Psychedelics Encyclopedia

Cultural Context, 1 Origin of the Word Psychedelic, 4 Other Terms Preview Proposed, 7 Varieties of "Psychedelics," 9 What are the . a psychedelic drug is one which, without causing Common Effects?, 11 What are the physical addiction, craving, major psysiological disturbances, Benefits delirium, disorientation, or amnesia, more or less reliably to Humanity?, 17 produces thought, mood, and perceptual changes otherwise Counterculture! Influences, 19 rarely experienced except in dreams, contemplative and Questions about Impurity and Other Complications, 21 Use and religious exaltation, flashes of vivid involuntary memory, Misuse, 25 Dealing with and acute psychoses. Difficulties, 26 Drawbacks of Psychedelic Usage, 30 Future Directions, 31 Mind-altering substances have been used in all societies except among the Eskimos and some Polynesians, and thus many of the plants discussed in this book have long and exotic histories. Much of the history, including early New World native use, is undocumented, and much is veiled in legend. We may never know whether Buddha's last meal was of mushrooms ("pig's food"). However, many scholars have now accepted the identification of Fly Agaric mushrooms as the inspirational "Soma" in the world's earliest religious text, the Rig-Veda, and evidence seems strong that ergot, an LSD-like substance, was the mysterious kykeon, used for more than 2,000 years in the annual ancient Greek Eleusinian Mysteries. The anthropologist Weston La Barre characterized the use of mind- altering plants as being the source and mainstay of "the world's oldest pro- fession"—that of the shaman or medicine man. He adds that such a specialist was "ancestor not only to both the modern medicine man or doctor and the religionist priest or divine, but also ancestor in direct lineage to a host of other professional types." Shamanism in the New World was fostered by indigenous psychedelics that are powerful and quite safe. The Old World had to rely on less dependable, more erratic substances, such as hashish, belladonna, thorn apple and Fly Agaric mushrooms. It is now evident that the prescriptions of specific plants in the recipes in witches' brews of the Middle Ages was not as superstitious or random as earlier supposed. After accompanying Columbus on his second voyage, Ramdn Paul brought back word of cohoba sniffing among natives in Haiti. The earliest account of peyote was set down in 1560 in Bernardino de Saha'gun's History of the Things of New Spain. In 1615, botanical notes made by the Spanish physician Francisco Hernandez about the mind-changing effects of morning glory seeds were published. The first report on use ofAmanita muscaria mushrooms among Siberian tribesmen didn't appear until 1730. Forty-one years later, a Swedish botanist accompanying Captain James Cook on his first voyage to the 1 2 Preview psychedelizatton of Society 3 Hawaiian Islands described kava-kava and the natives'ceremonial use of this the world's first psychedelic compound in crystalline form. Louis Lewin, substance. One year later, Sir Joseph Priestly, who first isolated oxygen, pro- another German important in the development of modern psychopharma- duced nitrous oxide (N^O). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, cology, traveled to the southwestern United States and brought peyote back Baron Alexander von Humboldt, after whom the Pacific current is to laboratories in Berlin. Eight years later, Lewin's rival, Arthur Heffter, named, gathered together the first "scientific" report on the use oiyopo isolated "mezcalin" from Lewin's specimens. After fractionating the snuff in the Amazonian region. alkaloids, or nitrogen-containing compounds, from this cactus, Heffter was Around the middle of the nineteenth century, the pace of knowledge of able to locate the source of peyote's psychoactivity only by trying the various psychoactive substances greatly quickened. In 1839, W. B. O'Shaughnessy fractions himself. introduced Cannabis indica into the Western pharmacopoeia, and five years Tlie first account of the peyote experience from someone who had later Theophile Guautier established Le Club des Haschischins in Paris. In actually tried it appeared in 1896. This came from a distinguished author 1851, the British explorer Richard Spruce first observed ayahuasca practices and Philadelphia physician, S. Weir Mitchell, who then forwarded "peyote among the South American natives; four years later, Ernst Freiherr von buttons" to the prominent psychologists William James and Havelock Ellis. Bibra published an account of seventeen plants capable of affecting the After ingesting them in his flat in London, Ellis called the resulting exper- mind. Urging others to study this field, he described it as "oromising for re- iences "an orgy of visions" and "a new artificial paradise" (from the titles of his two reports). James, however,got a severe stomachache after eating only search and fraught with enigmas." one, declaring that he would "take the visions on trust." In 1864, die earliest description of psychoactive effects from the African Scientific curiosity about peyote dimmed shortly after the turn of the bush Tabernantha iboga appeared. It wouldn't be until near the end of the century but was revived in 1927 by the French pharmacologist Alexandre nineteenth century, however, that peyote investigations eventually produced Rouhier, who gave an extraction from the cactus to several students and published accounts of their "exotic" visions. A year later, Kurt Beringer published his 315-page study Der Meikaltnrausch (Mescaline Inebriation). A year after that, an English monograph that attempted to catalog the elements of "mescal visions" was published. By this time, a continuing interest in what we now call psychedelic states was emerging. However, there was little indication yet that psychedelks would eventually affect and enchant a great many people. That eventuality began to take shape in 1938, when the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann synthesized d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate—LSD-25 In mid-April 1943, Hofmann apparently absorbed some of this compound through the skin of his hands and thus learned what animal tests had failed to show: that this substance was a mind-altering drug that had about 4,000 times the potency of mescaline. In 1947, Werner A. Stoll, the son of Hofmann's superior, broadcast news of this discovery in scientific literature. Within two years, Drs. Nicholas Bercel of Los Angeles and Max Rinkel of Boston brought LSD to the United States. The change that would take place in our thinking about molecules and their ability to affect the mind was catalyzed during the mid-1950s. In a slender, much noted book, Aldous Huxley described how his "doors of perception" had been cleansed by 500 milligrams of mescaline sulfate. In May 1957, Life magazine published the third part of a "great adventures" series with ten pages of color photographs: R. Gordon Wasson described how he had become one of the first two white men to be "bemushroomed." Since Ernst Friherr von Bibra laid the foundation for modern then, knowledge about psychedelics has grown steadily, as have the numbers pharmacological studies in his 1855 Die narkotischen Genuss- of people interested in them. mittel und der Mensch (Narcotic Inebriants [•'mediums of enjoyment"] and Humanity). from "Psychotomimetic" to "Psychedelic" Prew Origin of the Word Psychedelic In the early 1950s, researchers Humphry Osmond and John Smythies wrote a paper about the mental effects of mescaline that came to the attention of Aldous Huxley, who invited Osmond to visit him if he should be in the Los Angeles area. Huxley's wife, Maria, was initially apprehensive about such a meeting, fearing that Osmond "might wear a beard." When Osmond did go to L.A. for a psychological conference, Maria was satisfied that he was not a Bohemian or a mad scientist (he didn't have a beard), and he stayed with the Huxleys. Maria, ironically, finally asked about getting some mescaline for Aldous. Osmond's reaction to the proposal was favorable, with one reservation: The setting could hardly have been better, Akious seemed an ideal subject, Maria eminently sensible, and we had all taken to each other, which was very important for a good experience, but I did not relish the possibility, however remote, of being the man who drove Aldous Huxley mad In the literature then available about what we now call psychedelic drugs, the term most commonly used to describe the effects was psychoto- Humphry Osmond, an early LSD, mescaline, morning mimetic (meaning psychosis-mimicking). Yet it is evident from Huxley's glory seed and adrenolutin researcher, proposed the description in The Doors of Perception that when he tried mescaline sulfate word psychedelic. he was not going through some kind of "imitation psychosis." Huxley believed he had experienced something akin to mystical experience. He was considered an authority on the subject, being the author of one of the classics in this field, (soul) and delein, to make manifest, or dehttn, to show, reveal—was first The Perennial Philosophy. proposed in 1956 by Osmond. Osmond was already sensitive to the lack of an adequate term for the Huxley took the lead, proposing words derived from roots relating to mental state induced by mescaline and LSD. He and his colleague Abram "spirit" or "soul." He invented the word phanerothyme and encased it in a Hoffer had been observing LSD's effects in the treatment of acute alcoholism, couplet for Osmond's consideration: and the states produced in their subjects were not as expected. Having read To make this trivial world sublime, Take in the literature that LSD produced temporary psychosis, they had reasoned half a gramme of phanerothyme. that such a substance could be used to touch off a kind of artificial and con- Osmond has since remarked that the word Huxley selected was too beautiful. trollable delirium tremens. About 10 percent of those who experience d.t.'s He replied: never drink again.

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