Psychedelic Drugs and the Problem of Experience

Abstract

Over fifty years since the criminalization of LSD brought medical research on the drug to a halt, researchers in Europe have reopened investigations into the possible therapeutic benefits of the controversial substance. 1 This might come as something of a surprise to those who remember the public outcry against psychedelic drugs in the 1960s, when the American media echoed with sensational stories of LSD-induced violence and psychosis. 2 But before it became 'the nation's newest scourge', LSD was hailed as a 'wonder drug' by medical researchers and psychotherapists convinced of its therapeutic potential. This paper investigates how and why psychedelic drugs made the remarkable transition from medical tool to countercultural sacrament, and from panacea to medical, legal, and cultural pariah. Jordan Goodman, Paul Lovejoy, and Andrew Sherratt have already done much to demonstrate the fluidity of the boundary between licit and illicit drug use. They argue for the need to deconstruct the dominant western discourse on drugs, which artificially distinguishes between nutritional, medicinal, and recreational drug consumption. Instead, they look to 'the social contexts in which particular substances are consumed' in order 'to understand the meanings which they have for their users'. 3 Deconstructing the prevailing drugs discourse, however, requires more than replacing hegemonic definitions of drugs use with the meaning it has for consumers, as this meaning is itself highly contested and far from ideologically neutral.

Cannabis use under prohibitionism – the interplay between motives, contexts and subjects

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Psychedelic Birth: Bodies, Boundaries and the Perception of Pain in the 1970s

“…While both scientists and hippies who believed in the therapeutic benefits of LSD argued that the drug 'transcended all human boundaries' such as race and gender (in the words of Allen Ginsberg), there remained a 'distinctly white, male, middle-class bias' within both the countercultural discourse and the scientific studies. 59 The experience of the (predominantly male) subjects proved invaluable to Grof for their articulation of the psychedelic experience in a controlled environment (these were, remember, highly educated health professionals who had a vested interest in the mainstreaming of psychedelic drugs for therapeutic intervention). Their colourful descriptions appeared to follow a coherent structure that led Grof to develop a new psychological schematic.…”

The ineffable: A framework for the study of methods through the case of mid-century mind-brain sciences

“…Researchers tested a range of synthetic and natural psychotropic drugs as they compared rival hypotheses about how the normal human brain worked and effective therapies. The most notorious among them would eventually be LSD (Bachi, 2013; Dyck, 2008; Giffort, 2015; Novak, 1997; Shortall, 2014). In the 1950s, researchers considered LSD a legitimate research tool but felt it had major practical limitations: its effects lasted longer than a typical work day and could not be antidoted once underway.…”