Emerging from the Drug War Dark Age: LSD and Other Psychedelic Medicines Make a Comeback

[marmar]

from AlterNet:



Emerging from the Drug War Dark Age: LSD and Other Psychedelic Medicines Make a Comeback

By Charles Shaw, AlterNet. Posted July 11, 2008.

After a 40-year moratorium, credible research for treating illnesses and addictions with psychedelic compounds has made a miraculous comeback.



The return flight from Switzerland was a mix of hope and solemnity for Rick Doblin, the only American to attend the funeral of Dr. Albert Hofmann, the inventor of LSD who had just died at the age of 102. Doblin, a Harvard-educated Ph.D and founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, an organization that conducts legal research into the healing and spiritual potentials of psychedelics and marijuana, had spent his entire career trying to break through the virtually impenetrable wall of obstinacy that surrounds psychedelic compounds and their potential benefits to society.

More than anyone else in his field, Doblin is all too familiar with what he refers to as the "40-year-long bad trip" that researchers like him have faced in dealing with the fallout from the introduction of LSD and other psychedelic compounds to the Western psyche in the mid 1960s. This 40-year intellectual Dark Age, Doblin says, has been characterized by "enormous fear and misinformation and a vested interest in exaggerated stories about drugs to keep prohibition alive."

We've all heard the tales of kids jumping off rooftops because they think they can fly, of otherwise normal people taking a single hit of LSD and "going insane," and of course the all-pervasive myth of the "acid flashback." Although there were acid casualties, most were rare or aberrant tragedies, most often occurring in individuals with pre-existing mental health conditions who never should have taken LSD in the first place. Most of the tales are apocryphal at best, intentional propaganda meant to discourage use.

An Era of Censorship

Why would our government embark on this 40-year Inquisition to burn the psychedelic prophets at the stake and wipe clean from the Earth the true history of psychedelic culture, as if it were the secret of the Holy Grail and the Merovingian dynasty? Why has the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s -- one of the most powerful revolutions in human consciousness in all of history -- been reduced to pejorative tales of tie-dyed morons skipping through Golden Gate Park in an orgy of self-indulgence? Why would something that the government claims does not deserve respectable attention be the recipient of such Draconian repressive measures? Could it be because, like the secret of Mary Magdalene, the truth could bring the whole order crashing down? ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/90958/?ses=7cfc34c642682e2b091a5df337166101

[BridgeTheGap]

1. I once spent time at "The Farm" in Tennessee - the hippie commune

founded by Steve Gaskin and crew.
While in California, they really promoted lsd use. When they moved to Tennessee, people burnt out on lsd & shrooms began showing up at the gate. Out of guilt, they let many of these folks in, feeling they needed to be taken care of. They were quickly overwhelmed by the numbers and problems that these folks had. They made a decision to not let them in, instead referring them to hospitals for treatment. As several folks who lived their said: "We got in over our heads."

[Bob Dobbs]

4. Got a link?

Anecdotes prove nothing.

Of course, if you have pre-existing mental problems and drop acid daily in an uncontrolled setting, the probability of dissociative disorders is high.

Responsible applications of psychedelics can yield very positive results.

[BridgeTheGap]

6. Here you go

btw - I'm not opposed to their use. People with a genetic predisposition to schizpophrenia and related illnesses should obviously stay away from them.

http://www.thefarm.org/

[midnight]

2. I love it. After almost eight years of Bush it seems it is beneficial

to our society to drop acid.

[crikkett]

3. I was told at a party once that the guy who 'discovered' dna

did so on an acid trip.


More from the article:

Although it may be difficult for the uninitiated to understand at face value, LSD and other psychedelic compounds can have a profound life-altering affect on the user that, more often than not, serves to connect them (or reconnect, as the case may be) to the universal compassion and love for life that is inherent in our species. It invariably causes them to question the validity of the status quo, to examine their life and what surrounds them in terms of beliefs and values.

And in this epoch of industrial civilization, the last thing a corporate culture that survives on war, aggression and consumer spending needs is a consciously awakened population of people who inexorably choose to leave said culture in droves because they see it is killing the planet, themselves, and each other. This is precisely, to the letter, the meaning of "Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out."

But even for those who would call this hyperbole, what was lost in all the derision and urban myths about LSD and other psychedelic compounds like ayahuasca, peyote, psilocybin and iboga -- plant medicines thousands of years old -- was the fact that they are miraculously powerful medicines, with the ability to effectively treat, and in some cases, cure some of the most debilitating illnesses and disorders plaguing humanity: addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, migraine and cluster headaches and schizophrenia. They are also effective palliatives for the sick and dying.
...
Something with such legitimate potential to heal can only be kept in the bottle for so long. In fact, these transcendent therapies are now ebbing back into mainstream respectability. Doblin will be the first to tell you that times are changing, driven by too much government repression, too much scientific orthodoxy, and, perhaps more than any other factor, our culture's desperate need to learn how to handle what he calls our "collective emotional state."

[Hestia]

5. I've been sort saying the same thing for years now - something

is going to happen again, like LSD & Ecstacy, in the population to jump start us again.
Isn't it funny that psychadelics promote a Group Mindset and a feeling that We Are All One.
That's the number one thing that the fascists cannot allow - us all banding together
in unity to take them down. The next psychadelic will be something that's currently
legal and safe.

[Howler]

7. Wow!

Really good article! it pretty much bears out my experience with hallucinogens in my younger days.
They did open up a spiritual dimension for me that I never lost.Though at 48 going on 49 in august. The only altered state i can handel is meditation,an occasional drink and every once in a while a little reefer.

[argyl]

8. Excepting the occasional strychnine laced junk,I don't regret my numerous acid trips.

Wouldn't do it again but any substance as potent and perception altering as LSD certainly merits research into it rather than being labelled a Schedule I drug with no legitimate use.

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. I love the immeasurably more spiritual culture of the sixties, but fear the harm

done to people by drugs, not taken under laboratory conditions, or taking account of more recent scientific findings concering marijuana for instance.

However, perhaps you have already read it, but there is some very interesting information on Timothy Leary in an article by Joe Bageant on his site, "joebageant.com".