The following is taken from #05 "TEONANACATL", The International Journal Of Psychoactive Mushrooms (TEO) August 2003, pages 15-17. Stephen L. Peele, Editor (FloridaMycology@cs.com), has given permission for the Copyrighted Material to be placed here.
www.clusterbusters.com
The Hurt Stops Here?
Cluster Headaches And Psilocybin Mushroom Tea
By Dr. Karl Buchanan

Bob Wold is not your typical "shroomer". At 50, he has accomplished a regular adult life like others, the last 22 of those years carrying a burden most others don’t have to contend with: Cluster Headache. Commonly referred to as the "Suicide Headache" the Cluster phenomenon is a miserable condition for both the patient and the caregiver, always engaging an arduous course of medication experimentation and often, only limited benefits in the best of cases.

The list of drugs and treatments given to cluster headache sufferers reads like a horror script, and includes some of the most potent and debilitating pharmaceuticals currently made, many of which carry numerous undesirable and potentially permanent side effects. While many patients benefit from these drugs many do not, and only partial relief is obtainable in most cases. In fact, we are learning that the inundation of the drugs themselves, while offering only partial relief may actually be prolonging the headache cycle – a possibility first put forth regarding the drug Verapamil. We already know anger and depression, the symptoms of "narcotic dysphoria" hang like a cloud over those patients who again, must use high doses of a more dangerous drug continually to achieve only partial relief. There are times for caregivers that going to a patient with narcotics or other pain relieving drugs seems like a blessing in one’s hands – and times when it makes you sick, just like its making them. When narcotics don’t help, but are the only help – that’s the rough one for both doctor and patient. What is the end of the line for the Cluster sufferer? If you survive the sixty-two (+?) prescription and well over a dozen other treatment regimens (-if-) you too may qualify, like our friend Bob Wold, to have a one inch hole bored into your skull for vascular microsurgery or be fitted for a radiation brace to have your head bombarded just like a malignant tumor. For your headache. (What?!?) They call it the "Gamma Knife." Faced with these options Bob decided to take a chance that certainly didn't seem any more frightening or potentially dangerous. What he discovered approximately two and a half years ago is something that scores of cluster sufferers have, and several have described: "It just washed away". Yes, that’s right. Psilocybe mushroom tea has emerged as a top home treatment for the cluster headache sufferer. But it’s not as simple as "tripping". To begin with cluster sufferers typically use sub-hallucinogenic doses in the form of a liquid extraction in which dried fruit bodies have been briefly steeped in hot water. Add to this that there is a complete and identified regimen of necessary preparation – A protocol from the patients themselves requiring a five day detoxification from other drugs that causes some sufferers to hesitate more than any other concern. Next, they must treat the attack, and use subsequent doses until the attack cycle is under control. After that, according to sufferers themselves, a prophylactic (preventive or "maintenance") dose every six months is advisable to ward off further attacks. Of course if an attack comes before the six months or in-between…..well, there’s some things you just don’t have to tell a pain driven patient. Now here is a new Kabbalah, a revelation that researchers and doctors aren’t really balking at. There is a foundation dedicated to tryptamine research (www.maps.org ) and an existing body of knowledge that makes this area by no means "new frontier". It is simply the application of a medicine used for thousands of years by mankind to a condition which he may have forgotten (or never known) that it served. Over the years of searching for his own answers Bob has not only been through virtually every course of treatment, but he’s talked to most, if not all, of the top voices in both cluster headache and tryptamine medicine to the extent that it is becoming no longer a matter of "Bob, have you talked to Dr. Q" but a question of "Dr. Q, have you talked to Bob Wold?" I talked to Bob. I learned a lot. Not all of the adepti of this inner circle would talk to me about their knowledge, and while they quietly but freely minister to their own I discovered that out of five I contacted, only two had serious points for me to make about this article. Bob’s was "People will kill themselves because of this and it doesn’t have to happen that way." The other ClusterBuster, a long time sufferer and activist who has been using the treatment for about five years wrote back to tell me that I needed to let sufferers know where in the world they could legally receive this treatment right now; but his service to the cause is in composing those letters to the people the ClusterBusters want to hear them in medicine and legislature. He told me "Psilocybes have proven to be my miracle treatment. Although they have not "cured" me at this point I am extremely optimistic that they have won the battle so to speak. Although I had dabbled with this 4 Years ago, my last cycle was the first time that I truly followed the recommendations and dosing techniques loosely compiled by the pioneers of this treatment. My cycle appeared to have a longer duration (about 12 weeks) but was more than manageable." And he said that his next cycle would for him be the true test as he will be taking the low-level maintenance doses every six months which some, myself and Bob Wold included, believe can prevent the cycle from ever starting. What finally caused him to take the chance? "I drew the line when my neuro wanted to start me on lithium. I would rather be in hell every 18 months than be a zombie all of the time." The real and underlying subject of this article bears a final consideration of it’s own: For the past few years a grass roots group of patients (excuse me, sufferers...I’m not sure they’re all patients anymore...) has been gathering and compiling information through a series of "passed along" websites in an effort to help each other and doctors in the battle to manage their so-called "Beast". A retired military officer carried the torch for some time through an online support forum but eventually had to let it go, bequeathing the job and the archives to this now more loosely knit and yet highly informed group of contributors with Bob as spokesman, advocate and carrier of the "dot.com". I visited the ClusterBusters site and also the Yahoo! Group for what I thought would be a cursory perusal, and I haven’t been able to properly answer or respond to the mail and the energy which is generated when a group of people enter a sanctuary after their own that is more than a mausoleum. Doctors can benefit immensely from this site, but you know, we may not be needed much around there anymore. These people educated themselves. They are learning to care for themselves in a way that any physician would have to admire. One dose every six months? With a course like that, even the in-between crisis doses that may be needed seem negligible. But the ClusterBusters, regardless of this remarkable phenomenon and 10-Jewel spotlight of hope may remain a small and quiet temple to themselves for an indefinite time to come. Even if their cure passed all muster – an Everest climb which will cost them $50,000 for just the first step – they are a thorn in the side of world pharmakaeia. They, and their organic simple cure that only requires the number of doses in a year that most pharmaceutical products require for a single day, are a profitless bane and a direct threat to numerous high selling and high dollar pharmaceutical products. These upstart patients, having the gall to presume themselves sentient and capable of making their own care decisions, have removed themselves from our Emergency Rooms and Med/Surg Floors and gone home to foil lined shoeboxes on water heaters, and immediate answers to their debilitating pain stored reverently in little brown bottles protected from the light against a day no one would think anyone should have to face. They share their stories with others who, exhausted to their own limits also wonder if such a simple thing could finally be the answer to so many desperate prayers. While the pharmaceutical prognosis for "Psybanol" may not be promising, the hope of continuing remission and relief is and it remains for the rest of the world to catch up. It’s just not reasonable to expect people to endure such a condition due to it’s lack of profitability or mainstream community awareness. Dr. Karl D. Buchanan Sources: Bob Wold, Jeff Centers www.ClusterBusters.Com www.MAPS.Org www.Clusterheadaches.com Epilogue: Upward and Onward: Time to be Free. It is the personal opinion of this writer after having had contact both directly and discreetly with numerous cluster sufferers that Neurology must now accept it's place as contributory and relinquish the primary care of these patients to rehabilitative psychiatry. Those on the psilocybe treatment exhibited: - less anxiety - less pain related confusion/aggression - were less abusive of others and caregivers - seemed as changed in their perspective and personality as they were in their pain regardless of the degree which they themselves may have perceived and appreciated this - seemed to have a visibly increased confidence, clarity and directness in their discussion And now these people are back, washed up on our beaches grinning like naked little Adams and Eves - but some of them at least aren't out on that raging sea flailing around anymore. Functionally freed from an enforced and learned psychological set that is every bit as tragic as the "most painful disease known" - they are reborn from the isolation, self recrimination, abandonment, futility, guilt, anger, anxiety, frustration and stigmatization that most of them feel in varying degrees at different times into a world both inner and outer that they have not truly known since the full onset of their symptoms. Functionally capable of being more now than pain patients, they are patients most in need of continuing support and a larger total care perspective, because not all the pain they have suffered has been physical, treated or from within. They are most in need of the grief counselor, the occupational therapist, recreation therapy, art therapy, peer groups and others skilled in areas of self esteem and adult recovery/rehabilitation issues. Just like any other patient that has dropped their braces or risen from the wheelchair, thereby refocusing our priorities and approaches as total and primary care givers. Here they are coming. We need to welcome them back. -kb

(Note: the TEO current Journal is available for FREE viewing at www.mushroomsfmrc.com just click "TEO Journals")