The War on Drugs Halted Research Into the Potential Benefits of Psychedelics
Now it’s finally starting up again.
Timothy Leary on a lecture tour in 1969 at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
JAN. 3 2017 5:55 AM
By Don Lattin
In the fall of 1965, a 33-year-old father of three named Arthur King—a patient on the alcoholics ward at Baltimore’s Spring Grove Hospital—swallowed an LSD pill and laid back on his bed in a special unit called “Cottage Thirteen.” Sanford Unger, the chief of psychosocial research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, knelt beside King’s bed, holding his hand and reassuring the patient as he started to feel the drug’s mind-altering effects.
This was not a normal psychotherapy session. During his 12-hour experience, designed to help stop his destructive drinking habit, King sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the photo of his son that he’d brought. Suddenly, the child became alive in the picture, which initially frightened him. Then King noticed that a lick of his son’s hair was out of place, so he stroked the photo, putting the errant strands back in place. His fear vanished. Later, Unger held out a small vase with a single red rose. King looked at the flower, which seemed to be opening and closing, as though it were breathing. At one point, Unger asked him whether he’d like to go out to a bar and have a few drinks. King didn’t say anything but was shocked when the rose suddenly turned black and dropped dead before his eyes. He never picked up another drink.
Arthur King was one of thousands of research subjects who were given LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline as therapeutic tools in the 1950s and 1960s, often with government support and with promising results. But by the time King was enjoying his sobriety, the backlash against psychedelic testing had already begun. By the mid-1970s, the legal exploration of the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs was over.
This research is only now gathering momentum again in a new wave of U.S. clinical trials into other drugs with psychedelic properties. In recent years, university administrators, government regulatory agencies, and private donors have begun giving the stamp of approval and the money needed for new and expanding research into the use of MDMA, also known as ecstasy, and psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. In 2017, for instance, the Heffter Research Institute and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, two organizations leading the psychedelic psychotherapy revolution, will begin a final round of government-approved clinical trials in which hundreds of new patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and severe anxiety will undergo therapy sessions fueled by MDMA and psilocybin. Now, as we enter into a new age of experimentation, it’s worth looking back at the route that got us here.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/01/the_war_on_drugs_halted_research_into_the_potential_benefits_of_psychedelics.html
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This stuff has been known about for a while. Now, finally, one hopes we can get some real additional scientific confirmation for what has been known anecdotally for some time: psychedelic experiences can help people suffering from alcoholism or other addictions. Psilocybin and MDMA can be beneficial for PTSD or other intimacy/emotional problems. Etc.
In other circumstances or paired with the sorts of "coming of age" transformative or connective rituals our society often seems to sorely lack, these entheogens can be profound facilitators of personal insight and growth.
I think a lot of us who grew up around communities like the Grateful Dead's, understand that.
The substances in question are powerful and need to be treated with respect, certainly not for everyone or even every phase of life or situation- but it is well past time that we as a species grew up enough to have an adult perspective on so-called "drugs", starting with not treating them as monolithic. The inquisition approach to this kind of mind/consciousness research certainly hasn't helped.
To milk a cockroach 
