Cluster headaches are a rare and very painful disease that affects around 4-5000 Norwegians. We know little about what causes it, and it is therefore difficult to treat. There is effective emergency medicine available today, but the occurrence of attacks in patients is often frequent and the treatments are impractical, such as injections or inhalation from an oxygen tank. So preventive medicine is what is most relevant.
Psychedelics work for some people.
There is a poorly controlled study with self-reported results, and many stories that indicate that psilocybin, LSD and LSA can have a very good preventive effect against this disorder for some. The latter is a natural psychedelic tryptamine similar to LSD and found in some plants. The answers were reported afterwards, which means that one must assume that the results are exaggerated, but on the other hand they have managed to collect almost 500 respondents. And that suggests that it works for some people anyway.
Also good effect without trip
There is also much evidence that psychedelics can be effective against cluster headaches, even in small doses without noticeable psychoactive effects. A small study conducted at Harvard McClean Hospital in 2006 indicated that well over half of those who took small doses of psilocybin or LSD experienced a marked improvement in symptoms. Both in terms of stopping the attacks, but also in terms of preventing them.
There is also a substance called 2-bromo-LSD (or BOL-148), which is a derivative of LSD and does not produce a psychedelic effect. However, there are indications that it may have a good effect, for example in this (non-randomized) study in Germany . A new preventive medication (Emgality) was recently FDA-approved in the USA that has shown good results against migraines, and which many had hopes for, but it has unfortunately not shown good results for cluster headaches.