Archive for March 9th, 2020
What is myth? Any links among psychedelics and psychosis?
Note: A re-edit of article of 2015 by Zoe Cormier and Nature magazine
Credit: Chris Murtagh/Flickr
The findings are likely to raise eyebrows.
Krebs says that because psychotic disorders are relatively prevalent, affecting about one in 50 people, correlations can often be mistaken for causations.
“Psychedelics are psychologically intense, and many people will blame anything that happens for the rest of their lives on a psychedelic experience.”
The three substances Johansen and Krebs looked at all act through the brain’s serotonin 2A receptor.
The authors did not include ketamine, PCP, MDMA, fly agaric mushrooms, DMT or other drugs that fall broadly into the category of hallucinogens, because they act on other receptors and have different modes of biochemical action.
Ketamine and PCP, for example, act on the NMDA receptor and are both known to be addictive and to cause severe physical harms, such as damage to the bladder.
“Absolutely, people can become addicted to drugs like ketamine or PCP, and the effects can be very destructive. We restricted our study to the ‘classic psychedelics’ to clarify the findings,” says Johansen.
The ‘acid casualty’ myth
“This study assures us that there were not widespread ‘acid casualties’ in the 1960s,” says Charles Grob, a paediatric psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has long has advocated the therapeutic use of psychedelics, such as administering psilocybin to treat anxiety in terminal-stage cancer. But he has concerns about Krebs and Johansen’s overall conclusions, he says, because individual cases of adverse effects use can and do occur.
For example, people may develop hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), a ‘trip’ that never seems to end, involving incessant distortions in the visual field, shimmering lights and coloured dots.
“I’ve seen a number of people with these symptoms following a psychedelic experience, and it can be a very serious condition,” says Grob.
Krebs and Johansen, however, point to studies that have found symptoms of HPPD in people who have never used psychedelics.
The second of the new two studies, also published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, looked at 190,000 NSDUH respondents from 2008 to 2012.
It also found that the classic psychedelics were not associated with adverse mental-health outcomes. In addition, it found that people who had used LSD and psilocybin had lower lifetime rates of suicidal thoughts and attempts.
“We are not claiming that no individuals have ever been harmed by psychedelics,” says author Matthew Johnson, an associate professor in the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
“Anecdotes about acid casualties can be very powerful—but these instances are rare,” he says.
At the population level, he says, the data suggest that the harms of psychedelics “have been overstated”.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on March 4, 2015.
No reactions to badly injured children: Baby animals are cuter
Note: Re-edited article of 2016 “One Photo of a Syrian Child Caught the World’s Attention. These 7 Went Unnoticed”.
Thousands of children in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Somalia… ,and many of them refugees, have suffered drone attacks, suicide bombing, famine, curable diseases… and Not many States cared that much for them.
This article is a propaganda for the terrorist groups in Syria (Al Nusra and ISIS). It would be great if a second article showed the suffering of the children in Yemen, attacks executed by Saudi Kingdom and the colonial power for 7 years by now.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Omran Daqneesh, a small Syrian boy from the embattled rebel-held section of Aleppo, somehow snapped to attention millions of people around the world, who watched and shared the arresting video of him as he wiped dried blood and thick soot from his face.
(Turned out it was a faked picture by the media terrorists White Helmet in Syria, funded by USA and England
The widespread interest in 5-year-old Omran surprised the doctors who treated him, the photographer who shot the video and many Syrians who wondered whether the world had only just discovered how children have suffered every day in a war that has raged for more than five years.
Omran was injured on Wednesday by either a Syrian or a Russian airstrike — Russia has denied involvement — that destroyed the building where his family lived in eastern Aleppo.
On Thursday, a pro-government website published a photograph of a young girl that it said was hurt — around the same time as Omran — by rebel mortar attacks on the government-held western side of the city.
One monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, (the UN has discredited these organizations that never existed on the field) said that 100 children had died on the city’s eastern side this month alone, and 49 on the western side. (And the US was angry when safe passages were opened to fleeing Syrians)
For each family, the loss is immeasurable. And there are children constantly caught up in battles in other places, on all sides, across war-torn Syria.
Here are images of 7 of the many other children treated in the past week at hospitals in the same region (and in other regions? Selective propaganda images?).
They are taken from among several that were posted by doctors and other residents of Aleppo on a WhatsApp group for journalists.
Ahmad Tadifi, 2
<img class=”span-asset-img ” src=”https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2016/08/22/world/22SYRIA4/22SYRIA4-articleLarge.jpg” />Doctors did not know who this child was when he arrived at the same hospital that treated Omran. On Wednesday, Ahmad had been separated from his family — as happens to many children in the chaotic aftermath of an attack — in the Mashhad neighborhood of Aleppo.
(Most of these children were kidnapped by the terrorist groups in order to film faked news in Syria, and many of them were left to die)
He underwent surgery for serious injuries to his head, groin and right arm and leg. Later identified, Ahmad was kept in the intensive care unit of the hospital along with his father. Late on Friday, he died from his injuries.
Rouwaida, 5, and Rana Hanoun, 7 months
<img class=”span-asset-img ” src=”https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2016/08/22/world/22SYRIA1/22SYRIA1-articleLarge.jpg” />The Hanoun sisters were wounded on Wednesday in the same airstrike that injured Omran.
They were among 12 children under 15 who were treated at the same hospital in Aleppo. Both of the girls had suffered shrapnel wounds, but were treated and then released on Thursday morning.
Doctors shared their picture with the WhatsApp group around the same time they shared the photograph of Omran.
<img class=”span-asset-img ” src=”https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2016/08/22/world/22SYRIA2/22SYRIA2-articleLarge.jpg” />Aisel Hajar, 2
<img class=”span-asset-img ” src=”https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2016/08/22/world/22SYRIA3/22SYRIA3-jumbo.jpg” />Aisel suffered wounds to her head and to one of her legs on Tuesday, and was treated at Al Quds hospital.
The severity of her injuries could not be confirmed because doctors were busy treating new cases. But activists have nicknamed her “Syria’s Cinderella” because of a picture that one took of her shoes — Mary Janes, worn with white socks.
<img class=”span-asset-img ” src=”https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2016/08/22/world/22SYRIA5/22SYRIA5-articleLarge.jpg” />Amal, 4, and Hikmat Hayouk, 6
<img class=”span-asset-img ” src=”https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2016/08/22/world/22SYRIA7/22SYRIA7-articleLarge.jpg” />The Hayouk siblings suffered cuts and bruises when an aircraft opened fire on Wednesday over the Sakhour neighborhood, and they were treated around the same time and at the same hospital as Omran.
The children’s wounds were relatively minor, but an adult relative suffered a critical neck wound.
<img class=”span-asset-img ” src=”https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2016/08/22/world/22SYRIA8/22SYRIA8-articleLarge.jpg” />An unidentified boy
Efforts to identify this boy, below, were unsuccessful. He was treated on Tuesday night at the Omar Hospital and released, said Baraa al-Halabi, a citizen journalist who photographed him.
None of the medical workers who could be reached remembered the boy, which is not unusual in the overwhelmed hospitals.
<img class=”span-asset-img span-asset-img-vertical” src=”https://cdn1.nyt.com/images/2016/08/22/world/22SYRIA6/22SYRIA6-jumbo.jpg” />Four children, no picture
At 3 a.m. Saturday, a barrel bomb landed on a house in the Jalloum quarter of Aleppo’s old city, destroying the house and killing seven members of one family — including all four children — said Abdelkafi al-Hamdo, a friend of the father’s.
The children were Aisha, 12; Mohammad, 11; Obaida, 7; and Afraa, 6. There is no picture of their injuries to show because they were pulled dead from the rubble.
Their father, Ali Abu Joud, recorded this video of three of his children’s bodies wrapped in shrouds. His voice can be heard breaking as he tells them goodbye, calling them “habibati” — my darlings — “birds of heaven, gone to the one who is better, gone to God.”
Notes:
Pictures and videos can make a slight difference. If the world media conglomerates were Not owned by US and Saudi Kingdom, this ugly and savage civil war in Syria would have ended long time ago. So many brutal casualties were committed throughout Syria but the media turned a blind eye.
The same case for the Yemeni children dying from malnutrition and lack of basic medicines.
Same case for South Sudan
And Ethiopia where the government has been killing demonstrators
And No coverage of the suffering in Eritrea (controlled by the US and Israel)
Adonis Diaries 