Missed Opportunities? Beneficial Uses of Illicit Drugs
Lester Grinspoon, James B. Bakalar
July 16, 2020 DOI: 10.4324/9781003078364-14 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Review |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Illicit drug Internet privacy Criminology Computer security |
| Citations | 16 |
| Key findings | Psychedelic drugs were used for over fifteen years by hundreds of psychiatrists who considered them relatively safe therapeutic agents, and their potential includes treating alcoholism, aiding the dying, and facilitating mystical experience. |
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.