Comment by shantanubala | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shantanubala | Hacker News Reader

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> LSD does not cause people to be schizophrenic; schizophrenia shows itself during the most likely years for people to be experimenting with drugs.

This is very misleading at best. LSD use causes direct symptoms of psychosis, including symptoms of schizophrenia, schizoaffective, and schizophreniform disorders.

The effects of LSD resemble schizophrenia so closely, in fact, that it has led to studies on rats using LSD as a hypothetical model to represent schizophrenia. In other words, we give rats LSD and see what chemicals reduce the effects to find treatments for schizophrenia.

A very incomplete list of sources:

Aghajanian, G. K., & Marek, G. J. (2000). Serotonin model of schizophrenia: emerging role of glutamate mechanisms. Brain Research Reviews, 31(2), 302-312.

Crow, T. J. (1980). Molecular pathology of schizophrenia: more than one disease process?. British medical journal, 280(6207), 66.

Schneier, F. R., & Siris, S. G. (1987). A review of psychoactive substance use and abuse in schizophrenia: patterns of drug choice. The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 175(11), 641-652.

> The effects of LSD resemble schizophrenia so closely, in fact, that it has led to studies on rats using LSD as a hypothetical model to represent schizophrenia. In other words, we give rats LSD and see what chemicals reduce the effects to find treatments for schizophrenia.

And that was the research which led to the rejection of LSD as a model for schizophrenia, and there is still no evidence tying LSD to schizophrenia as all the correlations are heavily contaminated by polydrug use.

It's messy, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD_and_schizophrenia is a better overview of the topic...

I don't think we know enough about schizophrenia or LSD to say they are the same thing.

Most of the lsd-eaters I've talked with have talked about a visual effect called "tracers", but the handful of schizophrenics I've talked to don't talk about tracers, but they do talk about hallucinatory voices, depression, paranoia and confusion.

That said, I think that your current brain chemistry definitely affects your drug experience. If you have mental health issues, stay away from hallucinogens.

Like I said in another post, I have used psilocybin. The effects I had were not typical of what most other people described. I had a whole other set of "special effects" I experienced, consistently. After talking with many people, I found that a few other people shared virtually the same hallucinatory effects, and they seemed to have ADHD or some kind of OCD or were very tech-geeky. (And, I haven't been diagnosed, but I bite my nails and have a mild hoarding problem. That's a sign of possible OCD.)

So, I don't seek out this type of drug anymore.

I think it's simply misleading to quote studies comparing the effects of acute LSD intoxication to the symptoms that can be seen in psychotic people as evidence that LSD in some way causes schizophrenia.

Drunken people share symptoms with schizophrenics too, as well as people who have gone without sleep.

This is not just a matter of resembling psychosis.

Haloperidol and olanzapine, two common prescriptions for schizophrenia, have been demonstrated to reduce the effects of LSD.

There is a connection between the psychoactive properties of LSD and the neurological etiology of schizophrenia, though the connection needs to be studied further.

Yes, research should not be taken as gospel, but it is foolish to think that there is no reason at all for alarm.

Another more recent source: Marona-Lewicka, D., Nichols, C. D., & Nichols, D. E. (2011). An animal model of schizophrenia based on chronic {LSD} administration: Old idea, new results. Neuropharmacology, 61(3), 503 – 512. doi:10.1016/j.neuropharm.2011.02.006

LSD is primarily a 5HT2 agonist which leads to a decrease in dopamine pathways. This decrease in dopamine leads to taking it mimicing the "negative" symptoms of schizophrenia. this effect has been used in animal models to support various dopamine theories for us to learn more about schizophrenia, such as one of the current theories advocating for an increase in dopamine in mesolimbic brain pathway and decrease of dopamine in mesocortical pathways.

So the drug is useful for inducing the symptoms, however once the drug is gone so are the symptoms. Schizophrenics have problems at some cellular level, be it receptor, transcription, translation, protein modification, etc that leads to their symptoms and the end effects that are similar to LSD. LSD causes the final step in the pathway, not the initial ones.

Likewise for your drugs, you named two dopamine blockers (one selective for D_2 and one not). these treat schizophrenia in the sense that they minimise symptoms since they are working at the final step in what is wrong with the patients. They are not "cures" because they don't address the initial issue, which we hopefully will discover.

> Haloperidol and olanzapine, two common prescriptions for schizophrenia, have been demonstrated to reduce the effects of LSD.

That is such a bullshit statement. A wide array of pharmaceuticals reduce the effects of LSD as well as other drugs for that matter.

Number 1 rule: If you're having a bad LSD trip head straight for the liquor; that'll kill your trip good and fast. What's your point?

Dont mean to be rude, but I'm calling out your schizophrenia association as wild-eyed bullshit, too.

I think you've misunderstood my comment. The angle bracket part was me quoting the parent comment. I'm telling him that it's bullshit to try and draw some sort of conclusion between LSD and schizophrenia simply because schizophrenia medication dampers the effects of LSD because all sorts of medications damper the effects of LSD. I probably should have used quotes, my bad. I'm just so used to using the angle bracket to signify a quotation.

Hah, no, I was agreeing with you! I hit reply under the wrong thread.

Try taking LSD and then tell me if some aspect of the experience could not be described as schizophrenic. Seriously comparing the state of being drunk with that of one tripping their (rational) mind off is liking comparing apples and moons.

IMO, the mood-swings and irrational, dangerous behavior that Alcohol tends to induce seem to me to be far more schizophrenic than the states brought on by LSD.

A non-schizophrenic describing their subjective experience on LSD as schizophrenic can be nothing but projection.

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