The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy: LSD Psychotherapy in America by Matthew Oram
Bulletin of the history of medicine January 1, 2019 Nicolas Rasmussen
A historian of medicine argues that the abandonment of LSD psychotherapy for alcoholism in the 1960s–70s was primarily due to clinical trials failing to demonstrate lasting efficacy, not because of recreational use, cultural backlash, or suppression by biological psychiatry. Examining the research program at Maryland's Spring Grove hospital, the author shows that researchers persisted despite the drug's notoriety and conducted adequately controlled trials meeting post-1962 regulatory standards. However, even the best trials found no statistically significant, lasting benefit for alcoholism or other conditions. The author contends that the outcome partly reflects an inherent bias of controlled trials against therapies with strong subjective elements, such as high dropout rates when participants assigned to control groups lost faith in the treatment.