Take two tabs of blotter acid and call me in the morning.
Cool story up today from Wired News about the fight by doctors to be able to prescribe psychotropic drugs. Apparantly, psilocybin (which I believe are a form of shrooms, for those unaware) can disrupt the cycle of headaches that sufferers from cluster headaches experience, which just goes to show that most drugs are not necessarily the demons they are made out to be. Mainly, the parallels between this fight and the fight for the use of medical marijuana are quite striking, but the bit I found interesting was this bit here:

Another reason progress has been slow is because NIDA-funded studies performed by Dr. George Ricaurte and Dr. Una McCann found that MDMA had ill effects on the brain. A 2002 study was particularly worrisome because it showed that ecstasy caused Parkinson's-like brain damage. But a year later, the researchers retracted the study because they discovered they had accidentally used methamphetamine instead of ecstasy.

I clearly recall the whole "E causes Parkinson's" furor that was whipping around at the time, but I don't ever remember hearing about the mistake they made, which is not surprising in the least. Just another reason not to take any statistics or studies at face value...  ¶ 2:33 p.m.