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How Psychedelic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: May 1st, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/how-psychedelic-d...
Charles Grob [is] a psychiatrist and researcher at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center who [has administered] psilocybin an active component of magic mushrooms to end-stage cancer patients to see if it could reduce their fear of death. When the research was completed in 2008 ... the results showed that administering psilocybin to terminally ill subjects could be done safely while reducing the subjects anxiety and depression about their impending deaths. Grobs interest in the power of psychedelics to mitigate mortalitys sting is not just the obsession of one lone researcher. Dr. John Halpern, head of the Laboratory for Integrative Psychiatry at McLean Hospital in Belmont Mass., a psychiatric training hospital for Harvard Medical School, used MDMA also known as ecstasy in an effort to ease end-of-life anxieties in two patients with Stage 4 cancer. And there are two ongoing studies using psilocybin with terminal patients, one at New York Universitys medical school, led by Stephen Ross, and another at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, where Roland Griffiths has administered psilocybin to 22 cancer patients and is aiming for a sample size of 44. This research is in its very early stages, Grob told me earlier this month, but were getting consistently good results. Grob and his colleagues are part of a resurgence of scientific interest in the healing power of psychedelics.
Note: For fascinating reports from major media sources on the beneficial uses of psychedelics, click here.
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