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Will Harvard drop acid again?

Psychedelic research returns to Crimsonland
By PETER BEBERGAL  |  June 9, 2008

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In a moment of delightful whimsy in the annals of drug history, Albert Hofmann, after purposely ingesting LSD for the first time, rode his bicycle home and experienced all manner of beatific and hellish visions. Hofmann, a chemist with Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland, had recently synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide (a/k/a LSD, or “acid”) from ergot fungus. A few days earlier, on April 16, 1943, Hofmann had accidentally absorbed LSD through his fingertips and began experiencing “an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors.” Curious about the rabbit hole into which he had tripped, Hofmann dissolved some of the compound into water and deliberately swallowed a dose before taking his bicycle journey home — and elsewhere.

This experience set the stage for what was to become one of the most profound cultural forces in America, the use — and abuse — of psychedelic drugs. LSD, as well as other hallucinogens, would go on to help shape our ideas of consciousness, religion, and law for decades to come. From Timothy Leary’s proclamation to “Tune in, turn on, drop out,” to the spiritual underpinnings of the New Age movement, psychedelics would prove to be a restless burden for both the drugs’ users and the government that tried to suppress their use.

Hofmann, who died this past April at the age of 102, watched it all play out, horrified by the behavior of both drug users and opponents. He winced as the hippies took LSD with wild abandon, and wrung his hands as the government, here and abroad, criminalized LSD and other psychedelic compounds. But Hofmann also lived long enough to see it all come full circle. By the time he died, legitimate above-ground psychedelic research was alive and well at places like Johns Hopkins and, even more telling, at Harvard University, the latter under the guidance of Dr. John Halpern. Sitting a little to the left and outside of Halpern is Rick Doblin, founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a nonprofit research group that, through the support of members and donors, helps fund scientists to do bona fide work with psychedelics in the hopes of legitimizing their therapeutic use. Together, the two men form a kind of psychedelic odd couple: Halpern is young but traditional and cautious, a scientist first and foremost. Doblin is a veteran in this world, a little rougher around the edges, and speaks openly about his own psychedelic adventures and his vision for less drug prohibition.

Nearly 50 years ago, Leary and his colleague Richard Alpert created the Harvard Psilocybin Project, only to be fired by the university a few years later under scandalous circumstances. Harvard had not taken up this kind of drug research since that time. But after years of fundraising and petitioning for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval, this past February, under the auspices of Harvard, Halpern began administering MDMA (better known to the Glo-Stick crowd as Ecstasy) to dying cancer patients, to see how they psychologically benefit from the drug. And now Halpern is also hoping to get approval from Harvard for a project that will evaluate the effects of LSD and psilocybin (the psychedelic compound found in hallucinogenic mushrooms) on patients suffering from the debilitating condition known as cluster headaches.

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  Topics: News Features , Science and Technology, Culture and Lifestyle, Tim Leary,  More more >
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Comments
Will Harvard drop acid again?
Nice article, with one exception: the author consistently misspells "Richard Alpert" as "Richard Albert".
By JDMF on 05/29/2008 at 10:56:44
Will Harvard drop acid again?
I am a Neuroscience major at Northeastern University and not once in the classroom have I heard a single mention of even a possible positive use from psychedelic drugs and marijuana, nor mention of the research done BEFORE Tim Leary. It is a shame that student's are only introduced to this area of medicine through opinionated articles like this rather than able to draw their own conclusions through scholarly study. (Though this article is better than most)
By HelptheSick on 05/29/2008 at 7:08:28
Will Harvard drop acid again?
Very well done article. Ironic that the anecdotal evidence that followed in the comments section, helped weed out a couple things that will not now need clinical trials. One thing that is evident after reading the comments from Voldemort, is that psychedelics are not a cure for professional jealousy nor that age old malady called cutting off one's nose to spite the face. What Voldemort does not seem to understand, remarkably after stating this was a well researched article, is that such articles have no place for innuendo, allegations from anonymous sources or rumour. Certainly those which have no direct relationship to the subject at hand. I believe Voldemort should reserve his/her character assassination for the upcoming Presidential elections where such tactics are standard fare for those that prefer personal gain over the good of the masses. With all due respect, it's possible Voldemort thought this article was a piece of science fiction and not a serious article, about serious research which can lead to helping millions of people that suffer from serious health issues such as OCD, PSTD and Cluster Headaches, to name a few. If this is the case, my sincere apologies.
By Eugene 'Saxe on 05/30/2008 at 2:41:24

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