Missed Opportunities? Beneficial Uses of Illicit Drugs

Psychedelic drugs have wide-ranging effects that depend on setting, personality, and expectations. For over fifteen years, hundreds of psychiatrists considered them relatively safe therapeutic agents. Psychedelic therapy for alcoholism assumes a single overwhelming experience can change lifelong drinking habits. Giving psychedelic drugs to the dying aims at reconciliation with one's past, family, and limitations. In the 1960s, Walter Pahnke conducted an experiment on psychedelic drugs' potential to facilitate mystical experience. Illicit psychedelic use continues to fuel interest in controlled, public experimentation.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The psychedelic drugs have unusually wide-ranging effects that vary greatly depending on the setting and the user’s personality and expectations. The fact remains that psychedelic drugs were used for more than fifteen years by hundreds of psychiatrists who considered them relatively safe therapeutic agents. Psychedelic therapy for alcoholism is based on the assumption that one overwhelming experience sometimes changes the self-destructive drinking habits of a lifetime, and the hope that psychedelic drugs can consistently produce such an experience. The purpose of giving psychedelic drugs to the dying might be stated as reconciliation: reconciliation with one’s past, one’s family, and one’s human limitations. In the 1960s Walter Pahnke, a Doctor of Divinity as well as a psychiatrist, carried out an experiment designed to investigate the potential of psychedelic drugs to facilitate mystical experience. Illicit psychedelic drug use is an underground spring that continues to feed the stream of interest in systematic, publicly controlled experimentation.