Psychopharmacology II: Psychedelic Drugs

Abstract

People have been familiar with substances we now call “mind-altering,” “hallucinogenic,” or “psychedelic” “drugs” since ancient times. These drugs are the natural products of a variety of plants and belong, from a chemical viewpoint, in the class of organic compounds called “alkaloids.” From a medical viewpoint, the most familiar and most important alkaloids are apomorphine, atropine, cocaine, codeine, heroin, hyoscine, morphine, quinine, scopolamine, and strychnine. The use of these drugs predates the distinction between religion and medicine, between what is sacramental and what is therapeutic. In the American social-political context, the most important such substance is peyote, with mescaline as its active ingredient. For native-Americans, peyote is both sacramental and medical. For the FDA, it is neither. No historical review of psychopharmacology would be complete without at least a brief consideration of psychedelic-psychotomimetic substances, qua recreational, psychiatric, and prohibited drugs.2* The story begins in Switzerland in 1938, when Albert Hofmann (1906-), a chemist working at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Basel, fi rst synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. Five years later he accidentally ingested some of it and discovered its hallucinogenic properties. From 1943, when Hofmann fi rst experienced the effect of LSD, until 1967, when its sale, possession, and use were prohibited in the United States, LSD was a legal drug. Sandoz Laboratories, the drug’s sole pro- * The term “psychotomimetic” emphasizes and falsely implies that there are fundamental similarities between LSD-induced delirium and a so-called psychosis, especially schizophrenia. The term “hallucinogenic” refers to the property of the drug to induce hallucinations, delusions, or other symptoms of a psychosis.