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4. Keeping Tabs on Science and Spirituality
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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c h a p t e r f o u r Keeping Tabs on Science and Spirituality In the mid-1950s, alcoholism studies gathered momentum among a widening circle of experimenters as the Saskatchewan-based researchers broadened their networks. Psychedelic psychiatry began to emerge as a viable approach worthy of expanded interrogation, in part because the Saskatchewan group made sympathetic contacts in British Columbia, New York, and California. To that end, what had formerly been a loose coalition of interested researchers now emerged as a committed group of connected individuals seeking institutional legitimacy for psychedelic studies. Teaming up with writers, scientists, and clinicians, a more extensive community of LSD investigators began searching for new ways to enhance the scope of their studies. They convened international conferences, established new professional societies, and considered alternative applications for LSD. However, they also encountered new challenges as their work became more widely known outside the medical and scienti fic communities. The new cadre of investigators began applying the drug to nonmedical uses, in particular they began exploring how the drug could be used to enhance creativity and spirituality. This development attracted new experimenters, especially those outside the medical community, but it also forced some of the original clinical investigators to confront these emerging trends and consider whether or not factors such as creativity and spirituality could or should belong in the medical arena. Hoffer and Osmond had confronted these questions in some of their trials with alcoholics, but they framed their initial studies in medicoscientific language to steer the results directly into the medical field. As they continued working in this area, however, they gained a reputation as experts on LSD and other research groups sought institutional guidance from 80 Psychedelic Psychiatry them for exploring some of the nonmedical dimensions of psychedelic drugs. For example, the Native American Church of North America contacted the Saskatchewan-based LSD investigators seeking scientific expertise to support the continued use of peyote for religious ceremonies. The peyote cactus, whose psychoactive ingredient is mescaline, had been consumed as part of a religious ritual for centuries, but the police and government officials were paying more attention to its use during this period because they were concerned that it was contributing to high rates of crime and violence among Native Americans and Canadians. In a highly politicized environment, Hoffer, Osmond, and others evaluated peyote in an explicitly nonmedical setting. While the Native American Church represented one kind of nonmedical use of psychedelics, other users—includingwriters,artists,andcuriousbutwell-connectedpeople—began justifying their use of LSD on the basis that it might help to form a new religion , or at least might augment creativity. Elements of spirituality and creativity crept into the growing lore about LSD and produced divisions within the psychedelic community over the role of spirituality in medicine and the scientific value of psychedelic experiences. As research interests diversified and LSD investigations took a more philosophical turn, the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company in Switzerland expressed a growing reluctance to make its drug available for experimental applications. Consequently, biochemists and amateur scientists attempted to develop their own formulas for manufacturing LSD, thereby affecting the distribution of the drug as well as its potency and consistency. Sandoz responded by conducting an evaluation of the various psychedelic-like substances available to researchers and worked with trusted colleagues and national governments to implement regulations for ensuring safe access to legitimate sources of the drug. By the end of the decade, psychedelic psychiatry became something of a paradox . On the one hand its therapeutic applications were being tested in locations throughout North America, with attempts to conform to scientific guidelines. On the other hand, the drug, still more or less confined to a select community, was increasingly used to explore consciousness, creativity, and spirituality in ways that threatened to undermine any scientific credibility connecting LSD with therapy. Leading up to an explosion of recreational, often illegal, drug use in the latter half of the 1960s, LSD investigators in the late 1950s enjoyed relative freedom and flexibility to explore these drugs while still cushioned from external criticism by upholding the prerogative of the medical sciences to determine the value of a psychoactive substance. [44.211.117.101] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:13 GMT) Keeping Tabs on Science and Spirituality 81 Peyotism In February 1953, the Canadian federal government, along with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the local Indian agents in Alberta and Saskatchewan , grew uncomfortable with the...