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

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: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 11 2015, @05:53PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday February 11 2015, @05:53PM (#143692)

    Seriously, he would be. This kind of research is exactly what he did, what he talked about doing, and tried to figure out whether LSD could be used safely and if so in what quantities.

    I'm not one to do that sort of thing myself - I like my brain the way it is, thank you - but all those I know who've done it swear by it.

    --
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  • (Score: 2) by MozeeToby on Wednesday February 11 2015, @06:25PM

    by MozeeToby (1118) on Wednesday February 11 2015, @06:25PM (#143706)

    tried to figure out whether LSD could be used safely and if so in what quantities.

    These questions were answered very early in LSD's history. Yes, it's safe in quantities well above what you would ever want to use to trip on. The very first dose ever taken on purpose was something like 20x the dose you'd take for any conceivable use.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @09:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 11 2015, @09:27PM (#143778)

    .. and vindicated. Same for Terence Kemp McKenna and, of course, Dr. Albert Hoffmann.