Your Brain on LSD

foreign and welcome back to your brain on science this is Elena and zarmine together in the same room finally at the same time here to talk to you about all things LSD yes we are so happy to be together again and recording content for you all uh this is the first episode in a four episode special little mini series to celebrate bicycle day tomorrow so let's get right into it yeah so we'll kick it off simple right uh so we're doing a quick and dirty on LSD so lysergic acid diethylamide a laboratory synthesized complex tryptamine uh it's pretty similar to herbaline which is a ergot alkaloid um and so there's a lot of ergolene derivatives that exist in the world um and some of them are actually used clinically so for the purpose of vasoconstriction um and for the treatment of migraine if used with caffeine and also even for Parkinson's Disease um yeah and then some are also implicated in the disease ergotism which was pretty prominent in like what was it like before we had modern civilization people would eat bread and then they would go oh my God okay so do you guys remember all of like the Salem Witch Trials like the sort of the big stuff that happened you know girls were uh claiming that other girls were witches and whatnot and it's theorized and it's hypothesized that the people in that town had actually been consuming bread that was um infected with that had like growth of ergot on them so they were eating this bread and they were like literally having these hallucinations that Mary Beth down the street just turned into a bat and flew away and maybe they really were but like poor Mary Beth wasn't actually a witch so fun little story um so that being said right yeah what is LC most known for being a classic psychedelic right it has this um unique and promiscuous pharmacological profile um so obviously it produces hallucinations um due to one of its isomers the D isomer that acts on the serotonin 2A receptor if you don't know what an isomer is it's basically just the nature of the chemical composition um that causes it to move round in the 3D space so it can bind in different ways so this D isomer basically is the one that binds the serotonin to a receptor causing these hallucinations in people LLC acts at other serotonin receptors as well including serotonin to B receptor which is found in cardiac tissue and also non-seritinergic receptors like several dopamine receptors and a couple of other fun ones but LLC is more than just a serotonergic hallucinogen right it's got a rich social history like you just mentioned all leading back to the sooner yes yeah so LSD it's talking about Bicycle Day off Albert Hoffman discovered the Psychedelic uh the Psychedelic effects of LSD in the 1950s um and this was following an accidental exposure to LSD uh Hoffman had returned to the uh to the compound and he took it deliberately after having been exposed to it accidentally um on April 19 on April 19th bicycle day um and he recorded his experiences he found the experience to be intense uh describing this kaleidoscopic this is direct quote kaleidoscopic fantastic images and you know this is a lot of the imagery that we see uh canonically associated with lsdus um and once the structure of Serotonin was reported it was put forth that this neurotransmitter could be implicated in several Neuropsychiatric diseases um since LSD contains a tryptamine core uh scaffolding just like the endogenous ligand serotonin 5ht yeah so that kind of speaks to like you know the similarity between serotonin itself and LC and why it binds to these receptors causing these crazy yeah so there's also uh sort of Harkens back to if you guys listen to the episode with me and Haley um the big like the psychedelics being psychomimetics right like or uh mimicking some like Neuropsychiatric symptoms symptomology right like acute psychiatric

malaise I think yeah um as Elena chokes today So eventually uh in the 1960s LSD was now being synthesized by several clandestine chemists uh including some notable names like Stanley owsley I hope I'm saying that correctly um and Tim Scully eventually the LSD was brought into the counterculture you know very anti-government this was anti-war anti-vietnam it was very peace of Love yeah so it was being used for you know anti-war protests and it really infiltrated uh the music scene Grateful Dead and you know we've heard of all the acid tests we I think one of our first episodes was talking about that yeah we have a blog post about yeah kind of the social aspects of psychedelics yeah on our website um and it was actually I'm so sorry that was so gross I'm gonna cut that out drinking your cold last time I was going to go into a coughing fit with Leary and I was like we are not editing this so I drank coffee and I was like am I like dying inside okay we're gonna go back to this okay I literally what the [ __ ] okay I'll see also um infiltrated the academic scene and this was in part due to notables like kanikizi Timothy Leary we know very well um and the Grateful Dead and I just bought them up you know in terms of the music scene uh but I think they were like vital in getting LSD out and sort of spread into society and exposing a lot of people to it that could now have access to it and make you know ask these questions and go so on yeah and with you know this widespread use unfortunately at the height of it um and after some interestingly failed military experiments which we will not get it to today um the U. S government determined it was a danger to society and thus the drug war has begun um the Controlled Substances Act was passed uh in the late 19th no the early 1970s right 1971 71 yeah except well 70 uh 70 and 71 but yeah um and the drug classification system had started so interestingly we just looked this up for this episode LSD is actually one of the first drugs to be scheduled ever crazy along with DMT yeah uh and also we just did a quick search so please correct us if we're wrong but that is what we could find um this made recreational use very legal um it also made it extremely difficult for LLC research to continue in the United States yeah um LSD continued to be used in the underground though you know people are gonna they're gonna do what they're gonna do right and you can do whatever you want and this can be current women's Reproductive Rights arguments right people are going to do what they're gonna do despite all of the sanctions that you put on things despite all of the laws so lse continued to be used in the underground and was very well known and characterized for its like remarkable crazy you know Fantastical almost effects um and these include changes in perception sensory processing and induced these intense really intense and you know intense in the positive way or intense in the negative way experiences in a lot of people spiritual maybe even religious experiences um but the effect of orally or sublingually administered LSD so and the tongue under the tongue uh can last between six to 12 hours uh depending on the dose depending on how the individual metabolizes the dose uh but six to 12 hours generally right um and the dose is usually 100 to 250 micrograms okay all you need is micrograms this drug is extremely potent um so micrograms of the use of LSD has been noted uh to be for recreational spiritual and many social reasons right it's very often taken with friends in nature um to instill maybe an appreciation for the unknown and for life in general and for a lot of people LSD um and especially you know back then when it was part of this counterculture was something to help facilitate feelings of peace or love or during war times right or promote uh Oneness so like tuning in dropping out but all together yeah right so tuning into that self right but dropping out of the society that people are having to unfortunately experience yeah unfortunately experience Society it's uh rough

no but yeah um so LSD right is probably one of the most characterized psychologists and subjective of that for sure so um it was you know one of the first psychedelic drugs to be actually investigated therapeutically in the 1950s and today interestingly we don't see LSD being used in very many um you know like in clinical studies I think right now psilocybin is really predominating the space and you know that's not saying yeah and that's not saying that LSD isn't being used at all no of course it is we're seeing a lot of work uh come out a lot of ideas yeah nothing that is like not really huge popular trials with like psychedelic assistant Psychotherapy paradigms it's usually a psychedelic assisted Psychotherapy with psilocybin and I think that's for a lot of reasons one being um some of the Hallmark Watershed studies that came out you know the Griffiths paper uh way back when 2016. uh way back yeah that's crazy okay I'm having a moment um yeah okay so whatever been long ago in Integrity that paper came out um that was you know looking at the effects of psilocybin so you should sometimes it's easier when you have had some success clinical success with a drug to sort of uh move on with that but I don't know I think it might also just be personal preference at this point well I think too what we just talked about like the history of policy there's a lot of baggage that comes with those things yeah and I think a lot of those like earlier studies right they were not done very ethically or the people who are conducting them are also on LLC yeah so I think like a lot of the not use of it nowadays might come from the mistrust in the LLC studies or from it being less likely to be funded due to the governmental history with LLC specifically that's my thoughts on them yeah but it's being used you know yeah it's not like it's not there at all yeah for sure so it's available but you know there's a lot to learn so uh from a research standpoint like very like they say I think biology Neuroscience uh medicine there is a lot that we can learn about LST um recently actually it was discovered yeah it was discovered um how LSD binds to the receptor actually causes a lid almost to form right uh trapping the compound and potentially being responsible for the longevity of those effects so that's just like one example about how we're still learning and we're still trying to figure out exactly what these drugs are doing in our brains and how they're causing this just overhaul of all the senses right yeah um so you know we know it's a serotonin two-way receptor but what is this doing globally to the brain it's something that's really currently popular to research um there's also some research focusing on you know LC's effects on other receptors like I mentioned um and duplicating some cardiovascular stuff and it's also has a role in being used to potentially treat Eating Disorders through the serotonin dopamine modulation of hunger as well as potentially being looked at from various drug addictions so yeah that is something that is currently ongoing that we are still learning about so yeah so these are a lot of you know positive associations and even uh the subjective experience of LSD itself a lot of people we just talked about the peace and love era right like listening to the Grateful Dead that's what a lot of people associate LSD use with but Elena and I are big proponents of this of talking about this it's very important to note that not every trip is going to be a good one right like always there are risks associated with psychedelic use um including things like paranoia dissociation persisting visual hallucinations right and acute anxiety uh so as always I think make sure you know what you're taking and always have an awareness of set and setting please go listen to our harm rejection episode yeah um and also you know when talking about psychedelics when touting you know the benefits of psychedelics the therapeutic benefit of psychedelics or maybe the capacity that we want to harness I think always always keep a very realistic view these are amazing substances but they're not amazing for everyone and maybe they're amazing for you one day maybe they won't be amazing for you the next day yeah so you have to be you have to recognize all of that right and I think it's such a disservice to not and we have a responsibility too I think so exactly I couldn't have said it better myself um well we hope you liked our quick and dirty episodes on LLC obviously there's a hundred million things that we could talk about with this but we just wanted to bring you like a short episode to introduce this week um we've got a lot

of awesome amazing all capital letters um stuff this week like tune in tomorrow so we have an episode with the one and only Leonard redoing that so tune in tomorrow for our episode with the one and only Leonard Picard as he talks about his experiences and his life in the Psychedelic scene and also in prison um and he talks with us about his current uh book that he wrote in prison so yeah make sure you're liking subscribing sharing checking out um all of our stuff including some fun upcoming stuff ooh like our new YouTube channel uh for a video of this episode so if you guys are listening to us drawn on you can also watch us doing oh yeah I promise it's worth it though um please go to youtube. com your brain on science and check out more content on our website psychedelicfriendscience. com um and our brand new um so we are launching our patreon and it's patreon. com our brain on science and we have a few different tiers for you guys to check out uh so please go look at that explore it give us feedback chat with us we'd love to hear from you um and if you guys like this episode and you want something maybe a little bit more in depth about LSD we can also do that but yeah you know we'll do anything for you guys foreign