In 2015, a 46-year-old woman known as CB made a mistake that could have easily cost her life.
She accidentally snorted what she believed was cocaine — but it was actually pure powdered LSD.
Not just a small amount.
The dose was estimated to be 55 milligrams, roughly 550 times higher than a typical recreational dose.
What followed was terrifying.
For the next 34 hours, she experienced severe physical distress. She vomited repeatedly, lost consciousness, frothed at the mouth, and sat unresponsive in a chair while her roommate monitored her condition, unsure if she would survive.
But when she finally regained awareness, something completely unexpected had happened.
The chronic pain she had lived with for over two decades — caused by Lyme disease — was gone.
Completely gone.
For years, she had relied on daily morphine just to function. Yet after the incident, she stopped taking it immediately — and shockingly, experienced no withdrawal symptoms.
In the following days, some of the pain gradually returned, but the experience had changed everything. She began using small, controlled doses of LSD every few days while significantly reducing her morphine intake.
By January 2018, she had stopped all pain medication entirely.
Again — without withdrawal.
The case was later documented in 2020 in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, led by researchers from the University of British Columbia.
Experts strongly warn that this was a unique and dangerous situation that should never be intentionally replicated. However, the case has added to growing scientific interest in psychedelics as potential treatments for chronic pain, addiction, PTSD, and depression.
Sometimes, the most unexpected discoveries come from the most unlikely circumstances.