Psychedelia, p.32
Psychedelia, page 32
Remaining viable were the success stories known already in the late 1950s.14 Psychedelic drugs could be used in the treatment of chronic alcoholism, and as an adjunct to conventional psychotherapy; in the latter case either to speed up the process or unlock particularly hardwired complexes. But LSD does not really bring anything new to the table in either case; the model treatment of alcoholics based on a profound spiritual experience existed before psychedelic drugs were known. The psychedelic drug facilitates these therapy processes, but it does not make them happen. As observed above, the one established case where psychedelics did something otherwise hard or impossible to achieve, i e: the mystical experience in the Miracle of Marsh Chapel, does not fall into the realm of academic psychology at all. In the mechanistic atmosphere of the 1950s, the psychiatrists did not want to hear about mystical unions with the cosmos under LSD-25; if acknowledged at all, it was simply a part of the 'psychosis'. Some tried to straddle the line and recognize that the patients did seem to have powerful religious experiences, but since there was no room for this aspect in the hard, clinical research, it was simply noted. In the 1960s, on the other hand, there was no denying but an embracing of the otherworldly message from the psychedelic drugs, with the consequence that the mavericks of the Harvard Psilocybin Project gladly let their academic careers slip away in order to pursue more important matters. In the large perspective, psychology left psychedelic drugs behind, because The Psychedelic Experience leaves psychology behind.
There were indications in the mid-1960s that formal psychedelic research was breaking into areas where it may prove more useful than psychiatric treatment. One such field was that of creative enhancement and problem-solving. Such notions had been examined in passing in the 1950s, as in the case of Oscar Janiger's charming experiment to have artists make 'normal' and 'psychedelicized' paintings of a kachina doll. And of course, numerous poets, philosophers and painters had experimented with mescaline in the pre-WWII era. In the '60s it was intuited that architecture may be a field particularly well-suited for psychedelic experimentation. The research data that exists is anecdotal, yet intriguing. In The Ecstatic Adventure (edited by Ralph Metzner), two case reports describe how professional architects encounter and solve design problems under the influence of LSD. Despite taking large enough doses to experience ego-loss, the architects during the later stage of their trips were able to work concentrated on a few chosen tasks. These were not hypothetical design projects, but in-progress work from their professional reality. The results were remarkable; one architect managed to produce new design ideas for three different projects, all of which were good enough to be presented to the client. Regarding the specific effects of the LSD, he commented that:
There is definitely an enhancement of the ability to visualize, but my experience was that I became a better [myself] and was not converted to an instant Gaudi' I should emphasize that the solution could have happened before. It belongs to the same family as my other work. The only real difference was that the solution which I felt right about appeared in almost no time at all.
(The Ecstatic Adventure, 'The Designs Were More Free', 1968)
The particularly good fit that psychedelic drugs can have for architectural design is not accidental; the improvement of skill lies along an axis in which the craftsman is accustomed to work, and the sensory 'noise' of the psychedelic realm does not interfere the way it might for a painter or musician, who may feel hampered by the distortion of color or sound. The architect in the case above suggested that the most efficient use of the psychedelic state is to remain on a conceptual - ideational level, and save the detailed realization of the idea in terms of sketches for a later stage.
The other architect in the pilot study was equally enthusiastic, and after passing through a full-range psychedelic peak experience, was able to complete a complex landscaping assignment in a few hours. Afterwards, his assessment was very similar to that of his colleague: the work wasn't radically different from his usual style, but he was able to see the solution much faster. In a comment, Ralph Metzner makes a useful distinction between creative experience (perception and ideation) and creative performance (talent and craftsmanship), and suggests that the former is where to expect a boost from psychedelic drugs. Unsurprisingly, word got around among architects about the effects of LSD, leading to a 1966 article in the branch journal Progressive Architecture which reported that a number of professionals found psychedelic drugs a useful tool for enhancing perception, not least that of three-dimensional visualization. The excellent fit seen in architecture between the drug and the application may have given pause to Ralph Metzner, who had seen leading specialists within his own field of psychology search high and low for places where LSD might fit. Here was a clear-cut success story and again, like the Marsh Chapel experiment, it did not belong under the umbrella of psychological research at all.
The case reports above both stem from a pilot study of general problem-solving abilities conducted by Harman and Fadiman in 1966.15 Beyond the individual testimonies the study produced a number of quantified observations, including a tabular presentation of the pros and cons of psychedelicized creativity. The overall range was much wider than just architecture, and included engineers and artists. In general, the subjects found the psychedelic drugs to improve their ability in solving specific problems, the advantages primarily an increased open-mindedness (new creative faculties accessed, unfamiliar paths of ideation opened, increased empathy, improved intuition, a more relaxed and less opinionated attitude, an ability to change perspective on the problem), and the disadvantages mainly a reduced mental efficiency (difficulties in maintaining concentration, disruptions of logical chains of thought, sensory phenomena interfering, worldly tasks appear unimportant). These findings should not surprise the experienced psychedelicist, and as a whole they suggest that the most useful application of LSD as a professional tool lies in artistic and design tasks, while it may be less useful for traditional engineering and hard science problems. It is appropriate that the great scientific and technological break-throughs that have been facilitated with psychedelic drugs, such as Francis Crick's insight into the double helix structure of DNA, or Steve Jobs' radically new ideas about computer usage via Apple, have been ideas primarily about design rather than engineering.
While a small number of clinical LSD studies were allowed to continue after the combined road-block of FDA research moratorium and government legislation, 1966 stands as a demarcation point in the history of psychedelic science. During the 'dry' years of psychedelic research that followed, there was plenty of time to learn the lessons from the 1950s and '60s.16 The little amount of research that was initiated or at least allowed to continue reflected a more sensible approach to the psychedelic compounds, and dealt with questions raised by The Psychedelic Experience itself, such as the parapsychological studies of Stanley Krippner et al, the new research into near-death and out of the body experiences, and the so-called transpersonal psychology, an awkward label put on the higher psychedelic states to try and bring them back within range of psychology. As psychedelic research became viable again in the 1990s, the approved projects were unsurprisingly targeted towards very specific areas of medical use, such as pain relief and stress reduction in terminal cancer patients, alleviation of cluster headaches, and, still going strong, curing addictions to alcohol and other dangerous drugs.
The most important event in psychedelic academia in 1967 did not occur within psychology or psychiatry, but with the groundbreaking conference on ethnobotany held in San Francisco, discussed in Chapter III. In a sense, the scholarly torch was being passed from the psychologists and psychiatrists to the ethnobotanists and anthropologists, who if nothing else were certain to approach the hallucinogens with a completely different mind-set. As mainstream society shook and rumbled under a colorful avalanche of psychedelic culture that would cover the Western world for several years, the private and professional psychologists who had held the scientific initiative for almost two decades found themselves far removed from the crest of action, running therapy sessions in secret, or writing stern notes of warning for government brochures about the same little molecule that once offered the promise of a new wonder drug.
Notes
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1 Legendary Hollywood actor Cary Grant, describing his LSD trips to columnist Stella Graham in the late 1950s. In 2005, Premiere magazine voted Grant the greatest movie star of all time.
2 Albert Hofmann and Arthur Stoll of Sandoz Ltd in Switzerland filed for a US patent of the new class of d-lysergic acid dialkylamides (including LSD) and the preparation thereof in 1944, referring vaguely to a 'therapeutic' use of this group of compounds, who are said to stand out from similar alkaloids 'by their powerful specific action on the central nervous system'. The patent was approved in 1948. A related patent claim filed by Richard Pioch, a chemist at Eli Lilly, in 1954 referred to 'pharmacological' applications, mentioning an instance of 'oxytocic' (assisting in childbirth) use, which was the original line of research pursued by Hofmann in the 1930s. The 1954 patent (approved 1956) referred to an improved manufacturing process; it has been reported that CIA asked Eli - Lilly to learn how to manufacture LSD-25 to avoid being dependent on a foreign source like Sandoz. Both patent claims are useful for the underground chemist, with the first one containing hands-on advise from Albert Hofmann on how to proceed in the laboratory.
3 Sandoz had been looking into the psycho-physical properties of the ergot-derived compounds before Dr Hofmann's great discovery. As reported by Sandoz scientist E Rothlin in 1956, the company had in the 1920s developed a therapeutic drug that combined ergotamine (an LSD precursor) with the classic 'witch drug' belladonna and phenobarbital into a rather intriguing product called armamentarium. Among the neurochemical applications of ergot that were examined pre-Hoffman, migraine was one. Following the discovery of LSD-25, Sandoz developed more than 20 variants of lysergic amides, among which a couple of substitued derivatives were found to match the cerebral potency of LSD-25. For more details on this early research, see E Rothlin, 'Lysergic Acid Diethylamide And Related Substances' (1956).
4 The human trials with LSD had begun in Europe in 1947, when W.A Stoll (son of Arthur Stoll) tried it on healthy subjects and schizophrenic patients in Z'rich. Stoll used very low doses and did not observe much except mild euphoric tendencies. From his self-experiments with higher doses he was aware of the tremendous power of the compound, and classified LSD as a 'phantasticum' when presenting his research in a Swiss branch journal in '47, followed by a couple of related papers in '49 . Hofmann and Stoll the elder at Sandoz were only concerned with pharmaceutical ground research, so these experiments mark the earliest use of LSD with any type of therapeutical intent. Perhaps the entire line of psychiatric research with LSD stems from Arthur Stoll telling his psychiatrist son about the exceptional mind-altering substance they had ran across at Sandoz. Following Stoll Jr, a second series of Z'rich experiments with LSD therapy was conducted by Dr G Condrau in 1949, who gave substantial doses (100 mcg and above) to a group consisting mostly of mentally ill patients. Condrau noted that the drug seemed to have less effect on the patients than the healthy subjects, and offered a vague suggestion that an LSD-like compound may be involved in some mental disturbances. All over he found the experiment inconclusive, and like his predecessor he did not find the research worth continuing. The same year, a third study took place in Vienna under Professor A M Becker, who gave two dozen healthy subjects relatively small doses (avg 35 mcg) and noted mostly mild hallucinatory reactions, with one prolonged abreaction. Finally, an Italian study in '49 examined the effects of LSD on six epileptic patients with marked sensory and physical reactions..
5 Following W A Stoll's trial research, Sandoz commercialized LSD-25 for psycho-therapeutical use. Interestingly, the prospectus suggests that the therapist should try the drug on himself to understand the nature of psychosis, and Sandoz further warn against administering 'Delysid' (the brand name for LSD-25, coined by Hofmann) to people who are mentally unstable or in a pre-psychotic phase. Many researchers in the 1950s did not bother to follow any of these sound suggestions. After Delysid became available, international medical research with LSD began. When the first American trials began with Max Rinkel's psychotomimetic paradigm in 1949, no LSD research was in progress elsewhere, although there would be a substantial volume of European research in the 1950s. Interestingly, Rinkel later claimed unfamiliarity with any of the European 1940s experiments, despite copies of the Stoll papers being included with the Sandoz 'Delysid' package.
6 Regarding the early research on human subjects, Hudson Hoagland's article 'Biochemical Changes Induced In Vivo' in The Pharmacology Of Psychotomimetic And Psychotherapeutic Drugs (1957) offers a good overview and bibliography of the early clinical research and testing on human subjects (both schizophrenics and healthy subjects) in North America; this paper alone accounts for upwards 200 experiments.
7 A rarely covered area is the 'bad trip' of the branch professional. The number of such reports are remarkably few in the literature, not least in view of the number of journalists who underwent psychedelic trips and diligently reported on their experiences, including unpleasant aspects. One might assume that the the mental health professionals did not have 'abreactions' to the extent that their patients or others did, but this does not seem to be the case. In fact, it seems to be the opposite: – Dr Abram Hoffer in Canada, who worked with LSD in the 1950s, found that ministers, psychologists, and psychiatrists often had the most uncomfortable experiences." (From Eros To Thanatos, Myron Stolaroff). Presumably a question of occupational pride kept these negative experiences out of any public reports.
8 Osmond & co found a possible link between the mescaline experience and schizophrenia in a book called The Witnesses by the British artist Thomas Hennell. Published in 1938, Hennell's book offers one of the few accounts of schizophrenic psychosis written from the patient's perspective. His inside view of the psychoses reminded Osmond of the mescaline experience, and he consulted Hennell's book, for which he wrote an introduction in a 1967 reprint.
9 As for the supposed similarity of a drug-induced psychosis to a real one, a 1959 study clarified with direct input from schizophrenic patients that the LSD state did not resemble a schizophrenic psychosis to any meaningful degree; the whole 'psychotomimetic' hypothesis was thereby dismissed. See 'Chemotherapeutic Trials In Psychosis' by Almudevar, Turner & Merlis. Earlier studies had observed that schizophrenics responded less to the LSD experience than healthy subjects, and what measurable responses there were, tended to be negative (as Rinkel reported). The 1959 conference signalled an end to the psychotomimetic model and the research on schizophrenics, and shifted the focus to psychotherapeutical applications.
10 This has been thoroughly covered in several psychedelic history books, but in short Michael Hollingshead (a British ex-pat in New York City) first heard of LSD-25 from Aldous Huxley in 1960, and to satisfy curiosity he ordered 1 gram from Hofmann's lab at Sandoz via a medical connection (Dr John Beresford). Having tried the product and been duly impressed, Hollingshead looked up Tim Leary's group at Harvard on Huxley's suggestion. He introduced Leary to a large dose of LSD, which provided a stronger experience than anything Leary had had on Psilocybin, and soon LSD became the drug of choice in Leary's group.
11 The Good Friday Experimente was successfully repeated in 2006 at Johns Hopkins University: 'At 2 months, the volunteers rated the Psilocybin experience as having substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance and attributed to the experience sustained positive changes in attitudes and behavior''. See 'Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-type Experiences' (R R Griffiths et al, Psychopharmacology, 2006)
12 In Canada a similar LSD research moratorium had been enacted as early as 1962. The thalidomide scandal played a part in this process to a seemingly larger degree than in the US.
13 It should be pointed out that Sandison in England claimed success with OCD patients in the 1950s. But to the knowledge of the present author, no psychedelic research was conducted on OCD cases after 1960. Most of the research covered here occurred in the USA and Switzerland; for a view of the early British research, see Lysergic Acid & Ritalin In The Treatment Of Neurosis by Ling & Buckman (1963).
14 A modern book that chronicles the psychedelic research within psychology and psychiatry, with particular focus on the Saskatchewan projects, is Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD From Clinic To Campus by Erika Dyck (2008). Another summary with special attention on Sidney Cohen's influential studies can be found in 'LSD Before Leary' by Steven Novak, anthologized in Altering American Consciousness (ed. S W Tracey & C J Acker, 2004). These two modern academic works offer thorough source references and bibliographies.
