Psychedelic Schizophrenia

For many years it was believed that the brain mechanisms underlying the effects of psychedelic hallucinogens and dissociative anesthetics were separate and distinct. Indeed, there has been considerable debate about which represents the best drag model of schizophrenia. However, recent data show that the two classes of psychotomimetic drags share a common final pathway involving an increase in the release of the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate. 

Hallucinogen A drug that disturbs sensory perception. Visual hallucinations are the most common effect of the psychedelic drug LSD. In contrast, auditory hallucinations predominate in schizophrenia. 

LSD, mescaline and other psychedelic drugs cause psychosis, but their perceptual and cognitive changes do not resemble schizophrenia. 

Psychedelics (LSD) and other psy-chotomimetics such as mescaline and psilocybin can induce states of altered awareness, or induce hallucinations and anxiety, probably mediated by 5-HT2A receptors. Overactivity of these receptors may also play a role in the genesis of negative symptoms in schizophrenia (p. 238) and sleep disturbances. 

Because cocaine and amphetamine psychoses are anything but psychedelic, they are instructive to examine in terms of our ncurobiological hypotheses about why some altered states are dreamlike and others are not. Although cocaine and amphetamines push the dopamine system to the break point, they do not so radically alter the REM sleep modulators, norepinephrine, serotonin, or acetylcholine. Thus, they create a quite different altered state, one more akin to schizophrenia than to dream delirium. 

Why do I use the qualifier "so-called in this discussion Because stimulant psychosis—and schizophrenia—must both be as much organic as they are functional. They are just different kinds of organic psychosis from those characterized by delirium. And why are they different Because the stimulants suppress REM physiology and with it dreaming, whereas the psychedelics enhance REM physiology (or at least some aspects of it). 

But might either of these two observations lead to a diagnostic test for schizophrenia At the present time, the conventional thinking is that this probably cannot be. The illness has such social and genetic contributions, that no simple measure of a response to an almost-psychedelic, or minor shift of some urinary metabolite pattern could possibly be believed. No independent confirmation of... 

Schizophrenia] is also psychological, sociological, and even theological. For like the psychedelic reaction, the molecular abnormality in schizophrenia merely sets off the train of events which are perceived and reacted to by a person in terms of his life s programming.. .. The same factors that lead to a psychotomimetic reaction in normal people probably lead to the psychosis features of schizophrenia (p. 128). 

Diseases such as schizophrenia and/or malvaria (Hoffer and Osmond, 1962), are contraindications for the use of psychedelics, because subjects who have them are unlikely to have psychedelic reactions and are much more likely to have prolonged depressions and other psychotic reactions. These can lead to severe anxiety or panic, to suicide, and, very rarely, to other violent acts. Recurrences may occur several months later, but it is difficult to decide whether this is a recurrence of the LSD reaction or a resurgence of schizophrenia. 

Every therapy has contraindications. Psychedelic therapy is no exception. They are schizophrenia and malvaria, and high HOD scores. They are contraindications because individuals with these characteristics are unlikely to be helped and because they are more likely to have prolonged undesirable reactions. 

Hoffer, A., and Osmond, H. "What is Schizophrenia " Psychedelic Review 7, 86-116,1966b. 

HUMPHRY OSMOND is the Bureau s Director of Research in Neurology and Psychiatry. The man who first coined the term "psychedelics," he is the co-author (with Abram Hoffer) of How to Live with Schizophrenia, Chemical Basis of Clinical Psychiatry, and New Hope for Alcoholics. 

Anecdotal evidence suggests that psychotic breaks and schizophrenia-like symptoms are far more frequent with heavy or regular dissociative anesthetic use than any other type of psychedelic. 

Westerners do not accept the existence of conscious processes for which they have no operational term. The attitude which is prevalent is - if you can t label it, and if it is beyond current notions of space-time and personality, then it is not open for investigation. Thus we see the ego-loss experience confused with schizophrenia. Thus we see present-day psychiatrists solemnly pronouncing the psychedelic keys as psychosis-producing and dangerous. 

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