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c h a p t e r o n e Psychedelic Pioneers In April 1943, Albert Hofmann, a Swiss biochemist, dissolved an infinitesimal amount of a newly synthesized drug, d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), in a glass of water and drank it. Three quarters of an hour later he recorded a growing dizziness, some visual disturbances, and a marked desire to laugh. After about an hour he asked his assistant to call a doctor and then accompany him home from his research laboratory at the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company in Zurich. He climbed onto his bicycle and went on a surreal journey. In Hofmann ’s mind he was not on the familiar road that led home, but rather a street painted by Salvador Dali, a fun house roller coaster. He had trouble coordinating his legs to pedal his bicycle. He tried to communicate his predicament to his assistant but found that he had no voice. Reaching home he encountered a neighbor he thought had become a witch. When a doctor reached Hofmann he found him physically fine but mentally in a distraught state. Hofmann later wondered if he had permanently damaged his mind.1 Hofmann’s serendipitous discovery of the chemical compound LSD introduced a new drug that inspired a flurry of interest. He had first synthesized the drug in 1938, but without physical contact with the substance until 1943 he remained unaware of its dramatic effects. Not until some spilled on his hand, in 1943, did he discover that he might have produced something worth further investigation. Following his initial drug reaction Hofmann published his account of the LSD discovery and shortly afterward the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company made the drug widely available to scientific researchers around the world.2 One of the remarkable aspects of the drug was that it required extremely small doses to produce powerful reactions. LSD was measured in micrograms (mcg), and as few as 25 to 50mcg could cause an individual to hallucinate. Pain relief from aspirin, by comparison, required a dose of 300,000mcg for observable effects. This powerful chemical was a colorless, odorless substance that, in 14 Psychedelic Psychiatry minute quantities, could cause an individual to believe that he or she had become psychotic. LSD immediately appealed to medical researchers as a drug that might help explain the origins of mental disorders, particularly those involving involuntary psychoses. LSD appeared alongside a list of other chemical substances that attracted significant attention from psychopharmacologists; in the 1950s the introduction of chemical therapies in psychiatry seemed capable of reforming the discipline and radically transforming the experience of mental illness. One of North America’s early psychopharmacologists, Thomas Ban, commented that in the 1950s, drug research (psychopharmacology) into mental disorders was responsible for “dragging psychiatry into the modern world.” Psychopharmacological research at this time received two Nobel Prizes: one was awarded to Daniel Bovet for research on antihistamines and another to James Black for his identi- fication of histamine receptors. In fact, in an investigation of the history of psychopharmacology, psychiatrist David Healy argues that nearly all of the antidepressants , including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and the antipsychotics were a result of the drug research that took place during that decade .3 These contemporaneous developments inspired confidence in the medical contention that psychopharmacological treatments would not only modernize psychiatry but would also pave the way for dramatic reforms in mental health care in the post–World War II period. In 1952 the advent of antipsychotics (drugs that ameliorate the incidence or severity of psychotic episodes) began with French surgeon Henri Laborit’s discovery of chlorpromazine.4 Over the next three decades this drug, known by the trade names Thorazine and Largactil, seemed largely responsible for emptying asylums throughout North America and Europe. Chlorpromazine purportedly reduced positive psychiatric symptoms in patients in a manner that helped improve the potential for care in the community, or gave way to the optimistic belief that patients could lead meaningful lives outside the institution.5 The subsequent dismantling of psychiatric institutions had a revolutionary effect on mental health care. Although chlorpromazine was not the only reason for dismantling the asylum, the increased reliance on drugs in psychiatry demonstrated the enormous potential for drugs to change the course of mental health care policy and the important role that they would play in the future of psychiatry.6 Experimentation with LSD began in earnest in the 1950s in North America and throughout Europe alongside studies with antidepressants and antipsychotics , in...

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