A large and scattered body of clinical and research reports on daydreaming, sleep and dreams, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, dissociative and depersonalization states, and drug-induced mental changes has not been organized into a consistent theoretical framework. This work aims to integrate current knowledge about various altered states of consciousness to determine the conditions necessary for their emergence, the factors influencing their outward manifestations, their common denominators, and the adaptive or maladaptive functions they may serve.
A controlled investigation of 176 male alcoholic patients compared three different LSD treatment procedures with a milieu-only condition. Half of each group also received disulfiram after hospital discharge to test whether it could enhance any of the treatments. All groups showed significant improvement on several clinical assessments during post-treatment and follow-up, but no single treatment condition proved superior to the others. The authors conclude that dramatic claims for the efficacy of LSD treatment in alcoholism are unjustified.
Hallucinogenic substances such as LSD, psilocybin, and psilocin are far more potent than older agents like peyote and mescaline. Renewed interest in these drugs has led to speculation about their applications across diverse fields, including anthropology, where their socially sanctioned use in some cultures is described; fiction, where their role in utopian societies is imagined; and medicine, where they have been proposed for treating mental illness or inducing model psychoses. Others have suggested their use as educational tools or for triggering religious mystical experiences.