most of his life in the egyptian desert/tormented by demons). His old age was part of his torment/martyrdom been denied him despite his best efforts to seek it. (Sec: important for senility/the aged). Sufferers experienced physical torment in the form of a burning fire on the skin and devilish hallucinations.

St. Anthony he great is a patron of monks/healers. (his hallucinogenic torments were almost equally divided between taunts of the most horrible demons and temptations of the most beautiful women and sensual delights/favourite subject for artists and writers as Bosch/Flaubert).

The Ergot Alkaloids

Ergot used by midwives to induce childbirth. It was, notoriously difficult to judge the correct dose and could damage the child. Its use therefore mostly restricted to the treatment of post partum haemorrhage.

Ergotoxine isolated in 1907 but more toxic than therapeutic. Ergotamine is still used to treat migraine. Ergometrine is still a major drug for the treatment of post partum haemorrhage.

Ergobasine/Hydergine used to treat peripheral vascular disease (geriatric patients).

Hofmann has combined lysergic acid with propanolamine/this produced a number of other compounds of lysergic acid. LSD is LSD-25. It produces a strong effect on the uterus (but only 70% of that of ergobasine)/"was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away". The self-experiment showed Dr Hofmann "that LSD-25 behaved as a psychoactive substance with extraordinary properties and potency. Dosage for LSD measured in micrograms (millionths of a gram). Even these minute doses cause massive effects. LSD tends to lodge in the liver/spleen/kidneys. Only 0.1% of the dose enters the brain and even that remains for only 20 minutes. Thus its powerful effects can be caused by less than 100 nanograms (billionths of a gram) of the substance reaching the brain and these effects continue long after there is no substance left in the brain. LSD causes flashbacks where the patient again experiences the effects of the drug, even many years later. LSD may also be tetragenic and thus be felt even by future generations. At one point LSD was cited by some homœopaths as an example of how microdoses could cause dramatic and long lasting changes in the human body.

These extraordinary properties led to experiments in the use of LSD in psychotherapy/philosophy/by governments looking for ways to manipulate the mind for brainwashing and as a tool for assassination.

At first the experiments on LSD indicated that it might be a useful truth serum. However, it became clear that it was as likely to produce confusion/panic/boundless bliss/paranoia/openness/tendency to talk. It was also totally unreliable/the subject was likely to move from one state to another completely and suddenly.

LSD and the Counter Culture

Dr Humphry Osmund was a staff physician at a hospital in Saskatchewan/had noticed that many alcoholics only found the power to quit after they had "hit bottom" and suffered the terrors of the DTs. He used LSD to simulate this experience in a less dangerous manner. He had a significantly better success rate in treating alcoholics than conventional therapies.

Hubbard also introduced LSD to Hollywood. Cary Grant found the experience so helpful and healing that he became a zealous missionary.

Timothy Leary (a clinical psychologist/lecturer at Harvard)/For 4 years Leary and Alpert ran a commune at Millbrook where the psychedelic phenomenon was both experienced and investigated. Leary regarded LSD as a religious experience/chemical mysticism. Leary believed that LSD tuned into genetics and could connect with the evolutionary program of DNA. God is the DNA code. "Our corticol cells, or the machinery inside the cellular nucleus, remember back along the unbroken chain of electrical transformations that connect every one of us back to that original thunderbolt in the pre-cambrian mud."

Ginsberg realized that the LSD experience could not be guided or controlled. To learn from LSD requires openess and freedom from desire.

On the West Coast of America Ken Kesey experienced mescaline through a research programme at a veteran's hospital/on the mental ward were psychedelics freely available/described his early trips as "shell-shattering ordeals that left us kneedeep in the cracked crusts of our pie in the sky personalities. Suddenly people were stripped before one another and behold: we were beautiful. Naked and helpless and sensitive as a snake after skinning, but far more human than the shining knightmare that had stood creaking in previous parade rest. We were alive and life was us." High on peyote and acid, he wrote „One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest“. With the proceeds from its success he bought a ranch that soon became an acid commune. He and his friends became the Merry Pranksters and travelled the country in the first psychedelic bus.

In 1968 and 1969 possession of LSD became illegal, the Mafia moved into Haight Ashbury and took over the drugs trade, and the local authorities cracked down. Nixon became President and seemed to be moving things back into the fifties when he had been Vice President. Woodstock was the last real manifestation of the hippy ideal.

That the psychedelic experience should seem to have come to very little is I feel quite important. It echoes the CIA's failure to find a use for it and also the feeling that I had after collating the proving.

This is partly an illusion. The world today is very different from that of the fifties. The respect for the individual and the attitudes to gender, race, sexual orientation and the attitude to animals are all radically different and the events of the sixties had a major role in this change.

Octavio Paz remarked that under the influence of LSD "The self disappears, but no other self appears to occupy the empty space it has left." "Ego" would probably be a better word to use than "self". LSD has a remarkable effect and those who have sufficient spiritual development can use that emptiness to find what is beyond the ego. However, it cannot be the short cut that many hoped it was. For those who were not ready to fill the emptiness from a deeper place it remained empty, or worse was filled with demons and images from hell.

Toxicology

Symptoms of exposure are euphoria/hallucinations/distorted perception/excitement/anorexia.

It can cause central nervous system effects, tachycardia, muscular weakness, increased body temperature, wavelike recurrences of perceptual changes, difficulty in locating the source of sound. Persons taking it may become hypervigilant, withdrawn or may alternate between states. It can cause fear of fragmentation or disintegration of the self, prolonged afterimages, overlapping of present and preceding perceptions, colours may be heard and sounds may be seen, subjective time is seriously altered and moods may be labile/it can cause tremor, piloerection, pupillary dilatation, salivation, hyperreflexia, ataxia, and spastic paresis/it can cause vomiting/hypertension and hypotension, coma, prolonged psychotic state, psychopathic personality disorders, increased homicidal and suicidal risk, and possible chromosome injury.

Hyperexcitability and convulsions can also be symptoms of exposure to this chemical. This compound can inhibit the firing of the raphe neurons.

It can be habit forming.

It is a serotonin antagonist.

Vorwort/Suchen Zeichen/Abkürzungen Impressum