Psychedelic Research

In a search for a naturally occurring trace substance which could induce a schizophrenic-like reaction, Osmond and Abram Hoffer had studied the “schizogenic” properties of a group of materials, and had coined for them name “hallucinogens”: they included mescaline, lysergic acid diethylamide, harmine, ibogaine, and hashish (Hoffer, Osmond & Smythies 1954). Based upon speculation that the LSD experience could be akin to that of delirium tremens, a disorder involving visual and auditory hallucinatIons found in habitual and excessive users of alcoholic beverages, they began a series of studies of Iysergide in the treatment of alcoholism at Saskatchewan Hospital in Weyburn, where the first two alcoholics patients were treated in 1953 (Thomas 1977; Hoffer 1967).

Attempts to Simulate Delirium Tremens

The experience of delirium tremens is unpredictable, overwhelming and frightening. First described in 1813, it is sometimes referred to “the horrors,”, and may be accompanied by “rum fits” or seizures (Sutton 1813). It is the last in a continuum of alcohol withdrawal symptoms which may begin soon after the cessation of drinking as the blood level of alcohol begins to drop. It progresses erratically from agitation and autonomic hyperactivity, to mental confusion, disorientation, delusions and vivid hallucinations of colored snakes, dragons, and other fantastic objects. The patient may be amnestic for the experience (Adriani 1976). Delirium tremens occurs in about 4% to 5% of patients (Osmond 1969); in the early 1950s it was fatal in about 10% to 15% of patients; Advances in treatment have reduced mortality today to less than 5% (Yost 1996)

Hoffer and Osmond were familiar with the testimonies about “rapid abolition of ancient impulses and propensities (Osmond 1969: 218) collected by William James from the reformed drunkards of the Jerry McAuley Water Street Temperance Mission in 1902, and with James’ observation that the only radical remedy known to medicine “…for dispomania is religiomania” (James 1982). They were aware that ”a very remarkable experience” of some kind had been the cause of Bill W’s beginning to build Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) (Osmond 1969)

They knew that some kind of “hitting bottom” experience produced psychic states in which the subject recalled was at the heart of the Wesleyan Methodist sect’s success in converting alcoholics and helping them to stop drinkIng by catching them in the remorseful time after a drinking bout, scaring them thoroughly with the potential consequences of continued drinking, and then offering hope for improvement in a program of abstinence (Osmond 1969).

Because of these accounts of alcoholics who had experienced delirium tremens and sometimes were noted to “hit bottom” (an experience of surrender that is often consider -to be the key to beginning recovery from alcoholism, Hoffer and Osmond wondered if a similar experience, therapeutically induced, would help alcoholics stay sober (Hoffer 1967). They understood the LSD reaction to be similar in character to delirium tremens, but capable of being initiated at a time and placed that could be directed and controlled. Hoffer and Osmond speculated that one could inspire an alcoholic patient to “mend his ways” by inducing such an experience (Osmond 1969).

Hoffer and Osmond soon noted, however, that substances such as LSD and mescaline, which they had understood to produce hallucinations, could also produce “a particularly vivid and intense awareness of personality problems” which seemed to make the alcoholic more amenable to psychotherapy (Smith 1958). For many patients, this was also an “admonitory” experience, in which they were profoundly shocked and frightened by their vision of themselves and how alcohol was affecting them. Hoffer and Osmond abandoned the idea of provoking a simulacrum of the delirium tremens in favor of encouraging patients’ self examination of personality problems, and the development of insight into their “dismal present and appalling future”(Osmond 1969). They made no deliberate attempt to produce fear in their patients, since they had noted early in their investigations that making alcoholics afraid “often produces a desperate resolution to go on drinking” (Osmond 1969), and seemed to lead to severe anxiety and poor communication (Smith 1958).

In 1956 Humphry Osmond presented a paper at the New York Academy of Sciences conference entitled: “The Pharmacology of Psychotomimetic and Psychotherapeutic Drugs.” In this paper, which was “a review of the clinical effects of psychotomimetic agents,” Osmond described the major uses of this class of drugs. Some of these uses were the subject of ongoing research: the study of psychopathology through the production of “model psychoses,” the experiential training and education of psychiatrists and psychologists, and use as an adjunct to conventional psychotherapy. Two of the potential uses that he proposed were less well known: exploration of the normal mind under unusual conditions, and discoveries with social, philosophical, and religious implications made while using LSD and other drugs of this class (Osmond 1957). Osmond pointed out that to continue to consider these agents to be primarily “psychotomimetic” begged the question of their other potential uses. To prevent this, he proposed a new name for the class of drugs that would include their capacity to enrich the mind and enlarge the vision: psychedelic, a term coined from Greek roots indicating “manifesting the mind.” Research on the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of the alcoholic continued for the next 12 years, producing innumerable areas of controversy.