LSD Alleviates 'Suicide Headaches'

            In today’s day and age drug therapy has become a widely used method for curing or preventing the symptoms of many of today’s illnesses, be it psychological or physiological. New drugs are being created and tested everyday in search of finding the one, true cure for whatever disease you can imagine. But what about the drugs that have been around for a while now; the one’s we wouldn’t think to consider because of the stigma attached to them?

This article takes a look at research done the treatment of cluster (“suicide”) headaches with a nonhallucinagenic analog of LSD.

            Cluster headaches are referred to as “suicide” headaches because of the intense almost unbearable pain the patients experienced. These experiences are usually localized to one side of the face, can last for periods of hours, and can occur in bouts that last months with several headaches each day. The cause of these headaches has still not been discovered, but recent research that changes in the structure of the hypothalamus are involved in their origin.

            Six patients were treated with this analog LSD, 2-bromo-LSD (BOL) one time everyday for three treatments. Every patient reported a reduced frequency in the occurrence of his or her cluster headaches, and five of the six reported having none at all for months. This is inspiring research to me because my dad suffers from cluster headaches, and watching him struggle with a bout of them is a rough experience. More research definitely needs to be conducted in this area, but the fact that there is hope for a possible cure or treatment to these headaches means we are heading in the right direction.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/06/lsd-alleviates-suicide-headaches.html