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sLSD, or Lysergic acid diethylamide, also known as “acid”, had its peak research era in the 1960s when the United States government researched the effects of the drug and its potential usage; before inevitably classifying the substance as somehow being dangerous without medical potential.

LSD was first made by Albert Hofman in Switzerland in 1938 from ergotamine, a chemical from the fungus ergot that grows on rye and other grains.

The psychoactive effects of LSD were discovered in 1943, and it was introduced as a commercial medication under the trade name “Delysid” in 1947.

More than 22 million (9.1% of the population) have used LSD at least once in their lives. That's an incredible number, for something that is so shunned by those who don't understand it.

That dated analysis, however, is incredibly wrong for a multitude of reasons.

In fact, for those who have actually used the substance, they consider it as a “tool”, and not a “drug”.

It indeed is a powerful mind-expanding tool, and this is coming from someone who overall views drugs, both prescription and illegal narcotics, as degenerate.

However, LSD is far beyond your typical addictive prescription or illegal narcotics.

In fact, LSD has a multitude of benefits for both researches, those wishing to further expand their horizons, and most importantly, the terminally ill.

Those who are on their last leg of life, literally soon to perish because of a terminal illness, have much more to suffer from than to lose.

Much of modern medicine for cancer patients or those dying via cirrhosis of the liver, for example, are in severe pain and suffering their last days.

Currently, doctors and hospitals can offer them narcotic painkilling opioids alongside powerful anesthesia in order to quell their suffering and keep them in a sort of zombified-state until they pass away.

This isn't much of a way to live our your final days - unable to function outside of sleep.

It's not exactly a preferred means of exiting our existence.

While the Dilaudid, ketamine, oxymorphone, or fentanyl options are indeed better than nothing; there are other drugs such as LSD that could help those suffering at the end to be more aware, at peace, and relieved of all worry.

Unfortunately, research into LSD-assisted psychotherapy rapidly came to a halt when LSD was made illegal in the United States in 1966 because of increased non-medical use.

Professor David Nutt argued that LSD, however, could be another option that the terminally ill have a right to choose from.

“It has been the great unanswered question in neuroscience,” he argues. “What is the nature of the profound psychedelic experience that LSD produces, with long-lasting changes in the way people view themselves and the world around them?”

He and a growing number of scientists around the world are beginning to revive interest in LSD as a usage for terminally ill people at the end of their life.

“People are very, very frightened of dying. They see it as the end. On psychedelics, this sense of self begins to break down,” says Professor Nutt.

“People in the psychedelic trip often experience being at one with the world or even with the universe. It’s as if they have died as if they’ve gone out to another place. They exist beyond their body. That experience can give them a sense of perpetuity, of permanence, of being part of the cycle of life, which of course we all are.”

A recent study in Switzerland has already looked at the use of LSD for this purpose. After two months, a few terminally ill patients given doses of LSD in sessions with a psychiatrist experienced improvements in their anxiety levels; findings which persisted for a year among those who survived.

Professor Nutt thinks using LSD in this way, strictly on a voluntary basis, should be further investigated. It is, after all, how the most famous exponent of psychedelics, the author Aldous Huxley, ushered in his own eternal rest.

“The way we deal with death is to poison people with opiates so that they can’t think,” Professor Nutt says. “They’re pain-free, but they’re constipated, can’t speak, and are numbed before they die. I think the idea that there might be an alternative strategy is something we should at least explore.”

Professor Nutt, however, hasn't received much support from the government. He once was the chair of the Government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in 2009 but was kicked off after saying that ecstasy, cannabis, and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco.

The unfortunate truth is, he's correct.

The stigma put on these plants and substances has been heavily pushed by propagandists from vile drug corporations, alcohol corporations, and tobacco corporations; all to prevent a hurt on their sales.

The fact of the matter is, new studies support these findings of the use of psychedelics such as LSD to assist those who are terminally-ill, and the United States government refuses to enter the modern world.

The active ingredient in magic mushrooms was given to terminal cancer patients, in which 80 percent had immediate reductions in anxiety and depression which persisted for six months or longer.

Researchers think that's because psychedelics can change entrenched ways of thinking that people might otherwise not be able to tackle on their own.

Beckley and Imperial ran their own <a href="http://beckleyfoundation.org/event/psilocybin-for-treatment-resistant-depression-a-new-study-from-the-beckleyimperial-research-programme/" target="_blank">http://beckleyfoundation.org/event/psilocybin-for-treatment-resistant-depression-a-new-study-from-the-beckleyimperial-research-programme/</a> psilocybin and depression study </a>which provided evidence that two low to medium doses of psilocybin reduced depressive symptoms in 67 percent of participants, with 42 percent remaining depression-free after three months. Participants in this study had all suffered from depression for at least 18 years and been completely unresponsive to any other forms of treatment. Next year, a larger, placebo-controlled study will be conducted to verify these findings.

Beckley also performed the <a href="http://beckleyfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/One-Page_LSD-Neural-correlates_multimodal-imaging.pdf" target="_blank">http://beckleyfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/One-Page_LSD-Neural-correlates_multimodal-imaging.pdf</a> first brain-imaging study </a>to investigate how LSD has its effects in the brain.

These results correlated with the findings from other psilocybin studies, and have begun to assist researchers in order to build our overall understanding of how these compounds alter blood supply and connectivity in ways that can help change fixed patterns that underlie many debilitating illnesses such as depression, anxiety, addiction, OCD, PTSD, and others.

The research being done with terminal cancer patients adds to the growing collection of evidence of psychedelics’ therapeutic potential and indicates a significant development of an exciting new model of mental health treatment. Scientists are discovering that psychedelics change consciousness in a unique way that has the tremendous potential to revolutionize the field of psychiatry.

“The most interesting and remarkable finding is that a single dose of psilocybin, which lasts four to six hours, produced enduring decreases in depression and anxiety symptoms, and this may represent a fascinating new model for treating some psychiatric conditions,” said Dr Roland Griffiths, lead investigator at Johns Hopkins.

So if these treatments can benefit cancer patients, for example, why are we shunning them?

Does the United States of America not want to innovate and lead the world in research and treatment? Absolute insanity that America is acting as if we're in the stone ages in regards to such science.

In fact, many cancer patients who have undergone these studies proudly exclaim the benefits of LSD to the sedatives currently given.

One cancer patient told <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/lsd-permanently-reduces-anxiety-cancer-patients-285398" target="_blank">http://www.newsweek.com/lsd-permanently-reduces-anxiety-cancer-patients-285398</a>Newsweek</a>, “Quality of life changed extremely insofar as I became calmer, that I take things easier,” writes one study participant, as excerpted in the study. “It makes a difference if I look upon death with stress or with equanimity. I believe that is an enormous difference in quality of life. That I don’t have to cry every night like in the first months. Instead, I laugh.”

Who are we, to judge and decide how a person must suffer into their death?

It's outright insanity.

America should be better than this and strive to allow such treatments.

—<i>[email protected]</i>

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