Lester Grinspoon

Lester Grinspoon
Harvard Medical School | HMS · Department of Psychiatry

BS,MD.

About

117
Publications
14,940
Reads
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise

Publications

Publications (117)
Article
The reaction times of good premorbid and poor pre morbid schizophrenic patients and normal controls were measured under conditions of low, medium and high sensory input (noise). Poor premorbid subjects showed significant initial deficits that improved under conditions of increasing input, reaching normal levels under high input. These findings are...
Article
Full-text available
The authors present case histories indicating that a number of patients find cannabis (marihuana) useful in the treatment of their bipolar disorder. Some used it to treat mania, depression, or both. They stated that it was more effective than conventional drugs, or helped relieve the side effects of those drugs. One woman found that cannabis curbed...
Article
Unlike hospice, long-term drug safety is an important issue in palliative medicine. Opioids may produce significant morbidity. Cannabis is a safer alternative with broad applicability for palliative care. Yet the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) classifies cannabis as Schedule I (dangerous, without medical uses). Dronabinol, a Schedule III prescriptio...
Chapter
cannabis phenomenology and cannabis odyssey;study on marijuana, ubiquitous cannabis catechism - primarily on fear not science;psychopharmacological properties of marijuana;Marihuana Reconsidered - marijuana less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco with no psychopharmacological effects;cannabis, as medicine in Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine - clini...
Article
This commentary presents the case for the legalization of marihuana for medicinal purposes. It examines the history of medical marihuana, briefly discusses its clinical uses and presents a general overview of the legal classification (scheduling) of the drug in the United States of America today.
Article
Full-text available
The use of herbal marijuana as a medicine is here to stay. Both its safety and efficacy have been well established through much anecdotal and clinical experience. Pharmaceutical cannabinoid pro- ducts will be developed, some of which may successfully compete with the de facto gold standard, legally available herbal marijuana.
Article
Given the very limited toxicity of marijuana and the growing appreciation of its therapeutic value, it will undoubtedly find increasing application as a medicine in the coming years. But there is uncertainty about the forms in which it will be made available. Governments are hesitant to approve it because of concern about its use for nonmedical pur...
Article
Given the very limited toxicity of cannabis and its increasingly acknowledged therapeutic value, it will undoubtedly find increasing application as a medicine in the coming years. But there is uncertainty about the forms in which it will be made available. Governments are unlikely to approve it because of concern about its use for nonmedical purpos...
Article
The medical value of marijuana is becoming increasingly clear, as it proves to be a remarkably versatile, safe, and inexpensive drug. Arrangements now being proposed for making cannabis constituents medically available include quasi-legal buyers clubs, restrictive classification as a prescription drug, the isolation of individual cannabinoids, and...
Article
As the medical virtues of cannabis become increasingly clear, the question of how to make it available to patients becomes increasingly urgent. Conventional routes to medical legitimacy—the process by which pharmaceutical companies satisfy government requirements for a new medicine—are inappropriate because of the unique history and properties of t...
Article
In Reply. —As Dr Lowenthal points out, the contrast between tobacco policies and marijuana policies is instructive in more ways than one. Dr Bennetts raises the issues of social acceptability, cost, and alternatives. His fear that medical availability would lead to more nonmedical use is unwarranted. Cocaine and morphine, for example, have always...
Article
Full-text available
Today the 5000-year medical history of cannabis has been almost forgotten. Its use declined in the early 20th century because the potency of preparations was variable, responses to oral ingestion were erratic, and alternatives became available -- injectable opiates and, later, synthetic drugs such as aspirin and barbiturates. In the United States,...
Article
BETWEEN 1840 and 1900, European and American medical journals published more than 100 articles on the therapeutic use of the drug known then as Cannabis indica (or Indian hemp) and now as marihuana. It was recommended as an appetite stimulant, muscle relaxant, analgesic, hypnotic, and anticonvulsant. As late as 1913 Sir William Osler recommended it...
Article
After nearly 10 years of escalation, the government assault on illicit drugs has proved to be a costly failure. We have all been paying the price in misdirected resources, social tension, violent crime, ill health, compromised civil liberties, and international conflict. The war on drugs is, in effect if not in intention, a war on drug users. The f...
Article
A “Harmfulness Tax” is proposed as an alternative to the present unsuccessful drug prohibition policy. Both legal and currently illegal drugs would be taxed in proportion to the social cost associated with their use. In a sense, drug users would be required to buy insurance against the harm their drug use might cause to society. The scheme would be...
Chapter
The drug revolution that began 30 years ago has transformed psychiatry, but it has left little imprint on psychotherapeutic procedures themselves. Little attention has been given to the possibility of using drugs directly to enhance the process of psychotherapy — fortifying the therapeutic alliance and facilitating the production of memories, fanta...
Article
The authors propose a legalization and taxation policy regarding drugs as an alternative to the present system of probihition. Taxes would meet a twofold objective: first, they would have a dampening effect on potential use and secondly, they would finance drug education programs as well as subsidized costs of public safety linked to abuse.
Article
Many preindustrial cultures traditionally use certain psychedelic plants to enhance a procedure that resembles psychotherapy--an idea that was also tested in Western psychiatry in the 1950s and 1960s. LSD and related drugs were used to facilitate the production of memories, fantasies and insights and to enhance the therapeutic alliance. The results...
Article
Many preindustrial cultures traditionally use certain psychedelic plants to enhance a procedure that resembles psychotherapy--an idea that was also tested in Western psychiatry in the 1950s and 1960s. LSD and related drugs were used to facilitate the production of memories, fantasies and insights and to enhance the therapeutic alliance. The results...
Book
This book presents papers on the risks of nuclear weapons. Topics considered include nuclear war and climatic catastrophe, evolutionary and developmental considerations, a biological comment on Erikson's notion of pseudospeciation, national security, unexamined assumptions and inescapable consequences, opposing the nuclear threat (the convergence o...
Article
This article has no abstract; the first 100 words appear below. As a medical specialty, American psychiatry has changed enormously over the past 30 years. In the 1950s it was dominated by psychoanalysis. Now, "biological" psychiatry commands the high ground. In this book, Dr. Maxmen provides an excellent account of what modern psychiatry is and how...
Chapter
Some kinds of risk-taking in the pursuit of pleasure or the improvement of work performance are considered socially and legally acceptable. Drug use is not, except for alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. This is certainly not because the dangers of drugs have been carefully compared with other kinds of danger, and not even because the risks of legal dr...
Article
The Department of Defense has rules and procedures to minimize the opportunity for error and improper behavior among those with access to strategic weapons, but no psychiatric screening system can predict with assurance who will or will not behave rationally during a crisis. Personal problems and institutional decision-making pressures may destroy...
Article
The authors questioned 52 recently admitted patients about formally receiving information regarding patients' rights and about their knowledge of that information. Of the 13 day hospital patients, 12 recalled being given the information, but only 20 of 39 inpatients recalled receiving the information. Most patients, irrespective of their diagnosis...
Article
This article has no abstract; the first 100 words appear below. Cannabis has long been used as a primitive medicine. The heyday of its medical application in the Western world was the period 1840 to 1900. Physicians of a century ago knew far more about it and were much more interested in exploring its therapeutic potential than are physicians today...
Article
Twenty-seven chronically ill mental patients were followed up four years after their discharge from a state hospital to the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. In interviews with the patients and their caregivers, data were gathered on the patients' current places of residence, mental status, time spent in the hospital since discharge, levels of fu...
Article
The Quarterway House was founded in December 1978 to deinstitutionalize and provide rehabilitation services to a small group of long-term, seriously ill inpatients of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. The purposes of the residential program are to provide a less institutional therapeutic environment and to develop a psychosocial treatment pro...
Article
Coca has been used in folk medicine in South America for thousands of years both as a general stimulant and for more specific medical purposes. It remains one of the most commonly used medicines in some areas of Bolivia and Peru. The medical use of coca and cocaine in the industrial world has a more dramatic and varied history. Coca extract and coc...
Article
Until recently scientific knowledge about cocaine use and abuse was very limited, and most of it was based on studies more than fifty years old. There were no controlled experiments on human beings; even the clinical literature was sparse and affected by the limitations and prejudices of an earlier era. Recently cocaine has been gaining popularity...
Article
Heath and coworkers proposed that schizophrenia may be an autoimmune disorder in which antibodies are built up against specific substances in certain brain cells. Heath reports that schizophrenic patients exhibit abnormal brain waves in recordings from the caudate nucleus and septal area. These abnormal waves can also be recorded from similar sites...
Article
In a recent six-month period, a state-operated community mental health center was required to gather data for nine major surveys, reviews, and budget requests. Such surveys cover much the same ground, yet without any attempt to standardize formats so that the data a center compiles for one survey can be used in the next. The surveys frequently are...
Article
Cocaine can be considered habitforming only in the sense that people who try it are likely to continue using it if they can obtain it easily. Cocaine produces no clearly defined withdrawal syndrome, since it is not a depressant. It may, however, cause the same kind of uncomfortable but physiologically unspecific feeling of need associated with nico...
Article
This article has no abstract; the first 100 words appear below. During the course of its history, the United States has both zealously embraced and vigorously outlawed the cannabis plant and its various products. Cultivation of the plant for its fiber was practically simultaneous with the founding of the early American colonies. Until the Civil War...
Article
This article has no abstract; the first 100 words appear below. In 1930 the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was founded, and shortly thereafter its first director, H. J. Anslinger, undertook an "educational campaign," which must be some sort of landmark for its success in converting the general lack of concern with and ignorance about marihuana to wide...
Article
The authors review research on the effects of amphetamines on children, particularly hyperactive children in the classroom. They point out that there is no clear evidence these drugs should be prescribed as often as they are. The "hyperkinetic syndrome" remains vague both in its diagnosis and its etiology, and the mechanism of amphetamine action is...
Article
This article has no abstract; the first 100 words appear below. One property of cannabis, certainly as interesting as any other, is that an objective account of its psychoactive effects and the consequences of its prolonged use seems impossible to achieve. Judging by the reports of Bayard Taylor, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Theophile Gautier, Charles Baudela...
Article
Full-text available
Took telemetric recordings of a male 23-yr-old chronic schizophrenic patient's heart rate and skin potential while on the ward. During periods of hallucinations, the skin potential increased significantly, while there were no changes in heart rate. Neither heart rate nor skin potential increased during periods of talking. When very angry, heart rat...
Article
Therapists who participated in previous active drug-placebo studies of chronic and acute schizophrenics were rated on the Whitehorn-Betz A-B scale. The ratings were then related to treatment outcome. Patients who had been treated with phenothiazines and by Type A (verbal-intellectual) therapists improved more than those treated with placebo and by...
Article
Increased activity of cieatine phosphokinase (CPK) or aldolase, or both, was found, on a blind basis, in the serum of 25 of 39 acute schizophrenic patients at some phase of their illness. The median increase in serum enzyme activity was approximately threefold. Smaller increases in serum CPK and aldolase activity were also found in five of 22 first...
Article
Obtained measurements of heart rate and palmar skin potential from 22 good and poor premorbid schizophrenics and from 23 normal Ss during rest and during performance of 2 psychomotor tasks. Analysis of data was concerned with level of arousal and variability in the level of arousal with changes in the experimental situation. It was found that poor...
Article
: Spontaneous skin potential fluctuations (SPF) were recorded during the sleep of 8 acute schizophrenic patients and 6 normal volunteers. While in normals the SPFs decreased during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and were most numerous during Stages III and IV, the acute schizophrenics had the greatest number of SPFs during REM sleep and waking, and...
Article
Feedback on patterns of social interaction was given to chronic schizophrenic patients at their weekly ward community meetings for a period of four weeks. This feedback produced a significant decrement in aloneness (from an initial level of 80% to 72%) relative to the initial pre-feedback period. Isolation had returned to the initial pre-feedback l...
Article
1.1. Two groups of chronic schizophrenic patients had a sufficient difference in skin potential response wave form to a loud noise so that they could be rank ordered with respect to normal responses.2.2. The skin potential response wave form rank order correlated with the rank order as determined by two behavioral measures of the patient's clinical...
Article
Although institutions may take impressive steps to safeguard the physical health of their highest decision-makers, they tend to ignore and in fact exclude provision for safeguarding vital interpersonal needs. The successful executive experiences a restriction of freedom in his relationships with other people, lessened objectivity and candidness amo...
Article
Two groups of chronic schizophrenic patients were treated with intensive psychotherapy for a period of two years, starting in 1962 and 1964. Half of the patients also took phenothiazines. Control groups at a local state hospital received phenothiazines but no psychotherapy. A follow-up of the groups on three tests of adjustment, administered at the...
Article
Two grams of NAD were administered orally to ten chronic schizophrenic patients for twenty-one days. Five of the patients were also receiving thioridazine. There was no gross clinical improvement noted in any of the patients despite the fact that related experiments suggested that the NAD was absorbed. In those patients who were not also receiving...
Article
The relative merits of psychotherapy alone and psychotherapy in conjunction with phenothiazine therapy were investigated in the treatment of 20 chronic schizophrenic patients. Psychotherapy alone produced no demonstrable change over a two-year period in the nondrug group. The combination of drug and psychotherapy reduced florid symptomatology and s...
Article
Full-text available
On a research ward where nursing personnel have both research and clinical responsibilities, the effect of staff's rating of patients' behavior on frequency of contacts was assessed. Percentages of staff's contacts with patients and with other staff were compared on days when the staff was doing the ratings with days when it was not. There were no...

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