Unauthorized Research on Cluster Headache

This commentary (2008) recalls the history of unauthorized research on cluster headaches that started out from individual claims in online forums to the implementation of systematic surveys conducted by medical professionals. Psilocybin, LSD, and LSA (contained in Hawaiian baby woodrose and morning glory seeds) now appear to be at least as effective as the conventional medication to treat cluster headache.

Abstract

Review: Perhaps the greatest triumph of unauthorized research on visionary plants and drugs to date is the discovery that small doses of LSD, psilocybin, and LSA (lysergic acid amide) are more effective than any conventional medication in treating the dismal disorder, cluster headache. Five years ago, no one other than cluster headache patients or neurologists had ever heard of cluster headache. Now, treatment of cluster headache is routinely listed among potential therapeutic uses for psychedelic’s, and has even penetrated popular culture to the point that the character Gregory House, M.D. has used a psychedelic drug to treat headache on the TV show House not once, but twice (Kaplow 2006; Dick 2007). The first mention of therapeutic effect from a psychedelics’ on headache comes from Drs. D. Webster Prentiss and Francis P. Morgan, professors of medicine and pharmacology at Columbian University (now George Washington University), who began to conduct animal and human experiments with peyote in 1894 in order to determine whether or not it had any valuable medicinal properties. Two years later, their report concluded: “The conditions in which it seems probable that the use of mescal buttons will produce beneficial results are the following: In general ‘nervousness,’ nervous headache, nervous irritative cough… [etc.].” In their account are a number of cases, including #5: “The same gentleman reports that his wife formerly used to take the tincture [anhalonium1] for nervous headaches and that it always relieved her. She has them so seldom now that she does not use it” (Prentiss & Morgan 1896).”

Author: R. Andrew Sewell

Summary

VOLUME XVI, NUMBER 4 ! WINTER SOLSTICE 2008

Unauthorized research on visionary plants and drugs has led to the discovery that small doses of LSD, psilocybin, and LSA are more effective than any conventional medication in treating cluster headache.

Drs. Webster Prentiss and Francis P. Morgan conducted animal and human experiments with peyote in 1894 and concluded that the use of mescal buttons will produce beneficial results in the following conditions: nervousness, nervous headache, nervous irritative cough, etc.

Havelock Ellis was intrigued by Prentiss and Morgan’s reports of mescaline’s psychological properties and tried peyote himself the following year. His trip report states that his headache was relieved, but he never investigated headache further.

Ultimately, the use of mescaline to treat headache never caught on, perhaps because most early American and European peyote users complained that peyote caused headache. However, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, psychotherapists began to observe some startling remissions of headache after using LSD.

What is Cluster Headache?

Cluster headache is considered the most painful condition known to man, and is five times more common in men than in women. It is described as sharp, steady, and intense, and often causes patients to pace around and press their temples.

Cluster headaches are periodic headaches that usually occur at the same times each day, and usually last four to eight weeks. Ten percent of patients get no remission period, leading to the nickname “suicide headache”.

LSD is particularly suitable for anxiety states with accompanying tension, and we have been particularly successful with migraine. In every case, the resolution of the headache was attributed to resolution of the underlying psychodynamic conflicts, but no one suggested that it might be a direct pharmacologic effect of the drug itself.

Dr. Federigo Sicuteri, a giant in the field of headache medicine, introduced the serotonin theory of migraine and developed the first prophylactic drug for migraine, methysergide. This drug was removed from the U.S. market in 2002 because of its unpredictable propensity to cause death.

Dr. Sicuteri’s summary of the effects of lysergic acid derivatives other than methysergide on 390 headache patients is reproduced on page 118. He saw much more promise in methysergide than in LSD, and spent a considerable portion of his career developing it as a medication.

Dr. Ethan Russo made two expeditions to Peru’s remote Manu National Park in the early 1990s, and found that the Machiguenga tribes used visionary plants to treat headache. He later found that cannabis had similar effects, but no evidence that it was helpful in treating cluster headache.

Otto Snow published a book on LSD treating migraine, but his symptoms are consistent with a rare form of migraine called basilar-type migraine, which should not be treated with ergotamine, triptans, or beta-blockers.

In 1998, Craig Adams, proprietor of The Moorings Bar in Aberdeen, described his use of psilocybin to treat his cluster headache. The cluster headache community was unwilling to hear about the new treatment, but Adams persisted.

Mr. Wold had tried sixty-five medications, all of which had failed, until he tried psilocybin, which worked! He founded a group called the Clusterbusters, which is dedicated to bringing the attention of the medical establishment to this new medicine.

Bob Wold approached MAPS and Harvard Medical School about conducting a study on cluster headache and psychedelic drugs. The study yielded 242 cases, which were combined with 120 cases provided by the Clusterbusters and 21 cases from patients who e-mailed me out of the blue.

People sent documentation of illegal activity to a faceless authority figure over the Internet, and the results were extraordinary! Psilocybin and LSD appeared to be at least as effective as the conventional medication at aborting an acute attack.

The study suffered from several methodological flaws, including a lack of information about the dose and selection bias.

What is LSA?

LSA, also known as “ergine”, is an ergoline alkaloid found in nature in Argyreia nervosa, Ipomoea violacea, and Turbina corymbosa.

Hawaiian baby woodrose is a perennial climbing vine that was used by Aztec shamans in Mexico to commune with their gods, and is now used by the Mazatecs. Its seeds contain LSA, which was identified in 1960 by Albert Hofmann.

Modern science could have stumbled upon the discovery that psychotropic indoles treat cluster headache several times, but instead asked the wrong questions, drew the wrong conclusions, or simply looked the other way. A group called OUCH-UK discovered that seeds of Hawaiian baby woodrose and morning glory plants treat cluster headache.

News of the discovery spread like wildfire, and I had a database of 383 cluster headache patients. I asked how many seeds they had taken, and multiplied the two values to arrive at a dose.

A dedicated patient group tested different psychedelic compounds through trial and error, and discovered that sub-hallucinogenic doses of LSA appear to be effective in treating cluster attacks, terminating cluster periods, and extending remission periods in cluster headache.

Jim DeKorne, former editor of The Entheogen Review, recorded the date of every LSD trip over three decades, and I thought it would be easy to show that his LSD use corresponded with his cluster periods.

There you have it. Jim DeKorne threw out irrefutable scientific evidence of the therapeutic efficacy of psychedelic drugs a decade after he cranked out the first photocopies of The Entheogen Review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Ethan Russo, M.D., and Nicola Schilling, L.C.S.W. for their comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript, Kyle Reed for performing all the seed analyses, and MAPS and Seth Hollub for funding the research.

Bibliography

Mummies in a New Millennium, pp. 75-78, Danish Polar Center Publication No. 11, Greenland National Museum and Archives.

Study details

Topics studied
Pain Headache Disorders

Study characteristics
Commentary

PDF of Unauthorized Research on Cluster Headache