Psychedelic Healing for the 21st Century: -

By Michael Watts and Gray Jolliffe

This short book is packed with fascinating information about one of the most controversial areas of psychiatry – psychedelic therapy. Research within this field of medicine has recently been resumed, having been banned for nearly half a century, and results of completed studies on the effects of psychedelics on war veterans with intractable PTSD and on subjects with treatment-resistant depression, have been very promising.
Currently, controlled studies on the efficacy of psychedelic treatment for depression are taking place at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the USA and at the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Sciences, at Imperial College London. The results so far suggest that within a decade, psychedelics could become a legal pharmacological treatment for depression and PTSD.
In addition, these substances are known for their ability to dramatically enhance creativity and to provide profound spiritual insights, but perhaps the most fascinating part of this book is the second section which describes the experiences of numerous famous individuals who owe much of their significant success in life to these life-changing chemicals, the list includes:
Apple pioneer, Steve Jobs who credits his outside-the-box perspective to LSD, which bestowed upon him an entirely different vision of existence that inspired a lot of Apple's product inventions and success; Francis Crick, the father of modern genetics who perceived the double helix shape of DNA during an LSD trip. The award-winning cosmologist Carl Sagan who stated: "the Hindu mystical experience" of union with the universe " is pre-wired into us, requiring only 200 micrograms of LSD to be made manifest." Oliver Wolf Sacks, author and Professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University: "I'm glad I had the experience. It taught me what the mind is capable of." Susan Blackmore, English freelance writer, lecturer, author of The Meme Machine who stated: "The ultimate psychedelic, whose discoverer is fit and well at a hundred years old, is LSD...Not only can it induce mystical experiences, but can treat neurosis and alleviate pain and fear in the terminally ill. We may be wasting a potential "wonder drug." Tom Robbins, American author named one of the 100 Best Writers of the 20th Century by Writer's Digest magazine: "Frankly, the day I ingested 300 micrograms of pure Sandoz LSD was the most rewarding day of my life, the one day that I would not trade for any other... psychedelics can enhance the life of any intelligent, courageous person, and they might even represent our last great hope for planetary survival."
And this list also includes numerous other celebrity figures such as: Aldous Huxley; Chemistry Nobel Prize winner, Kary Banks Mullis; VRML inventor Mark Pesce; New York Times best-selling author and doctor, Andrew Weil; Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous; Rupert Sheldrake; Colin Wilson; Walter Houston Clark; Stephen John Fry; Robert Greene; Robin Skynner; Abraham Maslow; Robert Anton Wilson; Huston Smith; Alan Watts; Ken Kesey; Cary Grant; and Time Magazine publisher Henry Luce, who in the 1950's, subsequently wrote and published in Time Magazine, some very positive articles about the drug's potential, in which he praised Sandoz and LSD itself as providing: "an invaluable weapon to psychiatrists."

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookPartnership.com
• Release date: Feb 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781912022052

Michael Watts

Michael Watts is professor of Geography and Chair of Development Studies at the University of California, Berkeley where he has taught for over thirty years. A Guggenheim Fellow in 2003, he served as the Director of the Institute of International Studies from 1994–2004. His research focuses on food and energy security, rural development, and land reform in Africa, South Asia, and Vietnam.

Book preview

Strassman.

INTRODUCTION

This carefully researched text provides a reliable, thought-gripping overview of the status of psychedelic therapy, past and present. More importantly, it outlines fundamental reasons why the general public should enthusiastically support the current renaissance of scientific research into the amazing healing potential of these substances.

This renewed enthusiasm for psychedelics comes at a much needed time, since mankind - more than ever before in the history of our species - is facing, on multidimensional levels, numerous serious threats to its survival, so a brand new vision of reality is needed if we are to have any hope in finding appropriate ways of dealing with our increasing problems.

Over the past 60 years of growth, the Earth’s population has tripled, its insufficient resources are rapidly declining, and many climate scientists now believe that it is too late to undo the considerable damage that has already been caused by deforestation and air-water-soil pollution.

A prime example of this destruction can be seen in the oceans, which absorb as much as 25% of all human carbon dioxide emissions. This gas combines with other elements in the water to form compounds such as carbolic acid, and the steadily increasing ocean acidification is already effectively weakening the skeletal system of many of its residents.

In addition to all this, ecologists speculate that in the foreseeable future, water will inevitably become a precious commodity, like Gold or Oil, and as a result, wars may be fought over who has access to the best water supplies.

And the majority of these planetary crises, current and imminent, are the bitter fruit of our futile attempts to cater for the needs and often selfish desires, of a severely overpopulated, over-demanding species, which is living on a massively under-resourced planet. If this pattern of behaviour continues, then the outlook for the world and it’s inhabitants seems bleak. Psychedelics however may be able to help us break free from our self-destructive habits of living.

The late Robert Muller, Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations for 40 years, is regarded by many as the philosopher of the United Nations. Author of numerous books including New Genesis: Shaping a Global Spirituality, he was also the winner of various prestigious awards including: UNESCO Prize for Peace Education and the Goi Peace Award, 2003.

Muller was convinced that most hostility between, and within nations, is rooted in religious conflict, and he believed that if genuine mystics from the different religions were to unite and teach peace, that potentially this could catalyse in the general population a widespread experience of mystical unity that might prove to be the perfect antidote to the ever-present and clear dangers of religious fundamentalism.

After viewing evidence which demonstrated that psychedelics can help trigger spiritual, mystical experiences with lasting beneficial effects, and in agreement with Einstein’s viewpoint that A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive, Muller successfully helped Rick Doblin, Ph.D., founder and director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), to gain permission from the government to resume psychedelic research.

At this stage it is perhaps of interest for some readers to note that the word psychedelic was first coined in 1956, by British-born Canadian psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond (1917-2004) who suggested it in a single line of verse that he wrote in a letter to Aldous Huxley, "To fathom Hell or soar angelic, Just take a pinch of psychedelic (english: psyche) meaning mind or soul, and dêlos, meaning manifest or visible".

Osmond felt that within the context of psychotherapy, this new term, which means manifests the mind more accurately describes the effects and function of this type of drug than does the standard term hallucinogen.

The therapeutic effects of psychedelics were already very evident in the 1950s through to the mid-1960s, when LSD was legal. Hundreds of clinical trials of psychedelic drugs were carried out, with more than 1,000 scientific publications chronicling the ways that LSD could be used as an aid to make psychotherapy more effective. One of the first doctors to start using the drug was the British psychiatrist Ronald Sandison, who visited Sandoz in 1952 and, impressed by Hofmann’s research, left with 100 vials of what was by then called Delysid. At Powick Hospital in Worcestershire, Dr Sandison immediately began administering the drug to patients who had not been helped by traditional psychotherapy.

After three years, the hospital directors were so pleased with Sandison’s results that they constructed a new clinic specifically for LSD therapy. Patients would arrive in the morning, take their LSD, then rest in private rooms where nurses checked up on them regularly. At 4pm the patients would then discuss their experiences, prior to being driven home.

Psychiatrists were thrilled, finally, to have access to a drug that instantaneously dissolves the ego instead of slowly peeling it away layer by layer, and within the profession, word spread that LSD held the potential to cure alcoholism, schizophrenia, shell shock (now known as post-traumatic stress disorder), and a wide range of other problems. Between 1953 and 1971, the federal government spent $4million USD to fund 116 studies of LSD, involving more than 1700 subjects and a significant number of these individuals experienced very real and lasting therapeutic effects.

In fact, fairly recently, it has come to the attention of today’s general public, that the draconian legislation that rendered psychedelic research illegal for nearly half a century, had not been based on any legitimate scientific evidence whatsoever. Even worse, it entirely ignored the wealth of positive results yielded from the existing clinical data derived from studies carried out by some of the best minds in psychiatry who were funded by the government