Cluster Headaches might be helped after all
Of course, finding a physician who knows they exist and won't treat you for migraine might be difficult.
Had them while growing up and thought it was normal, that everybody had them. Kept having attack episodes well into my early 40s. They are not fun and if you get them, you understand why many other sufferers suicide. Almost as bad as the pain, which is now recognized as worst pain there possible, is the dread when the pain lets up but you know it will be back, likely worse than the first attack.
Headaches seem to frustrate most doctors who sometimes show feelings of hostility to sufferers when their preferred prescription does nothing to help. Government regulations about what can or can't be used in medical trials does not help sufferers or the doctors who recognize the condition is real. In short, the whole situation is hell.
Found an interesting read this morning. https://www.theguardian.com/science/ng-interactive/2025/apr/23/cluster-headaches-magic-mushrooms-psilocybin]
CH is a rare headache disorder that affects up to 0.1% of the global population. More men are diagnosed with CH than women, though women might be more likely to be misdiagnosed with migraine due to their reports of severe pain not being taken seriously. People with CH have rated the pain at 9.7 out of 10 – worse than childbirth at 7.2, a gunshot wound at 6 and a migraine at 5.4. Right now, much of the limited research on CH is happening in the US. Cluster headache patients are 20 times more likely to take their own lives than the US average. More than half of American cluster headache patients have considered killing themselves, and almost 20% have lost a job due to their debilitating condition.
Still, episodes are often dismissed as “just headaches” by family, employers and doctors. Patients see neurologists who aren’t aware that CH exists, and even headache disorder experts still don’t understand how CH operates in the brain – or how to make it stop.
Instead of trying to tolerate a level of chronic agony that doesn’t feel survivable, patients with CH have taken to experimenting with their own pain, their own bodies and psychedelic drugs.
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