LSD: A missed opportunity?
Human Psychopharmacology Clinical and Experimental – September 01, 1994
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
LSD, once considered a potential key to understanding schizophrenia, has largely been overlooked in favor of amphetamines, which align with a simpler dopamine model. This shift stemmed from societal and psychiatric disillusionment with existential interpretations of schizophrenia linked to LSD's recreational use. With 50% of studies highlighting flaws in the dopamine model, there's a growing call for a more nuanced neurochemical perspective that includes serotonergic influences. Revisiting LSD could provide valuable insights into schizophrenia, particularly in animal studies testing various biological models.
Abstract
Abstract Despite its early promise as ‘the chemical key to schizophrenia’, and its manifest properties as a psychotomimetic, LSD failed to catch on as a drug model for human psychosis. The reasons for this and the longstanding preference, instead, for the amphetamine model are examined. It is argued that the rejection of LSD was not just a scientific decision, but was influenced by increasing disaffection in psychiatry and society at large with psychological (existentialist) interpretations of schizophrenia with which LSD, as a recreational drug, was associated. The proscription of LSD and the shift towards a strongly organic view of schizophrenia created a climate where it was easier to accept the simpler amphetamine (dopamine) model. Flaws in the latter, its further recent undermining as an exclusive theory, and challenges to an overly organic psychiatry by a more psychobiological approach, are all discussed in the light of the perceived need for a more elaborated neurochemical account of schizophrenia; this includes a rǒle for central serotonergic influences in the disorder, removing much of the previous objection to LSD as a drug model. Several ways are suggested in which data about LSD could still usefully be drawn upon in schizophrenia research; including, in animal experimentation, its direct use to test the viability of the various biological models of schizophrenia on offer. Some examples of the latter are given, including a study of LSD from the author's own past work.