Now that Chauncey can join AARD, we’ve had to start her on a small daily dose of phenylpropanolamine for urinary incontinence. She wears her emotions on her sleeve, so I don’t think she’d mind me sharing that information. Anyway, it got me reminiscing about when I used to get cluster headaches, which I tried treating with a similar drug.
These are not fond reminiscences — not in the slightest. For years I lived in fear of April and October, the months of transition, when I would sink into these cycles of unfathomable pain. If you’ve heard anything about clusters, you’ve heard about how inadequate words are to describe them. Childbirth? Sister, please. Decapitation? Preferred. Propranolol was just one of many things I threw at ‘em. I also tried caffeine, ergotamine, other beta blockers, tryptamine (the turkey suppository), and pure oxygen, as well as more woo-woo things like St. John’s Wort and meditation. Nothing worked, really, not even the improvised cocktails. Then after I stopped smoking, they stopped coming around. I’m sure that’s just coincidence.
Ergotamine, you may know, is derived from a wheat fungus, and is used to make lysergic acid. In the small, refined doses I was taking, there were none of the effects you might hope for. But now it’s kicked up a notch: people are having great success treating clusters with actual LSD and psilocybin. And —and!— the apocryphal orgasm cure is gaining credence as well. So my pioneering work in the manual administration thereof didn’t go unnoticed by the medical community after all.
Tags: cluster headache · LSD · shroomsNo Comments
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