An Excerpt From The Book "Hallucinogens"

Plants containing most of the drugs covered in this booklet have been known and used for their hallucinogenic properties since prehistoric times. Almost all of these plants have traditionally been used in a religious context. The cultures that used these plant drugs considered them a means of achieving a direct contact with the "spirit" world, a means of looking inward. Until recent years, the use of hallucinogenic drugs was primarily limited to what we might call primitive cultures; there was an especially high concentration of hallucinogen users among native New World peoples. What survived of primitive hallucinogen use in Old World cultures was usually attacked as "witchcraft" or "devil worship."

Maverick researchers interested in the workings of the human mind and/or in the mystical religious experience had, of course, been experimenting with hallucinogens long before the discovery of LSD in 1938 - but it was LSD that initiated our civilization's Psychedelic Era. It is by far the best known, most potent, most widely used and most available of the hallucinogens. It took five years after LSD was first synthesized to discover its effects, and still a few more years after that to begin looking for ways to use it.

The U.S. Army tested its usefulness for brainwashing and later stockpiled it in large amounts for possible use as a chemical warfare agent. However, when chemicals capable of producing even more bizarre effects were developed, the military lost interest in the drug.

LSD was introduced to the psychiatric profession through the back door. Initially, the effects of the new compound suggested its possible use as an agent for producing a temporary "model psychosis." Many psychologists took the drug themselves and gave it to staff members of mental hospitals in the belief that it might lead to greater empathy with and understanding of mental patients. It wasn't until the early fifties that LSD began to be used on the patients themselves.

By the mid-fifties, LSD was a major subject of controversy among psychotherapists. By 1965, it was estimated that between 30,000 and 40,000 psychiatric patients around the world had received LSD in therapy, and some 2000 scientific papers on LSD had been published - an intense interest matched by few other drugs. At first, therapists most often employed LSD (and sometimes mescaline and psilocybin) at a low dosage level on a repeated basis within the framework of continuing psychotherapy. In the late 1950s, a number of therapists began using LSD in a highly specialized form of brief intensive psychotherapy. High doses were used in one- shot sessions (after weeks of intense preparation) to produce what has been referred to as a "conversion" experience. Many experimenters were favorably impressed with the results of psychedelic psychotherapy, especially in psychotherapy for alcoholics and terminal cancer patients.

Many, however, offered such cautions as: ...it should be emphasized that LSD is not conceived to have any inherent beneficial effects... The therapeutic potential of LSD depends primarily on its ability to activate in the patient a period of intense emotionality while still allowing for control direction and guidance by the therapist. It is the sequence of psychological experience upon which the therapeutic intent and structuring is focused. The analogy that we have sometimes used to try to convey the role of LSD in therapy is that of a scalpel in surgical intervention; the scalpel is helpful but without the skilled surgeon it is merely a dangerous instrument. (DeBold, ea., LSD, Man and Society; The Therapeutic Potential of LSD in Medicine) But, as it turned out, it was a short and easy step from professionally directed to self-directed and non-directed psychedelic experiences.

Among the first to use LSD privately for non-therapeutic purposes were physicians, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals, as well as the laymen who took LSD in their company. Those who felt that the experience was beneficial often went on to initiate or encourage other friends to use the drug. Some people, who felt that their lives had been immeasurably enhanced by their LSD experiences, proselytized the use of the drug with a fervor usually reserved for religious missionaries. Thus, small circles of LSD users began growing around the country, especially near universities.

In the early sixties, Drs. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, along with a small group of their friends and students, began experimenting with hallucinogens at Harvard University. In 1962 the group's activities attracted the attention of Federal Drug Administration and Massachusetts law enforcement officials. In 1963 Leary and Alpert were forced to leave Harvard, accompanied by nationwide publicity.

This publicity, which uncovered a new source of unfailingly sensationalistic news copy, was a major factor in launching the psychedelic era. What was previously spread by word of mouth now had the aid of the mass media. By the late 1960s the focus of media attention on hallucinogenic drug use had generated fantastic public interest in LSD and its alleged "transcendent" effects, an interest manifested as both fear and curiosity. To placate the fearful, restrictions were quickly placed on the manufacture and use of LSD and other psychedelics in the U.S., even for therapeutic purposes. By this time, however, illegal laboratories had already begun manufacturing LSD to meet the demand of the curious.