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Comment by DyslexicAtheist | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious what would be the market for this? wouldn't that be an extremely niche scenario within the emergency-response medicine where people inexperienced with LSD who suffer a bad trip ask to be taken off it? afaik LSD isn't a drug that one is likely to OD from either.

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Psilocybin (from mushrooms) and MDMA are both fast tracked for FDA approval as adjuncts to therapy. Psychedelics are poised to become the most common psychiatric treatment in the world, with ongoing trials showing huge effects for treating PTSD, addiction, and treatment-resistant depression. Despite a lot of therapeutic promise, LSD has not received as much research attention, primarily because of its duration of effect. Having therapists present for up to 24 hours (compared to 6 for psilocybin) is prohibitively expensive. A true off switch would facilitate its study and use in treatment.

Results from studies that used an antipsychotic across the board would not be generalizeable to traditional experiences. At that point, why use L in the first place if older, faster acting substances are available. Mescaline and psilocybine have been used in spiritual and therapeutic settings for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Where is the interest in L coming from, if not ease of slipping it past customs and other law enforcement?

I think if one class of drugs has the effect you want (in this case "psychedelics") you'd want to study other drugs in that classification as well.

Since people are studying psilocybine for depression, PTSD, etc, why not others like Mescaline, LSD, or DMT? Why leave something off the table? Maybe LSD is great for a specific type of PTSD and psilocybine for depression? You got to study it to figure out. And who knows, maybe these drugs don't actually help at all. Either way, you have to study them to figure anything out.

> Mescaline and psilocybine have been used in spiritual and therapeutic settings for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Yes and no. Those are the active ingredients, but these have not been distilled. From my extremely naive understanding, other chemicals here could affect people differently. So to create a safer and more therapeutic drug. Maybe you even need some of those other chemicals. But you can't find out without testing.

One thing is for sure, in a clinical setting you want very controlled dosages. You're not going to get that by ingesting plants/fungi.

It might make a little sense for Emergency Rooms to have in response to the "bad trips" that result in people calling an ambulance.

But I think the primary reason they would want to develop this would be to encourage LSD to be used as a therapy drug. A lot of people would be more comfortable experimenting in a controlled/legal setting if they new they had an off switch in case anything went wrong.

> It might make a little sense for Emergency Rooms to have in response to the "bad trips" that result in people calling an ambulance.

Doctors already have a ton drugs with proven efficacy for treating acute reactions to psychedelics. Many of them are cheap, off patent and have minimal side effects if they aren't taken chronically.

There is a lot of hearsay off switches, there is just a lot of hearsay in drug communities.

For LSD, anything to get out of the rest of a 14 hour trip and come down would be an option that the market would easily gravitate toward.

The biggest problem with LSD is its unpredictability, and what I think is the main reason why it isn't used therapeutically despite having shown very promising results.

You can't reasonably OD from LSD but you can have bad trips. Some of them can be so overwhelming that they will cause lasting effect not unlike PTSD. If you can stop a trip dead in its tracks, that's one less risk. By having ways to counteract its various potential negative effects, you can improve the safety profile of the drug, and therefore make it more acceptable.

People on or approaching a bad trip I assume. Just don't know who will bother having any on hand if this happens.

There seems to be growing interest in using psychedelics for medicine. Just last week I was approached by someone asking to sign for a ballot measure to approve the usage of psychedelics in clinical settings (with a medical professional on hand). If they are going to do that, I think said medical practitioner would be the perfect person to have this on hand.

There's a weird cottage industry around legalized psychedelics and their use in medicine, so I wouldn't be surprised if some less knowledgeable investors' money is funding this, given that there are hundreds of such drugs already on the market.

People seem to be saying "just use Risperidone" in the comments, so if there is a new drug that counters LSD, maybe it would be useful as an alternative to Risperidone, which has a variety of side effects when taken long term.

There's a lot of inconveniences with drugs that have very long half-lives and very low effective doses. Alcohol lasts for an hour or two; with LSD, you're out for 24. You can't just take less, or it won't work. So this would allow for shorter trips.

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