THE RETURN OF THE PSYCHEDELICS
The social history of psychedelics in the 1960s when the recreational use of LSD got into full swing is well-known.
By Terry Maguire
experience of pure being” and how the use of these drugs “allowed a fusion into a larger whole” difficult to understand or grounded in any practical reality.
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Albert Hoffman was more pragmatic in his book LSD; My Problem Child where he accepted that society would ultimately decide on the application of these drugs either for recreational or medicinal use or both but we needed science to underpin it.
The moral panic Timothy Leary unleashed led to a ban and due to these restrictions little serious research was done since the 1960s. There is now a plan of rehabilitation bringing psychedelics mainstream into clinical use. It would be good to be able to say that these drugs are now getting the serious scientific attention they deserve, but it seems that claim might be premature.
Psychedelic means “mind manifesting”. Other termed these drugs “entheogens” the power to elicit experience of the Devine within. They create visual hallucinations and dream like ecstatic states, powerful shifts in cognition and emotional perceptions dissolving of time and space. These chemicals loosen the grip of our everyday perception. They were an essential part of sacred religious rituals in ancient societies across the globe and still are.
They are proving a tricky group of drugs to work with scientifically. They don’t act like conventional medicines and their effect occurs over hours where the patient needs to be closely monitored and supported. The treatment is often a one-off where the efficacy is sustained long-term. Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy is now in Phase 2 clinical trials in the US.
One study has treated 107 PTSD patients with, as the authors claim, impressive results. This team is using MDMA (Ecstasy) which is not really a true psychedelic and they will have great difficulty designing a randomised controlled trial to assure the efficacy and safety of the drug and the process in a Phase 3 trial. I don’t see Big Pharma knocking on their door anytime soon.
Treatment is currently focused on mental conditions - those that prove difficult to manage
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scottishpharmacist.com
erence McKenna’s Food of the Gods articulated the zeitgeist but I found his hippy counter-culture mantra about “an
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