V Knid esq
12th September 2004, 18:07
I am currently reading this BRILLIANT book:
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0802135870/104-3889690-2911161?v=glance">
http://www.erowid.org/library/books/images/storming_heaven.jpg</a>
...and it makes me very sad the way that clowns like Leary (great, glamourous and wonderful adventures though they may have had) turned LSD into a wacky, far-out thing surrounded by mystical mumbo-jumbo when it could have been the greatest pyschological tool of the 20th century - the early proper scientific research that was done on it in controlled situations with 'guides' to help people through their trips showed without doubt that it had incredible therapeutic properties including curing alcoholism and other compulsive behaviour patterns. Of course it was not all the psychedelic lobby that spoiled this - the US government was clearly rattled by the way it tended to cause people to question authority and not want to be good conformist productive workers...
Anyhow, it set me to wondering if there is any properly scientific documented research going on into psychedelics nowadays... lots of the 'entheogenic community' have a pseudo-scientific outlook, but do tend to get carried away with mystical / spiritual supposition, which kinda undermines their claims to rationality... There's Shulgin of course but his approach seems fairly subjective, and he doesn't tend to use statistically significant numbers of people in his tests...
One thing in the book that really made me sit up and think was someone comparing psychedelics with hypnotism, which for a good half-century after its discovery was confined to the music halls and cabarets, and only recently has been developed for its therapeutic possibilities - so maybe, just maybe, after decades of hallucinogens being the province of kooks and weirdos we might be headed for a time when the scientific community can take them seriously...
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0802135870/104-3889690-2911161?v=glance">
http://www.erowid.org/library/books/images/storming_heaven.jpg</a>
...and it makes me very sad the way that clowns like Leary (great, glamourous and wonderful adventures though they may have had) turned LSD into a wacky, far-out thing surrounded by mystical mumbo-jumbo when it could have been the greatest pyschological tool of the 20th century - the early proper scientific research that was done on it in controlled situations with 'guides' to help people through their trips showed without doubt that it had incredible therapeutic properties including curing alcoholism and other compulsive behaviour patterns. Of course it was not all the psychedelic lobby that spoiled this - the US government was clearly rattled by the way it tended to cause people to question authority and not want to be good conformist productive workers...
Anyhow, it set me to wondering if there is any properly scientific documented research going on into psychedelics nowadays... lots of the 'entheogenic community' have a pseudo-scientific outlook, but do tend to get carried away with mystical / spiritual supposition, which kinda undermines their claims to rationality... There's Shulgin of course but his approach seems fairly subjective, and he doesn't tend to use statistically significant numbers of people in his tests...
One thing in the book that really made me sit up and think was someone comparing psychedelics with hypnotism, which for a good half-century after its discovery was confined to the music halls and cabarets, and only recently has been developed for its therapeutic possibilities - so maybe, just maybe, after decades of hallucinogens being the province of kooks and weirdos we might be headed for a time when the scientific community can take them seriously...