Cluster headaches are excruciating for those who suffer from them.
More than one person in the course of research for this story likened the headaches to “an icepick piercing your brain through your eyes.” The headaches come in cycles, sometime multiple times a day, and an attack can last for up to 90 minutes. It’s debilitating to the point where cluster headache patients cannot function normally in society—how do you tell your boss you need to take an hour off while you suffer through excruciating pain? Modern medications—from opiates to steroids to neuro-implants—are, at best, minimally effective. There is no known cure. The suicide rate for those with the disease is 20 times the national average (PDF), according to a report published by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a 501(c)(3) non-profit research and educational organization dedicated to expanding the usages of psychedelics and marijuana.

There are an estimated 1 out of every 1000 Americans, 350,000-400,000 people, who suffer with the disease.
Bob Wold, 61, started getting the killer headaches 35 years ago. He tried over 70 different medications, and none of them worked. There is only one FDA-approved medication for cluster headaches. Other than that, all other treatments are off-label. According to Wold, the National Institutes of Health has spent less than $2 million on studying cluster headaches in 25 years. And so, Wold was “always on the look out for something better.”
Combing the Internet and message boards, he started doing research, and found people talking about psychedelics.

“A guy in Scotland had used some LSD recreationally and his cluster headaches didn’t happen that year. [The headaches] start the same time of year, every year,” he explains, so if your cycle starts in the spring, that’s when they’ll usually start to come on.
“This guy’s cycle didn’t start that fall, and he attributed it to LSD,” Wold says. “When [Albert] Hoffman was researching LSD, he was looking for a drug for headaches and migraines.”

“Other people tried it, and had amazing results,” Wold continues. “It gave long-lasting results after just a couple of doses. You could avoid the [headache] cycle from just 2-3 doses, 5 days apart at the start of cycle—and that stops it. It works. We’re trying to figure out why that is.”

And when he says “doses”—it’s not what you might think. These sufferers do not want to trip. They want relief. Just a quarter of what would be considered a recreational dose is effective for stopping their headaches.
Wold says that while low-doses of LSD are effective, (“People liken it to the buzz of drinking three beers,” he says.) it’s difficult to get. “But mushrooms are effective, and you can grow your own. For a $50-$100 investment, [patients] can grow several years worth of medication.”
And that’s what many cluster headache patients are doing now—growing their own mushrooms for medicine.

I have cluster headaches lol.

But I don't believe that. The best thing for me to is take my meds and knock out. Can't feel pain if I'm asleep. And USUALLY when I wake up it's either gone or a pain I can deal with.