Psychedelic drug

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A psychedelic drug is one that induces a lucid altered state of consciousness. Psychedelics are a subset of hallucinogenic drugs along with dissociatives (which produce feelings of detachment, e.g. ketamine) and deliriants (which produce a state of confusion, e.g. Atropa belladonna).^[1] Notable psychedelic substances include:

From a biochemical perspective, most of the psychedelics are in the chemical classes tryptamines, phenethylamines, or lysergamides, which bind to the serotonin 5-HT_2A receptors.^[4]

Possible therapeutic uses[edit]

It is important to note that these studies have deficiencies of one sort or another (small sample sizes,^[5] potential for publication bias, issues with control groups and blinding), and hence it is difficult to conclude anything more than the results are suggestive. It is also important to note that the studies are in clinical settings with professional mental health experts present, who often additionally give psychological counseling in addition to drug treatment. Taking psychedelic drugs as part of self-treatment is ill-advised, particularly because there is evidence that LSD can induce schizophrenia in those who are prone to the disorder.^[6][7]

• Anxiety: psilosybin^[8]
  • Illness-related anxiety: primarily tested with psilocybin^[9]
• Depression: psilosybin^[8]
  • Illness-related depression: primarily tested with psilocybin^[9]
• Post-traumatic stress disorder: MDMA^[10]

Microdosing[edit]

There has been recent interest in taking psychelics at below-consciousness-changing doses several times per week, most commonly using LSD or psilocybin. It has been claimed — without evidence — that doing this "can treat anxiety, depression and postmenopausal symptoms; improve creativity and athletic performance; and do much more."^[11] Other reasons include treatment of PTSD, ADHD, and chronic pain.^[11]

There are few scientific studies on microdosing, and the results of such studies that exist are mixed.^[11] Harriet de Wit's lab has studied EEG brain signals of people who were microdosing and did find increased brain signals, indicating that there is at least some measurable effect.^[11]

There are potential dangers to microdosing however. One study found that some microdosing increased anxiety in some participants.^[11] There is also a risk that repeated microdosing will cause increased serotonin levels, and thus potentially cause irreversible valvular heart disease.^[11] For that reason, psychopharmacologist Kelan Thomas recommends taking a two-week breaks in microdosing.^[11]

Utopiates for the masses?[edit]

The beginning was the end[edit]

Mead in 1951

The idea that peyote could have both beneficial and deleterious effects on a community was when anthropologist Margaret Mead researched the Native American Church in 1923.^{[12]:23-24[13]} Mead and her then-husband anthropologist Gregory Bateson were key members of the Macy conferences (1941-1960), which among other things were primary meeting spaces for researchers studying the potential for truth serums and drug-induced mind control.^[12]:49-54 The Office of Strategic Services, the World War II agency that became the CIA was involved with the conferences from the beginning.^[12]:48-49 Starting in 1948, Bateson began working on psychedelic drugs at the Langley Porter Clinic (which later became the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute).^[12]:93

Researchers had two views of psychedelic drugs from the 1940s onward, as a diagnostic tool for its purported mimicry of schizophrenia and as a possible treatment for societal problems, specifically nationalism and violence.^[12]:104 But from 1951 onward, the CIA began experiments with psychedelics on humans that were "a toxic mishmash of amateurism, unchecked megalomania, and simple incompetence."^[12]:119-120 The CIA experiments became folded into their MKULTRA program, which started in 1953.

In 1954, Mead wrote in private correspondence her belief that LSD could be used for brainwashing as well as for "integrative and insight giving" but only "in a responsible experimental spirit."^[12]:152

Psychedelic drugs received favorable media coverage in the 1950s and early 1960s, appearing in:

• 1955: "Seeking the Magic Mushroom" in Life magazine^[14]
• 1957: a "Focus on Sanity" episode on CBS^{[12]:179-180[15]}
• 1957: "I Ate the Sacred Mushroom" in Harvard University's This Week Magazine,^[16] which was also syndicated^[17]
• 1959: Gregory Bateson and Harold Abramson gave LSD to a volunteer on TV^{[12]:196-207[18][19]}
• 1959: "The Curious Story Behind the New Cary Grant" in Look magazine, about his use of LSD^[12]:152

But despite the favorable media coverage, there was increasing doubts among psychedelics researchers and advocates based on reports of bad trips and suicides, poorly-designed studies (e.g., elitism, and lacking control groups, informed consent, and evidence-based psychology), and the growing understanding that the research was likely being funded by the CIA for nefarious purposes.^{[12]:143,219,222,283}

Against this backdrop of favorable media coverage but self-doubt among original researchers, came newer researchers: John C. Lilly who began dolphin research in the 1950s, and psychologists Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert who ran the Harvard Psilocybin Project from 1960-1962. Lilly had claimed that he taught his dolphins to speak to him, but by 1965 he had begun dosing his captive dolphins at his own research facility in the US Virgin Islands. The research conducted by Lear, Alpert and Lilly, could at best be described as Pathological science, but in both cases quickly devolved into pseudoscience. Leary and Alpert's work was sufficiently bad for them to get kicked out of Harvard, and Lilly's work was sufficiently revolting to cause Gregory Bateson and naturalist Margaret Howe to his research facility.^{[12]:227,232-235,250-252}

In 1964 legal restrictions against LSD had started,^[12]:250 leading to full criminalization in the US in 1968 as a Schedule I drug.

Utopia or bust[edit]

This idea for widespread use of LSD was popularized by quack psychologist and publicity hound^[12]:171,173 Timothy Leary^[20] in 1966/1967, "Turn on, tune in, drop out."^[21] If one believes Leary's much later retelling, the phrase was immediately misinterpreted from what he had meant,^[22]:253 but what he meant is irrelevant to what it meant in the popular consciousness, essentially turn on to drugs, tune in to rock music and drop out of the establishment. Perhaps belying Leary's claim, the term 'to drop acid' (to take LSD) was derived from Richard Alpert's 1966 book LSD;^[23][24] Alpert was a close associate of Leary.^[25] Also influential and ultimately more damning of the belief that people could totally change their worldview from psychedelic use was Leary's own published academic research in 1968 that claimed that psilocybin could reduce recidivism among soon-to-be released prisoners.^[26] Leary's analysis was shown to be badly flawed in a 1998 reanalysis.^[27]

In 1966, an Orange County, California commune called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love (BEL) was started by John Griggs.^[28] Starting in 1969, BEL began manufacturing LSD and smuggling hashish, believing that they could start a "psychedelic revolution" in the United States by distributing LSD.^[29] Prior to starting BEL, Griggs was "[p]art of a local hotrod gang called the Street Sweepers, "Farmer John" Griggs was a notorious boozer, brawler, and heroin user."^[28]

Slick and Hoffman, waiting to dose Nixon outside the White House

In 1966 Desmond O'Brien, co-founder of Chelsea's World Psychedelic Centre, claimed that anyone could control London by putting LSD in the water system, with a former British MP (Donald Johnson) confirming the claim.^[30][31] This idea had also been secretly floated during World War II by LSD researcher Harold Abramson and colleagues to be used against Nazi Germany.^[12]:145 The reality of manufacturing a sufficient quantity of LSD to overcome the vast dilution of a municipal water supply makes the idea highly impractical however.^[32] Nonetheless, the idea started to take off when Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Paul Krassner threatened to put LSD in the Chicago water supply on the eve of the 1968 Democratic National Convention during the height of the Vietnam War.^[32][33] The prank was in getting people to believe the threat rather than in actually attempting the act.^[32][34] In 1969, Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane was invited under her maiden name to the White House by Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia. Slick and Hoffman had plotted to secretly dose Richard Nixon but the plot failed.^[35] In 1970, the Indiana State Police superintendent believed that "a conglomerate of organized leftist groups" had attempted to spike the governor's dinner and that they were still attempting to dose Nixon who was about to visit the state.^[36]

Historian Mary Kilbourne Matossian hypothesized in her 1989 book Poisons of the Past that ergot poisoning may have had a role in the 1789 French Revolution.^[37] Ergot is a fungus that can be found on rye seeds; ergot sometimes contains LSD or LSD-related chemicals; and when ingested can cause a wide range of symptoms (ergotism), including panic, hallucinations, delusions, and psychosis.^[37]:11 Ergotism has previously been a cause of historical mass hysteria events.^[37]:xi Immediately preceding the start of the revolution was The Great Fear of 1789 based on widespread panic following the just-harvested rye crop that brigands would steal it.^[37]:81 The peasants' fear caused further panic among the landowners that peasants would seize their lands.^[37]:81 Historians have frequently remarked that the peasants' fears were exaggerated.^[37]:82 Also, a physician living in Clisson, France in 1789 noted that the July 1789 rye crop was "prodigiously" affected by ergot, and that ergot was found in one-twelfth of ears of rye.^[37]:83 Increased levels of panic also showed a temporospatial association in France that year, appearing first in the north where rye was grown and then later in the south following rye exports.^[37]:84-85

Carhart-Harris

A 2018 paper by Taylor Lyons and Robin L. Carhart-Harris reported on their study of treatment-resistant depression with psilocybin and its effects on relating to nature and changes in the libertarian-authoritarian scale. the study had serious problems that make its conclusion of dubious value.^[38] The study was not blinded, either to researchers or the subjects; there were only 14 participants, 7 control and 7 dosed (small sample size); it was not randomized; in using a libertarian-authoritarian scale, study suffers from the same problems as found in the Political Compass.^[38] The authors claimed a significant reduction in authoritarian attitudes even 12 months after treatment.^[38] Despite the study's substantial design flaws, it was touted in some parts of the (low- to middle-brow) popular press.^{[39][40][41][42]} The study authors cited evidence of "enduring changes in personality traits, attitudes and beliefs" from previous studies (some of which by the same authors), though this appears to have been the first study on the effect of a psychedelic on political ideology.^[38] Perhaps more worryingly than some parts of the press taking this seriously is that people in the real world are apparently taking this study seriously too:^[43]

Nothing else worked for peace in Israel/Palestine, so why not? MAPS is the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, funded in part by Rebekah Mercer through her Mercer Family Foundation.^[44] Mercer has been a major funder of both Donald Trump and Breitbart.^[45]

Thomasberg's mugshot

This may all be wishful thinking however, because there are numerous counterexamples:^[39]

• Atomwaffen Division, neo-Nazis who trafficked in LSD and magic mushrooms and discussed selling other drugs.^[46] One of the convicted members of the group, Andrew Thomasberg, was quoted as saying to a colleague, "Psychedelic Nazis… There's nothing more Aryan than entheogenic^{[note 2]} drug use… Drug addiction is untermensch."^[46]
• The Manson family crime cult used LSD extensively.^[48] James Mason corresponded with Manson and two of Manson's imprisoned cult members in the early 1980s (Squeaky Fromme and Sandra Good.).^[49] Mason, a longtime neo-Nazi, later became involved with Atomwaffen Division.^[50] It is not known what if any involvement Mason has had with psychedelics.
• Three members of the neo-Nazi group The Base were arrested in 2020 on firearms charges and attempted manufacture of DMT.^[51] Some of the members are known to have used LSD.^[52]
• Andrew Anglin, founder of The Daily Stormer, took LSD, magic mushrooms, cocaine and ketamine while in high school according to multiple acquaintances.^[53]
• Fredrick Brennan got the idea for founding 8chan while he was high on magic mushrooms.^[54]
• Jordan Peterson of the bigoted alt-lite has used psilocybin.^[39]
• Sam Harris, atheist Islamophobe, took psilocybin.^[39]
• Peter Thiel, Austrian school libertarian, Trumper and anti-feminist, has been investing heavily in the nascent psychedelics industry.^[55]

External links[edit]

• Can psychedelics meet their potential for treating mental health disorders? by Laura Sanders (December 3, 2021 at 7:00 am) Science News.

Notes[edit]

References[edit]