Just Say Know:
Regulating Psychedelic Expertise
Erika Dyck, PhD
Canada Research Chair, History of Medicine
University of Saskatchewan
• Dr. Hofmann's discovery of LSD generated
a powerful wave of interest in brain
chemistry and, together with the
development of tranquilizers, was directly
responsible for what has been called the
"golden age of psychopharmacology."
– Stanislav Grof interviews Dr. Albert Hofmann
Esalen Institute, Big Sur, California, 1984
I will never be able to describe fully what happened to me during my
excursion into madness. There are no words in the English
language designed to convey the sensations I felt or the visions,
illusions, hallucinations, colors, patterns and dimensions which my
disordered mind revealed.
I saw faces of familiar friends turn into fleshless skulls and the heads of
menacing witches, pigs and weasels. The gaily patterned carpet at
my feet was transformed into a fabulous heaving mass of living
matter, part vegetable, part animal…I was repeatedly held in the grip
of a terrifying hallucination in which I could feel and see my body
convulse and shrink until all that remained was a hard sickly
stone…Time lost all meaning. …Mysterious flashes of multicoloured
light came and went. The dimensions of the room, elasticlike, (sic)
stretched and shrank…But my hours of madness were not all filled
with horror and frenzy. At times I beheld visions of dazzling
beauty—visions so rapturous, so unearthly, that no artist will ever
paint them…
“Sidney Katz” excerpts from “My 12 Hours as a Madman,” MacLean’s
October 1, 1953, p. 9-12.
Aldous Huxley
E.M. Jellinek,
Yale
“Alcoholism is a disease.”
Bill W. co-founder of A.A.
12-step program:
Step Two: “For our Group purpose
there is but one ultimate authority—
a loving God as He may express
Himself in our Group conscience.”
Alcoholics Anonymous (1955), 564565.
Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer
• He had a momentary oneness with God.
Had a vision while lying [down] with eyes
closed of a spiral staircase with himself
talking to another person. This appeared
to have great meaning to him...He seems
to have gained some insight and
understanding of himself.[i]
•
[i] SAB,A207, XVII. Clinical Files, LSD Trials, “anonymous.” Patients’ names have been removed by the author to
maintain confidentiality.
Results
-
-
Strong endorsement in medical literature
for LSD treatments
Claim success rates from 30 to 90% with
2-year follow-up studies
Interviews with former patients treated
this way revealed sustained sobriety
Results
1962 Canadian Food &
Drug Agency places
Thalidomide on the
banned substances list
Schedule ‘H’
LSD?
“it would not be proper to remove a drug from
medical availability except in the most
extraordinary circumstances…we wish to
have the advice of the most competent
authorities.”
- December 1962, J.W. Monteith, Minister of
Health & Welfare. House of Commons.
VS
Bill S-60, 1967/8 placed LSD under the jurisdiction of the Food and
Drugs Act, alongside other psycho-active substances (DET, DMT,
MDMA).
Senator Molson
Minister Allan MacEachen
40 years later…
David Nutt, et al. “Rational
Scale to Assess the Harm of
Drugs,” The Lancet (2007)
Argues that regulated drugs,
including alcohol and tobacco
are far more dangerous than
many of the illegal
substances, including LSD.
Promotes ‘evidence-based’
public policy concerning drug
regulation.
- (2012) “Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) for alcoholism:
a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials, Journal
of Psychopharmacology
- Teri Krebs (Norwegian University of Science and
Technology and Harvard Medical School) and Pål
Johansen (Norwegian University of Science and
Technology, Neuroscience)
- Show that in a study of 536 participants, in trials between
1943 and 2010, exhibited a positive response to curbing
alcoholism through psychedelic approaches.
Just Say Know?