Though they look like ordinary people, and could easily be your
neighbors or colleagues, clusterheads (sufferers of cluster
headaches—a condition some doctors call the most painful known
to medical science), as they jokingly refer to one another, have
excruciating and extraordinary life stories. Their condition is
well documented, poorly understood—and devastatingly painful.
The medications they use to treat or at least reduce the
suffering are sometimes life-threatening, often physically
damaging, and usually psychologically and emotionally
debilitating. As a rule, they've gone mis- or undiagnosed for
years, been called hysterical by general practitioners and
neurologists unfamiliar with the condition, and endured
countless failed attempts at a cure. Now, thanks to an active
online community, and organizations like Cluster Busters, some
sufferers are finding relief in an unlikely treatment: the
serotonergic psychedelic drugs LSD , two chemicals that helped
fuel the psychedelic revelry of the 1960s. Anecdotal