Are We Finally Reawakening to the Profound Healing Properties of Psychedelics?

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There are approximately 400,000 - 500,000 people in the United States alone that have this condition. Last year, National Institutes of Health put zero dollars towards research for cluster headaches.  

At one point, Chuck was institutionalized, because the doctors could not believe that anyone could have this much pain without actually faking it. So the medications that he did have, and the oxygen that he was using, was taken away from him, and he was put into a psychiatric hospital for three months, until he finally convinced them that he actually did have a physical condition that was causing this problem.  

We desperately need reform. Friends of mine are dying from this condition. And one of the main reasons they are dying from it is because they do not have access to LSD or psilocybin. And I think that that’s important for the reform movement. If you’re looking for a physical ailment that is treated with psilocybin or LSD, I think you can see one right here.  

It’s a little difficult sometimes to explain to people about treating something like post-traumatic stress. If they’re sitting in a room, you don’t really see it, unless you’re there and you’re talking to them. You can’t walk into a room with somebody that’s suffering from a cluster headache and not know he has a cluster headache.  

This is a list of the medications that the medical community offers to people  This is the list that I was on for the first 20 years that I had cluster headaches. There’s approximately 75 of them here, and I use them in many different combinations. And there’s some fairly powerful drugs here that really did nothing at all, other than dull the pain in some cases, or make me forget a week. In some cases, that actually happened.  

But this was the list, and one of the interesting things on this list was, they did prescribe me cocaine drops at one point, which were used to try to deaden the nerves in the back of the sinus cavity.  

We also try a lot of different alternative treatments. So, if anybody out there is thinking that, “I’ve got an acupuncturist that I think can help you,” believe me, you don’t. It’s not going to help with cluster headaches. And, last thing I want to do is walk up to Chuck and ask him if he’s actually tried the Extra Strength Tylenol rather than the normal Tylenol.

What’s available at this point right now, and where the medical community is really going is toward surgeries, because all of the medications that they’ve tried over these years do not work. And at one point, I was approved for three of these operations. But the latest one that they’re looking at right now is the deep brain stimulation, where they drill a hole in the top of your head, put electrical wires down into the deepest part of your brain, into the hypothalamus, and send electrical currents through those wires. And there’s a battery pack inserted under the skin in the back.  

The biggest problem that I see with these types of treatments for people is, normally when the people go into the hospital or to see their doctor, when they’re offered these treatments, they’re told, this is the cutting-edge. This is the last thing we’ve got to try for you. The problem is that these don’t work either.  

The suicide rate, it’s difficult to find good numbers on it, because there, once again, isn’t a lot of research on cluster headaches. But, the last small study that was done, looks like the suicide rate for people with cluster headaches is approximately 200 times the national average, Personally, I’ve had six friends of mine that have committed suicide in the last two years. None of them had access to psilocybin or LSD.  Some of them that could have gotten it were on medications that they couldn’t stop using before they just gave up to try one more thing. I mean, if you look at a list of 75 medications that they may have already tried, just learning about one more thing, you know, it’s difficult to believe that that’s going to work, especially if somebody tells you, “Well, you ought to try some LSD next time you get a headache.” It really doesn’t work too well.