Pubdate: Wed, 04 Jun 2008
Source: Las Cruces Sun-News (NM)
Copyright: 2008 Las Cruces Sun-News
Contact:  http://www.lcsun-news.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/674
Author: Torrey Meeks

LOW-DOSE PSILOCYBIN BRINGS RELIEF TO CLUSTER-HEADACHE SUFFERS

Anita Wiseman knows pain. She's given birth and endured  a brain
aneurism. None of these, she says, comes close  to a cluster headache.

"I was always viewed as a drama queen, like I couldn't handle pain.
It's just a headache, that's what a lot of  people thought," says
Wiseman, a substitute teacher  from Los Lunas. "Then I had a brain
hemorrhage. That  was a whole different kind of pain, but I handled
it. I  don't think I ever cried when the aneurism burst. But a 
cluster headache can have me rolling on the floor in  tears."

Cluster headaches, or, "suicide headaches,' as they're nicknamed due
to treatment resistant sufferers who have  killed themselves, are a
little understood neurological  disorder, cropping up in a diverse
cross section of the  population. No clear pattern along genetic lines
is  evident as yet, and there are currently few potent, low 
side-effect pharmaceutical treatment options.

The pain has been described as, "Taking a blunt stick and slowly
pushing it through your eye, then continuing  to do that for one or
two hours."

"I guarantee you that you have friends and co-workers with cluster
headaches, you just don't know about it,"  says Dr. Andrew Sewell, a
psychiatrist and neurologist  who worked extensively with  cluster
headache suffers while on a three-year research fellowship at
Harvard. "It's as common as muscular  dystrophy; a quarter as common
as multiple sclerosis."

In the world of neurological disorders, clusters are by  far the most
painful according to Sewell. They exceed  the mental anguish imparted
by migraines by orders of  magnitude, and their nickname is not a glib
 overstatement. Not even the physical pain of amputation is comparable.

"[Migraines] are totally unrelated, except inasmuch as they're both
one-sided pains in the head," says Sewell.  "Migraine is associated
with nausea and light  sensitivity; CH with runny nose, droopy eyelid,
 tearing. Migraine goes away with sleep; CH tends to  come on with
sleep. People with migraines have to lie  still in a dark room; people
with cluster headache feel  compelled to pace around, rock, and bang
their heads  against things."

In 2004, after reading numerous accounts testifying as  to their
ability to send cluster headaches into  complete remission at low,
regular, non-escalating  doses, Wiseman tried psilocybin mushrooms for
the first  time. In the United States psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, 
DMT, and virtually every other entheogen are Schedule 1 substances
with no recognized medical use.

But Wiseman says that the psilocybin mushrooms not only worked, they
worked better than any prescription or  non-prescription remedy she'd
tried: The first time she  took the psilocybin the headaches went
away,  completely, for three days.

Then, a month of relief without taking anything other than
psilocybin. She tested herself in that time  period, taking the
mushrooms only when she felt the  headaches coming on. By the end of
the month, she was  able to take psilocybin once every 60 to 90 days, 
experiencing complete remission without having to  elevate the dose.

Most cluster headache sufferers only require sub-hallucinogenic doses
to achieve remission.  Wiseman's case was consistent with this
finding, in  that every time she's taken psilocybin it's been at 
sub-hallucinogenic levels, and, at most, "makes the colors on the
Home and Garden channel very pretty."

"I had little to no quality of life prior to that,"  Wiseman says. "I
was afraid to do things. I wasn't able  to work. We couldn't go on
vacations. Whenever I went  to a soccer tournament for my kids, I had
to run to the  car or go hide because I was in pain. I just wished we 
could go home. How awful is that?"

Anita's experience and turnaround on hallucinogens isn't unusual in
CH circles. It's estimated by the  Clusterbusters organization that 80
percent of the  cluster headache sufferers who try psychedelics find 
near-complete relief and the attendant improved quality  of life.

Though Dr. Sewell - who conducted the first comprehensive case series
on cluster headache suffers  who use hallucinogens therapeutically -
and other  researchers don't know why psilocybin, LSD, and other 
entheogens work, their preliminary research suggests  that some people
experience remarkable therapeutic  effects, if illegally.

There is a caveat, says Sewell, and that is that there have been no
randomized placebo-controlled trials.  While Sewell is in the final
stages of a large study  looking into the efficiency of LSA - a
natural LSD  analogue found in Morning Glory and Hawaiian baby 
woodrose seeds - against cluster headaches, it's an  independent effort.

"It's hard to imagine a company interested in marketing a drug that's
long out of patent and only has to be  taken once every three or four
months," says Dr.  Sewell.

"Its not something pharmaceuticals are interested in  because people
can grow their own medicine," says Bob  Wold, a 54-year-old carpenter
and business owner who's  suffered from cluster headaches for 27
years. "So we  aren't going to see any research dollars coming out of 
that industry."

Wold is the founder of the Clusterbusters organization and
www.clusterbusters.com website, which for the last eight years has
been dedicated to pursuing medical  research that documents the
efficacy of psychedelics  against cluster headaches.

The website is a comprehensive reference of treatment options for
cluster headach sufferers, and includes  cautionary notes and medical
considerations for those  considering using hallucinogens for relief.

While funding for the disorder is still highly limited, Wold hopes to
see good research come with the  assistance of his
organization.

"You can get a prescription for cocaine in the United States. Heroin
is still used in parts of the UK for  treating pain. We are not
looking to legalize drugs,"  says Wold. "What we're looking for,
hopefully, is  research that proves this works. Then we want to push 
the medical community to allow this to become a  prescription
medication, just like anything else.  That's our goal."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin