A naked man who climbed to the top of a towering rock at Goat Rock state beach near Jenner (CA) and then jumped off to the shock of onlookers suffered severe fractures and other injuries Thursday evening, emergency medical personnel said.

It appeared the man was under the influence of a drug, and it wasn't clear how much pain he felt despite having compound fractures, Monte Rio Fire Chief Steve Baxman said.

"He would scream every once in a while, and then when we moved his leg he would say, ‘That feels better,' " Baxman said. "He was conscious, but he wasn't really all there."

Supervising State Beach Ranger Damien Jones said the man claimed he had taken the hallucinogen LSD and also had been drinking.

Witnesses described seeing him crawl naked up the rock and then jump off around 7:50 p.m., Jones and Baxman said.

"It was probably a 100-foot fall," said Sonoma County Sheriff's Sgt. Dave Thompson, who was at the scene as part of the crew of Henry 1, the office's helicopter.

The witnesses saw him hit a rock shelf about a third of the way down, before tumbling the rest of the way to the beach, Jones said.

"He didn't fall," Baxman said. "He wasn't pushed. People said they watched him jump. Maybe he thought he could fly. I don't know. It's still a mystery."

Authorities were unable to find the patient’s car, his clothes or any identification, and he apparently was not cogent enough to identify himself.

[Thanks Luke!]

A pair of psychiatric experts think they’ve got the answer to the soaring number of troops coming back from war with PTSD: have them undergo intensive psychotherapy -- while they’re rolling on ecstasy.

Dr. Michael Mithoefer and Anne Mithoefer, a psychiatric nurse, are the South Carolina pair who've been spearheading research into ecstasy, known clinically as MDMA, since 2000. After one successful study on 21 PTSD patients between 2004 and 2008, they’ve now received the final okay from FDA and DEA officials to start a study entirely devoted to former military service members.

"My sense is that, especially after we published the results of the first study, these institutions are more open to the idea," Dr. Michael Mithoefer tells Danger Room. "Obviously, this is still new and experimental, and it can take time to get through to big institutions."

With $500,000 in funding from MAPS (the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), the two are recruiting 16 veterans -- they’re hoping for a 50-50 split between men and women, and want most of the participants to have been diagnosed within the last 10 years.

"These will mostly be veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan, because longer duration of PTSD means more complicating factors," Dr. Mithoefer says, adding that he does anticipate enrolling 4 vets from earlier wars and is still accepting applications.

From the relaxing effects of cannabis to the highs of LSD and ecstasy, illegal drugs are not generally associated with the lab bench. Now, for the first time in decades, that is starting to change.

For almost 40 years, mainstream research has shied away from investigating the therapeutic benefits of drugs whose recreational use is prohibited by law. But a better understanding of how these drugs work in animal studies, and the advancement of brain-imaging techniques, has sparked a swathe of new research. What's more, clinical trials of MDMA (ecstasy), LSD and other psychoactive drugs are starting to yield some positive results. This could lead to a call for governments to take a new approach to the funding and regulation of research into the potential benefits of such chemicals.

Is everybody that posts here between 15-20? Sure sounds that way. Maybe you bunch of wannabes should move out of Mommy and Daddy's house and see what living like how you're trying to sound like you live is really all about. I'll tell you right now, I'm 34 years old and have been a moderate to heavy meth user since around the time lots of you were born (1992). I grew up in southern Oregon, ten miles from the California border. Meth has been the drug of choice around here for almost 30 years. The mainstream media focuses on negative aspects of meth addiction that aren't applicable to all meth users. I am very well educated and actually about 50 pounds overweight, which is not that uncommon among long time meth users. My teeth are also excellent despite smoking around .5 gram daily. They have no black or other signs of meth mouth. That's because I brush them twice a day. What I have never heard anyone tell about meth addiction is that in the beginning, it is very difficult to make the right decisions in your life concerning education, relationships, and how you will progress into a productive, happy adult.

I had the world by the balls when I graduated high school (I snorted meth every day during my junior and senior year). My SAT and AZVAB (the test the military administered to high schoolers to find the next Oppenheimer) scores were among the top 99.5% in the nation. I scoffed at the Navy recruiter even though I was offered the opportunity to enlist straight into the nuclear sub program, which only 1 in every 40,000 enlistees is offered. Instead I chose to take a scholarship at one of the West Coast's top three technical colleges. I majored in Vascular Imagery and was poised for great things. Between graduation and the fall term of my freshman year, I started smoking crank instead of snorting it. The high was very nice and the addiction was extreme. Anyway, my addiction path led me to drop out of college after only 2 terms. I worked in my family's businesses and sold drugs steadily for the next four years. The longer you use meth, the more accustomed you become to its high. In other words, you still stay up and endless energy, you just don't have the euphoria you once did. Life becomes very dull and unrewarding during abstinence periods.

Originally published in 2000 'Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century' by Mike Jay is an extraordinary examination of the proliferation of various drugs during an enlightenment fueled Victorian age. Drawing on meticulous research, the book manages to combine elements of scientific, medical, literary and social history, in a manner befitting such a complex topic and the execution is highly readable, insightful and very entertaining.

The goal of this review is to examine the content and at the same time to draw lines of flight to twentieth century drug writing. Indeed, Mike draws his own conclusions between the differing attitudes of the centuries, socially, but we'll return to this at the end. Suffice to say it is the changing attitude of both the culture and the establishment that forms the crux of this differing perspective. The text itself is partitioned via the drugs; namely with chapters on nitrous oxide, opium, cannabis, ether, cocaine and mescaline. And is concluded with a look at the Temperance movement and alcohol prohibition. In many respects The Emperors of Dreams is a culmination narrative of the revisionist history of drugs, which took place at the end of last century but is also notable for taking into account the subjective efficacy of these substances as well.

One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink actually tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that -- for reasons that aren't entirely clear -- abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.

Smoking marijuana does help relieve a certain amount of pain, a small but well-designed Canadian study has found.

People who suffer chronic neuropathic or nerve pain from damage or dysfunction of the nervous system have few treatment options with varying degrees of effectiveness and side-effects.

Neuropathic pain is caused by damage to nerves that don't repair, which can make the skin sensitive to a light touch.

Cannabis pills have been shown to help treat some types of pain but the effects and risks from smoked cannabis were unclear.

To find out more, Dr. Mark Ware, an assistant professor in family medicine and anesthesia at Montreal's McGill University, and his colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial -- the gold standard of medical research -- of inhaled cannabis in 21 adults with chronic neuropathic pain.

Investigators used three different strengths of the active drug -- THC levels of 2.5 per cent, six per cent and 9.4 per cent, as well as a zero per cent placebo.

"We found that 25 mg herbal cannabis with 9.4 per cent THC, administered as a single smoked inhalation three times daily for five days, significantly reduces average pain intensity compared with a zero per cent THC cannabis placebo in adult subjects with chronic post traumatic/post surgical neuropathic pain," the study's authors concluded in Monday's online issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

[Thanks Jim!]

[Thanks Jim!]

Today marks the beginning of the Burning Man Festival in the wastelands of Nevada. Thousands of people will pour out into the desert, abandoning day jobs, relationships and social norms to dance around in one hundred degree heat wearing capes and glitter. For anyone unfamiliar with Burning Man, it's a weeklong event dedicated to self-expression, community reliance and sexual contact under the guise of spirituality. I know this because I went last year for the first and last time. I went seeking a utopian enclave of open-minded and accepting brothers and sisters, I followed rumors of a culture rising from the desert clay and supporting itself for seven days on nothing but love, understanding, and a little pharmaceutically induced introspection. Instead I found misguided, fat men in tie-died t-shirts with exposed genitals caked in dust. Suffice it to say, Burning Man let me down.

[Thanks Sam Hell!]