
Imperial College London Launches a Centre for Psychedelics Research - open-source-ux
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/190994/imperial-launches-worlds-first-centre-psychedelics/
======
miles
From a comment by /u/oredna in /r/Psychonaut yesterday[0]:

> _Worth noting that the actual first is the Center for Psychedelic Studies at
> the University of Toronto[1]. We were recently featured in a National Post
> piece[2]. We 've been in touch with the author to inform them that it's
> inaccurate to call ICL's the first given that we already exist._

> _That said, this is great news! More psychedelic research, and we 're
> hopefully all going to be collaborating and working together as we move
> forward._

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/bhkak8/imperial...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/bhkak8/imperial_college_london_launches_worlds_first/elvojzt/)

[1] [http://cps.radlab.zone/](http://cps.radlab.zone/)

[2] [https://nationalpost.com/health/health-and-wellness/is-
micro...](https://nationalpost.com/health/health-and-wellness/is-microdosing-
lsd-a-solution-to-the-crisis-of-meaning-in-modern-life-new-canadian-study-may-
provide-answers)

~~~
feedbeef
> That said, this is great news!

Great news indeed. Scientific progress into psychedelics needs to be
celebrated. We also need to celebrate specific individuals in the field, like
Drs. Nichols (father and son both), for their continuing scientific
contributions and persistence, often in the face of governmental and
industrial opposition [1].

1\.
[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gypbnx/psychedeli...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gypbnx/psychedelic-
drug-chemist-dave-nichols)

------
inflatableDodo
Judging from the success with clinical research into marijuana, if this is
successful we can look forward to a future in which family members of the UK
government can sell clinical psychedelics all over the world while still
insisting at home that it has no medical benefit and is only used by
criminals.

~~~
cies
> criminals

I've never accepted some behaviour to be criminal without a victim. Pedantic
gov'tal meddling, waste of resources at best, a way to lock up
lefty/hippy/non-whites at worst.

Passing laws that make victimless behaviour illegal should be criminal. Let's
make that a constitutional law...

~~~
mehrdadn
> I've never accepted some behaviour to be criminal without a victim.

You don't have to. That's easy to 'solve' at least a few different ways,
depending on how you prefer to look at it. (1) The victim is the same as the
criminal. (2) The victims are those who have to pay for that guy's
legal/medical/whatever bills later. (3) The victims are nearby/associated
families who have to deal with the consequences.

~~~
cies
> (1) The victim is the same as the criminal.

One has to identify as victim. It's not up to someone else to decide if I was
a victim at some point.

> (2) The victims are those who have to pay for that guy's
> legal/medical/whatever bills later.

So in case of medical insurances for all the public is the victim for every
persons action is remotely risky.

> (3) The victims are nearby/associated families who have to deal with the
> consequences.

See 1. Let's say some family members take great offense from one member being
gay. They feel victimized. Poor them. Because they are delusional. They are no
victim. If they, e.g., excommunicate the gay, the gay person is a victim of a
non-punishable offense in my opinion. Not the other way around.

~~~
mehrdadn
> One has to identify as victim. It's not up to someone else to decide if I
> was a victim at some point.

Yes, and there certainly do exist people who identify as victims of others'
drug use. Unfortunately they don't come knocking on our doors to inform us of
this fact. Instead they settle for the sadly-suboptimal solution of electing
representatives to represent their perspectives while they go about their own
businesses. If you're genuinely suggesting such people are nonexistent, well,
I'm not going to continue entertaining this further.

> So in case of medical insurances for all the public is the victim for every
> persons action is remotely risky.

I can't parse this sentence.

> See 1. [....]

See response to 1. Also note that dealing with drug users (medical care or
however else) costs people's money which is not exactly a subjective or
delusional thing to concern oneself with.

~~~
inflatableDodo
>there certainly do exist people who identify as victims of others' drug use

This is not a situation where the criminal and victim are the same person, is
it?

>If you're genuinely suggesting such people are nonexistent, well, I'm not
going to continue entertaining this further.

They obviously aren't suggesting that.

>I can't parse this sentence.

Here is some added punctuation that may help;

'So in case of medical insurances for all, the public is the victim. For every
person's action is remotely risky.'

------
oofabz
What about MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies?
They've been around for decades and have done great work. Aren't they the
first?

~~~
KingFelix
Who knows, but MAPS is awesome and doing some amazing things. Also most likely
doing a lot of heaving lifting when it comes to protocols and allowing for
more room / research. Its all good news!

------
DonHopkins
Not Reed College decades ago??!

[https://money.cnn.com/2015/01/25/technology/kottke-lsd-
steve...](https://money.cnn.com/2015/01/25/technology/kottke-lsd-steve-
jobs/index.html)

>Just a few years before Jobs' death, it was psychedelics that put Kottke back
in touch with Jobs. Albert Hoffmann, who discovered LSD, was turning 100 and
soliciting financial support for psychedelics research. Kottke was asked to
connect Hoffmann with Jobs, which he did; but Kottke doesn't believe that the
introduction resulted in any monetary contributions.

------
dj_gitmo
I look forward to the day when Psychedelic are a normal, and even boring,
topic of research and medicine.

------
llamathrowaway
Fun fact: Aldous Huxley, author of, among others, the Door of Perception, was
the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the biologist who was the first dean of
Royal School of Mines, which later became a part of the Imperial College.

~~~
Jimmed
They even named the building which houses the department of computing after
him!

------
modzu
does this mean we can free leonard?

my idea of justice doesnt include non-violent academics serving _life
sentences_ for manufacturing psychedelics

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard)

~~~
rudiv
I had heard of his story in pop culture references (the van with enough acid
to dose a major city) before, but did not know as much about him till I saw
your comment and perused his Wikipedia page. This passage was particularly
interesting to me:

> Pickard was the first American researcher to predict an epidemic of fentanyl
> and carfentanyl. At Harvard, he was appointed as a research associate in
> neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, where he was a drug policy fellow in
> the ad hoc Harvard Initiative on Drugs and Addictions, under the Program in
> Mind, Brain and Behavior.[6] In a presentation at the Harvard Faculty Club
> in 1996, Pickard proposed that fentanyl and carfentanyl use would become
> epidemic, and suggested specific policies for preventing wide-spread abuse.
> Pickard's prediction was 20 years in advance of the 2018 opioid crisis.[6]

> In federal court on March 12-13, 2003, Pickard testified in detail on this
> prediction, based upon his research among more than 200 addicts in Boston
> and Moscow and his study of rare fentanyl use. Original overheads from the
> Harvard Faculty Club presentation were seized by DEA in a Boston locker in
> November, 2000, and retained by the agency until trial in 2003, where they
> were entered as defense exhibits. This testimony, as a public record, was
> more than 15 years before the actual epidemic occurred.[7]

Given that the man is currently imprisoned because he manufactured substances
that the government deemed the harmful to specify because of their potential
for abuse, it's hard not to conclude that either he is a hypocrite or the
people who imprisoned him are.

~~~
modzu
lsd is neither addictive nor toxic

~~~
viktorvamos
addictive is quite a loose term, things like weed and acid may not cause a
chemical addiction - but they are extremely habit forming.

~~~
jMyles
LSD is habit forming?

...and although many people (myself included) use cannabis in a habitual way,
I don't think it's "extremely" habit forming. If cannabis represents the
extreme in this metric, then it is a very flat extreme since it also has to
include sugar, crack cocaine, nicotine, etc, users of which obviously develop
much more dire habits much more quickly.

I don't know that either of these are habit forming so much as that people
realize their benefit and choose to use them in some sort of routine.

~~~
viktorvamos
sorry i was referring to microdosing lsd.

everyone has their experiences, personally i know a few people whos smoking
habits have been detrimental to themselves.

i think theres this mantra of "its not addictive - legalise it!" when there
are other qualities of these substances that may cause issues, however it's
very hard to place weed on a scale of consumption benefit compared to other
substances.

For me, smoking a lot of weed deprecates my memory significantly, something
which i value quite highly, things like sugar and nicotine to not do this.

dire effects of these habits are also hard to quantify - i value mental health
over physical health... i'd rather be addicted to cigs than be addicted [sic]
to weed!

------
trashE
Nice, so we're only 60 years behind the best timeline

~~~
dokem
Maybe they are so powerful it has taken us 60 years to ready ourselves.

------
Vulkum
They have conducted some of these studies some years ago. One of the was a
study on the effects of LSD [0][1] on the brain, and I if I recall correctly
they were also looking for test subjects for shrooms around the same time.

[0][https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/171699/the-brain-lsd-
reveale...](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/171699/the-brain-lsd-revealed-
first-scans/)

[1][https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2016/04/05/151837711...](https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2016/04/05/1518377113.full.pdf)

------
open-source-ux
Launch video here:

[https://vimeo.com/332560919](https://vimeo.com/332560919)

------
bellerose
It will be nice when the religious old generation with their ideology die off.
The repressive outcomes restricting a better timeline from proceeding earlier
is so sad to witness. Speaking as an LGBT person who has witnessed suicide
among peers and when this treatment likely could help the tolls of abuse in
correlation to antiquated beliefs. Thanks to the dying god.

~~~
tim333
I'm not sure there's much in religion about no psychedelics?

~~~
RhodesianHunter
There is strong overlap between religious affiliated politics and zero
tolerance for many things.

