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Research into Psychedelics, Shut Down for Decades, is Now Yielding Exciting Results

posted by janrinok on Wednesday February 11 2015, @04:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds dept.

tt0120889 writes:

Beginning in the nineteen-fifties, psychedelics had been used to treat a wide variety of conditions, including alcoholism and end-of-life anxiety. The American Psychiatric Association held meetings centered on LSD. Some of the best minds in psychiatry had seriously studied these compounds in therapeutic models, with government funding.

Between 1953 and 1973, the federal government spent four million dollars to fund a hundred and sixteen studies of LSD, involving more than seventeen hundred subjects. Through the mid-nineteen-sixties, psilocybin and LSD were legal and remarkably easy to obtain. Sandoz, the Swiss chemical company, gave away large quantities of Delysid—LSD—to any researcher who requested it, in the hope that someone would discover a marketable application.

Now, forty years after the Nixon Administration effectively shut down most psychedelic research, the government is gingerly allowing a small number of scientists to resume working with these powerful and still somewhat mysterious molecules.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @05:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @05:05PM (#143668)

    Sandoz, the Swiss chemical company, gave away large quantities of Delysid—LSD—to any researcher who requested it

    That triggered me. Fucking Nixon/DEA.

    http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment?mbid=soylentnews.org

    BAD TRIP

  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday February 11 2015, @05:56PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 11 2015, @05:56PM (#143694) Journal

    FYI, the newyorker's own site added that piece to the URL, it's not part of the link.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by CRCulver on Wednesday February 11 2015, @06:15PM

    by CRCulver (4390) on Wednesday February 11 2015, @06:15PM (#143700) Homepage

    That triggered me. Fucking Nixon/DEA.

    LSD was outlawed under the Johnson administration.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @06:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @06:23PM (#143705)

      "LSD is Schedule I in the United States, according to the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) was passed by the 91st United States Congress as Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and signed into law by President Richard Nixon."

      • (Score: 2) by CRCulver on Thursday February 12 2015, @02:20PM

        by CRCulver (4390) on Thursday February 12 2015, @02:20PM (#144111) Homepage
        While that scheduling may date from the Nixon era, possession of LSD was outlawed in 1968 [erowid.org] during the Johnson administration, some months before Nixon's inauguration.