Texts / 1950-1970

A New Approach

Osmond and Smythies argue that schizophrenia involves a naturally occurring adrenaline derivative chemically close to mescaline. Hosted here is a fair-use excerpt: their case that mescaline intoxication reproduces the symptoms of acute schizophrenia, the biochemical note on how a disorder of adrenaline's transmethylation could form such a compound, and their resulting hypothesis and discussion.

Rinkel and colleagues at Boston Psychopathic Hospital administered microgram doses of LSD tartrate to normal volunteers and schizophrenic, depressive, and paranoid patients. They reported the drug reliably produced thought disorder, hallucination, and depersonalization resembling clinical schizophrenia.

A memo from anthropologist [Margaret Mead](/biographies/margaret-mead)'s papers at the Library of Congress, recording her interest in LSD and other psychedelics in the summer of 1954 and her work with [Harold Abramson](/biographies/harold-abramson)'s research team, including [Conan Kornetsky](/biographies/conan-kornetsky) and [Murray Jarvik](/biographies/murray-jarvik).

I. Effects in Former Morphine Addicts and Development of Tolerance During Chronic Intoxication

Harris Isbell and colleagues at the NIMH Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky, gave LSD daily for up to eighty-five days to former morphine addicts to measure tolerance and compare effects to psychosis. They found rapid tolerance to both physiological and mental effects, which disappeared upon discontinuation.

Osmond surveyed psychotomimetic agents and proposed new terminologies, settling on "psychedelic, mind-manifesting" as his choice. This paper put the word into circulation among psychiatrists, coining the term still used today.

R. Gordon Wasson's photo-essay in Life magazine announcing that he and photographer Allan Richardson had participated in a Mazatec mushroom ceremony near Huautla de Jiménez in June 1955. The article, illustrated with color photographs and watercolor plates, named Roger Heim as Wasson's collaborator.

Foundations for a Combined Therapeutic Technique

Luisa G. de Álvarez de Toledo's paper to the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in Buenos Aires on September 10, 1957, setting out a method for combining LSD sessions with psychoanalysis. Case reports by Alberto E. Fontana and Francisco Pérez Morales follow. It is one of the earliest attempts in Latin America to fit LSD into psychoanalytic treatment.

The Tenth Circuit affirms dismissal of a Native American Church suit against the Navajo Tribal Council's 1940 peyote ban, holding that the First Amendment does not apply to tribal governments unless Congress extends it. The court treats tribes as sovereign nations outside the federal Constitution.

Side Effects and Complications

Sidney Cohen surveyed researchers at the VA Neuropsychiatric Hospital who had administered LSD or mescaline to nearly 5,000 subjects across more than 25,000 doses. He found no cases of serious prolonged physical harm and quantified low rates of suicide attempts, psychotic breaks over 48 hours, and other adverse effects.

A declassified Army Chemical Research and Development Laboratories report on EA 1729 (LSD-25) as a non-lethal incapacitating agent. Includes clinical studies from 1955-1960 and September 1958 field tests at Fort Bragg in which whole military units were dosed with LSD and evaluated on operational tasks; all units proved unable to perform their missions.

A newspaper report that NASA had given John C. Lilly's Communication Research Institute an $80,700 contract to study communication between humans and dolphins. It shows the space-age funding behind the dolphin research that later included Lilly's LSD experiments.

The first scientific identification of Salvia divinorum, published in Harvard's Botanical Museum Leaflets. Wasson reports ingesting the Mazatec 'leaves of the Shepherdess' at two ceremonies in Oaxaca in 1961-62, attended on the second occasion by Albert Hofmann and his wife.

The Harvard Crimson's July 1963 year-in-review covers Richard Alpert's May dismissal for giving psilocybin to an undergraduate and Timothy Leary's suspension. The article traces the dispute from March 1962 through the November 1962 warning by Dean Monro and Dr. Farnsworth.

The CIA Inspector General's internal audit of MKULTRA, documenting covert LSD and drug testing on unwitting American citizens through a Bureau of Narcotics safehouse arrangement. The Inspector General finds safeguards inadequate and recommends terminating unwitting testing on Americans.

The founding issue of The Psychedelic Review, published in June 1963 by Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner's International Federation for Internal Freedom. Hosted here are the issue's unsigned Editorial and Statement of Purpose, which set out the journal's program and explain its choice of the word 'psychedelic.' The issue's bylined articles, by Gerald Heard, R. Gordon Wasson, and Alan Watts, are described in the front matter but not reproduced.

Drugs Open New Life: In a Drug-Filled Chalice, Total Love

George Draper's front-page story about Maureen Thompson, a Menlo Park mother of four who took LSD and mescaline in August 1961 at Myron Stolaroff's International Foundation for Advanced Study, which charged $500. She describes the session as a turning point in her life, and her husband Bill took the same treatment a week later.

A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

Leary, Metzner and Alpert recast the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a manual for LSD, psilocybin and mescaline sessions. Hosted here is a fair-use excerpt: the book's opening definition of 'set and setting,' and the full 'Preparation' and 'The Setting' sections, which give that idea its practical, session-by-session form.

The California Supreme Court reverses the peyote convictions of four Navajo men arrested at a Native American Church meeting near Needles in 1962. Justice Tobriner's opinion describes the all-night ceremony, its officers and its ritual objects before reaching the First Amendment question.

The poet Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) testified on June 14, 1966, before the special Senate Judiciary subcommittee holding hearings on narcotic rehabilitation and LSD on college campuses, with Quentin N. Burdick (1908–1992) presiding. He read a long prepared statement describing his visionary experience of 1948 and his use of peyote, mescaline, LSD, and ayahuasca, then argued from newspaper coverage and the medical literature that LSD's dangers had been exaggerated and that research should be expanded. The record hosts the full printed text, pp. 487–509, including his questioning by Burdick and Jacob K. Javits (1904–1986), his list of proposed research topics (Exhibit No. 76), and the references he put into the record.

Timothy Leary (1920–1996), then president of the Castalia Foundation at Millbrook, New York, testified on May 13, 1966, before the special Senate Judiciary subcommittee chaired by Thomas J. Dodd (1907–1971) that was holding hearings on narcotic addict rehabilitation and on LSD use on college campuses. Leary proposed licensing adults to use psychedelics and offering supervised university courses, and he sparred at length with Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1932–2009) over control, possession, and danger. The record hosts the full printed exchange, pp. 238–258, from Dodd's introduction to the recess.

A Chilean psychiatrist's report on harmala alkaloids, ayahuasca-related beta-carbolines, and comparative human experiments with harmaline and mescaline at the University of Chile.

A conversation among Leary, Ginsberg, Snyder, and Watts, taped aboard Watts's houseboat and published in San Francisco Oracle no. 7 (February 1967). Hosted here is the opening run of the conversation, in which the four debate dropping out of mainstream society versus working within it, and trace the psychedelic movement's lineage back through earlier utopian and religious dissent. The full conversation continues on to LSD, utopian withdrawal, and post-drop-out economics.

Judge Gesell denies the Neo-American Church's motion to dismiss LSD and marihuana charges against a minister. The court catalogs the church's symbols and regalia, concludes it lacks genuine religious doctrine, and rejects an equal-protection claim based on the Native American Church's peyote exemption.

Banisteriopsis caapi

A Colombian Amazon ethnographic study placing Tukano use of Banisteriopsis caapi, or yajé, within a wider cultural system of mythology, ritual, symbolism, perception, and social knowledge.

Proceedings of a Conference Held at the National Institute of Mental Health

Proceedings of an NIMH conference held September 29, 1967, on adverse reactions to hallucinogenic drugs, published 1969. Addressed LSD's alleged chromosomal and teratogenic effects and the government's challenge in communicating risks to the drug-using public without propaganda.

Timothy Leary's testimony for the defense at the Chicago conspiracy trial in December 1969, questioned by William Kunstler and cross-examined by prosecutor Thomas Foran. Leary describes his career and his 1968 meetings with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin about the planned convention protests, and says the young people coming to Chicago feared violence from the police and National Guard.