THE PSYCHODRAMA OF THE LSD EXPERIENCE-SOME COMMENTS ON THE BIOLOGICAL MAN

Abstract

Although d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25) was first formulated in 1938 and its hallucinogenic properties accidentally discovered in 1943, this amazing drug has been relegated to the laboratory for the most part. It has been viewed generally as an agent to produce a "model psychosis" from which investigators hopefully could learn some of the secrets of schizophrenia. LSD has been ignored as a therapeutic agent even though it has a striking lack of toxicity while other drugs with definite and serious toxic potentials have come into common clinical use (phenothiazines, Iproniazid, MAO inhibitors). Through 1959 some 700 scientifc papers pertaining to LSD have been published, but it has not been until the last 10 years that this twenty-three year old drug has had any appreciable use as a therapeutic tool. Since then a small number of clinicians have made cautious therapeutic use of this potent preparation often with unexpected and "unexplainable" positive results (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25). Speculations as to the reasons for the relative timidity in the use of LSD are interesting but are not within the scope of this paper.