Therapeutic LSD?!?

During my formative years in high school in New York City, during the early 1970’s, pot smoking was the norm.

On a good day, marijuana had a range of pleasant effects. It would make you giddy, euphoric, and playful. It could inspire creativity and make junk food delicious. All agreed that it was an excellent party drug. My peer group scoffed at the regular warning that marijuana was a “gateway drug.” Yet, I have to admit in retrospect, that it was.

Since a few tokes could brighten one’s day, then more potent mind-altering substances, such as LSD, became as tempting as Satan’s apple. Respected artists, writers, musicians, and social philosophers of that era regularly touted tripping as a magical doorway. It was hard to resist.

Marijuana was a modest tweak from the mundane mindset; LSD was something different altogether. In microgram quantities, this drug would unravel one’s habits of mental organization. It would reshape the boundary between self and non-self, pierce the barrier? that separates conscious from unconscious thought, enhance or distort sensory input, and instigate all sorts of novel, peculiar, and unfamiliar perspectives.? And these effects lasted for 8 to 12 hours. LSD also dilated the pupils to an extreme degree, an apt physiologic metaphor for Huxley’s doors of perception being blown wide open.

During the 1960’s, LSD got a bad rap. The media portrayed a psychedelic trip as frightening, overwhelming, and potentially fatal. As use became more popular, federal authorities banned LSD entirely, trying to erase it from American culture. It was classified by the DEA as a Schedule 1 chemical, with no accepted medical use. ?

Times change.

Intrepid clinical researchers are now exploring whether psychedelics like MDMA (“ecstasy”), psilocybin, and LSD might have some benefits. One challenge, of course, is that placebo-controlled clinical trials with these drugs are difficult if not impossible, as subjects realize when they are in the active treatment group. And the FDA remains wary of potentially serious adverse effects.

And yet, when it comes to our deeply ingrained ways of organizing and defining what is real, the conditioned architecture of our minds does not always serve us well. Consider, for example, the plight of people diagnosed with terminal illness who do not enjoy a firm belief in the existence of an afterlife. In this instance, fear of death can be overwhelming. What if an encounter with psychedelic therapy can soften the blow by reframing the transition that death represents?

Modern psychiatry continues to search for effective ways to help unfortunate souls who struggle with paralyzing anxiety or intractable depression or severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Perhaps it is time to stop viewing, “mind-expanding drugs” as a threat to the social order (as was the initial concern when these drugs were made illegal). Psychedelics may surprise us yet again, to become a valuable addition to the pharmaceutical wonders of our time. Wouldn’t that expand our thinking?

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