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Albert Hofmann, The father of LSD, is 100 years old.
He has super-bright eyes, a firm handshake and a voice strong enough
to address the 1500 people from all over the world who attended
“LSD: problem child and wonder drug”, a grand conference to
celebrate his birthday in Basel, Switzerland. Admittedly he walks with
a crutch but then, as he puts it, “I must remember I’m no longer
90”.
He attributes his extraordinary health to a daily
raw egg, but fans of LSD suspect it has something to do with his
wonder drug. Lucius Werthmüller, who organised the conference as a
birthday present, claims that the poets and artists who have flocked
to Hofmann all his life keep him young, while Hofmann himself says
that LSD reconnected him with the profound mystical experiences he had
as a young child roaming in the Swiss mountains.
Certainly LSD is no ordinary substance. Its
reputation in some circles is positively demonic. In the UK it is a
Class A drug, and in the United States there are prisoners locked up
for 20 and 30 years for taking it. Yet the city of Basel gave its
discoverer a birthday reception, the Swiss President wrote him a
letter; and in his home village children sang special birthday songs,
and a bench was erected with his name on. Best of all, the famous
route along which he road his bicycle on the first ever acid trip in
1943 has been renamed in his honour.
So this is a drug of extreme contrasts, from the
classic bad trip to ecstatic spiritual experiences; and that’s what
makes it socially and scientifically so challenging. As many
contributors to this conference stressed, there is no single state
that LSD induces; rather, the effect depends on the preparation,
setting and expectations of the person taking it.
“The same drug that can control the mind can
also free the mind” says Martin Lee, cultural historian and author
of “Acid Dreams”. He tells horrific stories of the CIA’s
attempts to use the drug as a weapon and even for torture. Remember
that this is a drug that opens one’s mind, transforms perception,
and dissolves the sense of self into oneness with the world around,
and they gave it to people without telling them what it was or how
long the effect would last. They threatened to keep people in that
state forever, and experimented with electric shocks and even
lobotomies while people were under its influence. Once the CIA decided
that it was too unpredictable to be of use they abandoned the
experiments, and the drug was made illegal in 1971.
During this time a certain amount of scientific
research into psychedelics had been going on. In 1954 Aldous
Huxley’s experiences with mescaline were published in “The doors
of perception”, and in 1958 Hofmann isolated and named the
active ingredients of magic mushrooms; psilocybin and psilocin. It
became clear that all these psychedelic, or mind-revealing, drugs
could have profoundly positive effects on people. Huxley claimed that
they could make death “a more conscious experience” and on his
deathbed, in 1963, asked for an injection of LSD. He died at peace.
In line with this, experiments in 1964 showed
that a single session with LSD could reduce pain in the terminally ill
for days or even weeks, breaking the cycle of anticipating pain and
dramatically reducing the fear of death. But prohibition, led by the
USA, and followed by the rest of the world, effectively put a stop to
all research on the positive effects of psychedelics. Research
intended to reveal damaging effects did continue, but not with the
expected results. There is no known lethal dose of LSD and early
claims that it causes chromosomal damage were apparently fabricated.
Now research on psychedelics is tentatively
starting up again. With fearsome controls, and mountains of red tape
it is a wonder that researchers are willing even to try, but those I
met seemed extraordinarily determined. The situation is least
difficult in Switzerland, as Felix Hasler, a researcher at the
Psychiatric University Hospital in Zurich, explained. Switzerland did
join the world-wide prohibition in 1971, but has a history of
resistance to US policy, and in the 1990s began to allow research on
psilocybin. The Zurich research group, headed by Franz Vollenweider,
is using brain scans, visual illusions, tests of attention, and other
methods to investigate its effects.
LSD and psilocybin both have structural
similarities to the neurotransmitter serotonin and affect its pathways
in the brain, and both can create a kaleidoscopic world of
extraordinary colour and movement. But oddly enough brain scans do not
reveal increased activity in the visual cortex. Rather, the increase
is seen in prefrontal, parietal and temporal regions. It seems that
the cortex can become overloaded with sensory information, with
psilocybin affecting high level motion detection systems but not low
level ones in the visual cortex. The result can be effects similar to
those observed in schizophrenics.
Although the connection with psychosis is often
stressed, psychedelics, like meditation and sensory deprivation, have
also been widely used as aids to spiritual practice. The Zurich
research is showing that all three of these spiritual techniques have
a common core of effects which can be understood using a 5-dimensional
model of altered states of consciousness. In the drug experiments, the
type of drug, its dose and the setting all work together to shift a
person’s state along these dimensions. In addition, PET scans are
beginning to reveal which areas of the brain are implicated; for
example the inferior temporal lobe is involved in the feelings of
boundlessness.
Most important to many researchers is the
therapeutic potential of psychedelics, but they have to fight to be
allowed to investigate this. Psychiatrist, Charles Grob says that he
has wanted to do such research since 1972 and at last is beginning,
although it took him more than ten years to get approval for his
study. He is using psilocybin rather than LSD, partly because its
action is rather shorter and its effects more controllable, but partly
because it is politically less sensitive. He has redecorated a drab
hospital room for the purpose and is beginning to treat anxiety and
pain in twelve patients with end stage cancer, giving them either drug
or placebo, and so far the results are very promising. This is the
kind of research that might eventually confirm what Huxley, and so
many other users, have seen for themselves, that just one or a very
few meetings with a psychedelic can – under the right circumstances
– enhance life and abolish the fear of death.
Why, if psychedelics really do have such magical
therapeutic potential, have they been ignored for so long? Why are
they not legal, or at least available on prescription? One depressing
reason is that the pharmaceutical companies cannot make money out of
them; not only are there are no patents to be had but these drugs
don’t need to be taken regularly. Indeed that is part of their
magic. Even one LSD trip can change a person’s outlook forever. In
therapy, one or a few sessions may be enough.
So what can be done? Rick Doblin, founder of MAPS
(the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) cynically
points out that the big pharmaceutical companies prefer a hair
restorer needed twice a day, or an anti-depressant taken daily for
life, to a once-off miracle drug. His solution is not to aim to make
money from the drug itself but to set up clinics that train
psychedelic guides and use the clinics as the business model.
Other initiatives are afoot in the hope that one
day prohibition will fall. One suggestion that was much discussed at
the conference was the LSD driver’s license proposed by German
philosophy professor, Thomas Metzinger. He laughingly told me that if
people knew what he really had in mind they might not be so keen, for
the licenses could be taken away as well as awarded, and people could
be prosecuted for the equivalent of driving without one. So this is
hardly the free-for-all some proponents of prohibition might fear.
Also applicants would have to undergo a thorough psychiatric
examination, pass a theory test, and take several training sessions
with an experienced guide. Once through all these hurdles they would
be licensed to take the drug just once or twice a year.
Curiously enough, once or twice a year is
probably quite enough. As Hofmann remarked, “once the gates of
perception are open you don’t need any more substances”. Users
seem to agree: the founders of the most comprehensive drugs site on
the web, the Vaults of Erowid, surveyed tens of thousands of LSD
users. The majority said that, if LSD were legal, they would take it
no more than once or twice a year.
I hope that one day soon it will be; that as a
society we will prove wise enough to use LSD for its highest potential
not its worst. And purely selfishly I hope this will happen in time
for me to take LSD again in my lifetime and that, like Huxley, I may
be able to take it on my deathbed.
