Toward an Individual Psychedelic Psychotherapy

In the mid-1960s, legislation in the United States instituted a prohibition on the use of psychedelic drugs, not only the supposedly alarming use by hippies, intellectuals, beatniks, college students, etc., but also use by scientific researchers and mental health professionals. The ban on practically all research and therapy was soon forced upon the rest of the world by international treaties and also, no doubt, by covert pressure from the CIA and other U.S. government agencies. LSD and the other psychedelic drugs were classed as "Schedule 1" substances, supposedly having no medical value or recognized uses. Yet a significant body of scientific literature of the time indicated quite clearly that psychedelic drugs most certainly did have valuable uses in both therapy and pure research. Work that had been going on for more than a decade in Canada, for instance, had shown LSD psychotherapy to be the most effective treatment for alcoholism ever devised. Other studies had begun to show similar effectiveness for treatment of addictions, personality disorders, and a whole range of conditions. A review of the pertinent scientific literature of the time is of great importance today, for a general review of the whole situation of the War on Drugs is increasingly leading to calls by important and influential individuals for a serious re-evaluation of that policy, if not an outright reversal leading to complete legalization of "drugs of abuse". A close scrutiny of the basis and justification for the War on Drugs is revealing not only inconsistencies, but gross deception, blatant lies, and the worst kind of propaganda used to institute and promote that War. The recognized therapeutic applications of cannabis, for instance, are still being resisted by Drug Warriors in spite of evidence that would long ago have been sufficient to get government approval had cannabis been a "new drug" invented by a pharmaceutical company. Yet cannabis remains a Schedule 1 substance. The following essay is the introductory section of a paper published in 1970 that reveals a similar, if not even greater ignorance in the current official attitude toward therapeutic use of the psychedelic drugs. The authors are noted scientific researchers who had been working with psychedelics for many years. Their work, like that of many others, was brought to an abrupt and premature conclusion by the anti-drug hysteria which still today, perhaps more than ever, is doing far more to poison Western Civilization than any sort of "drug abuse" could possibly do.