Name: Acid Test
ISBN: 9780399162794

Acid Test

It's no secret that psychedelic drugs have the ability to cast light on the miraculous reality hidden within our psyche. Almost immediately after the discovery of LSD less than a hundred years ago, psychedelics began to play a crucial role in the quest to understand the link between mind and matter. With an uncanny ability to reveal the mind's frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness, LSD and MDMA (better known as Ecstasy) have proven extraordinarily effective in treating anxiety disorders such as PTSD - yet the drugs remain illegal for millions of people who might benefit from them. Anchoring Tom Shroder's Acid Test are the stories of Rick Doblin, the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), who has been fighting government prohibition of psychedelics for more than thirty years; Michael Mithoefer, a former emergency room physician, now a psychiatrist at the forefront of psychedelic therapy research; and his patient Nicholas Blackston, a former Marine who has suffered unfathomable mental anguish from the effects of brutal combat experiences in Iraq. All three men are passionate, relatable people; each flawed, each resilient, and each eccentric; yet very familiar and very human.

What Hacker News says

neomJan 2019

There is sufficient evidence for both, and there is probably good reason to split them out (body and mind) and see them as different things that also work combined (body + mind). In this you might compare something like kambo to ayahuasca and ibogaine. They have many similar effects but have different ways of getting there (some more physical some more spiritual ,Kambo is probably not going to help with your childhood abuse, but it may help your high blood pressure, ayahuasca may help you process your childhood abuse and as a result lower your blood pressure.) If you look at something like 2cb vs lsd, lsd is found to be considerably more productive/creative than 2cb at subthreshold doses, but people often experience a much better "therapy trip" on high dose 2cb.

Some great books are:

The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide- James Fadiman

Acid Test - LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal - Tom Shroder

Sacred Knowledge - Psychedelics and Religious Experiences - William Richards

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anythingnonidinOct 2017

If anyone on Hacker News would like a crash course on the history and potential of psychedelic substances - I cannot recommend the book Acid Test by Tom Shroder more highly.

Or, for a shorter view, the article Trip Treatment by Michael Pollan: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment

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JeffDClarkDec 2014

I just finished the book Acid Test (http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Test-Ecstasy-Power-Heal/dp/039916...). The stories about the progress that the lucky individuals, who have been part of MDMA therapy studies for PTSD, have made; combined with government's refusal to fund research as well as their stonewalling during permitting (DEA primarily) is heartbreaking and infuriating.

The author quotes some numbers about how much the US Dept of Defense and Veterans Affairs Administration spend (and are projected to spend) "treating" PTSD in veterans over the coming decades. They are shockingly large and unfortunately the US keeps sending more meat into the grinder.

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noahdesuOct 2015

I just finished reading "Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal" by Tom Shroder. It was parallel tour of the history of influential people (primarily Rick Doblin of MAPS), and a Iraq veteran suffering from PTSD that was treated later in the book with MDMA. http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Test-Ecstasy-Power-Heal/dp/014751...

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