Drug-Induced States Claudio Naranjo EFFECTS OF THE LSD-LIKE PSYCHEDELICS OR HALLUCINOGENS A case may be made for calling this group that of the "hallucinogens," for it was in view of their effect that this word came into use-not in its literal meaning (which would be the property of eliciting true hallucinations), but in that of bringing about hallucination-related or hallucinoid phenomena. if I sometimes call them the "LSD-like" psychedelics rather than the "hallucinogens," it is only to avoid confusion in the mind of readers unfamiliar with my suggested nomenclature, for the term "hallucinogen "-unless specifically defined as I am proposing-might be considered applicable to the fantasy-enhancers as well, and is generally (though somewhat inappropriately) regarded as a synonym for "psychedelic." The group comprises lysergic acid diethylamide and related compounds, mescaline, dimethyl tryptamine (DMT) and related compounds, psilocybin and psilocin, and various phenylisopropylamines, in addition to plants containing some of the above. The drugs in this group differ in the duration of their effect and in subtle characteristics (mescaline, for instance, produces more visual phenomena than psilocybin, the effect of which tends to be more cognitive, and the experiential quality of LSD has been characterized as more "electric" than others); yet they all differ from the feeling- and fantasy-enhancers in that they elicit characteristic perceptual phenomena, may bring about psychotic experiences (including depersonalization, delusions of damnation, messianic ideas, gross misinterpretations of the ongoing situation, etc.), and have the potential to bring about the "psychedelic experience" par excellence-characterized by a combination of contemplative experience, ecstasy, and varying degrees of spiritual insight. The variety of psycho -spiritual states that may be evoked by the hallucinogens has surely been apparent to all those familiar with the domain. In the Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, Masters and Houston (1967) distinguish aesthetic, recollective-analytic, archetypal or symbolic, and integral or mystical experiences. Grof (1975), in Realms of the Human Unconscious, speaks of a psychodynamic or "Freudian" domain, a perinatal or "Rankian" domain, and transpersonal experiences (some of which correspond to the archetypal and thus "Jungian" domain). Following Huxley (1964), I proposed in the Healing Journey (1973) a classification of psychedelic states in general into "heavenly" ones, characterized by the apprehension of intrinsic values (and frequently accompanied by rapture), and "hellish" states, characterized by a near-psychotic intensification of psychopathology. I proposed, too, a further subdivision of the positive feeling states according to the quality of value characterizing the experience; and, influenced in this by the thinking of Scheler and Spranger, I proposed a gamut of value leading from the sensate (pleasure) through aesthetic (beauty) and the social and interpersonal (love) to the religious (holiness associated with the apprehension of Being). This classification would have been more complete had I included, along with the heavens and hells, "purgatory" states, neither wholly positive nor wholly negative but states of satisfaction and dissatisfaction at the same time, characterized by striving and the sense of moving along, working through obstructions. In spite of the validity of such distinctions, expressions such as "archetypal experience," is in other ways a hyper alert state rather than one of obnubilation (the effects of the LSD-like hallucinogens in this regard differ from those of Amanita muscaria, the fly-agaric mushroom, which causes a desire to sleep). The connotation of the word "contemplative" in the spiritual traditions derives in part from the fact that it exists as part of a word-pair, designating a polarity: contemplative/ active. Contemplative experience arises in the practice of meditation, which in turn entails a moving away from the world of action and the senses. Aside from its implication of passivity, the word 14 contemplation" makes reference, in its traditional use, to a spiritual experience; that is, one in which the individual has access to spiritual riches. Also, it is a state in which the habitual duality of subject and object is reduced or may disappear, so that the contemplator is absorbed in the object of his contemplation. In the "hallucinogenic trance," as we may also call this particular effect of the LSD-like psychedelics, the individual feels inclined to lie down and usually to close his eyes, relinquishing every intention aside from that of mere experiencing while the characteristic perceptual and spiritual effects to be described later unfold. When the eyes are kept open, objects become more interesting, as they are regarded in a way different from the habitual-in a "contemplative" manner in the sense of its being gratuitous rather than motivated by the ordinary utilitarian outlook; one in which seeing is its own satisfaction. There is a tendency to linger on things, which either undergo transformations in terms of formal or aesthetic attributes, significance, or, as Huxley (1954) puts it, is-ness. On the affective side, the experience of the body may range from one of oceanic bliss" on the positive side to malaise, localized pains, suffocation, and other painful symptoms on the negative. On the whole, we may say that the body reflects, just as visual perception does, the experiential qualities of heavenly, hellish, and intermediate states-or, to say it in Grof's terms, physical experience reflects the "perinatal matrices." According to him, thus, these experiences of physical distress sometimes suggest the re-experiencing of birth trauma, while the experience of relaxed plenitude suggests life in the womb before the onset of labor. The experience of "purgatory" that lies between these extremes of superabundant well-being and of distress may also be described in reference to the metaphor of birth, for we may attribute it to the fetus as it progresses along the birth canal. Grof (1975, 1980) suggests that the perinatal matrices (i.e., modes of experience related to those experiences surrounding birth) are memories or replays of the past-a hypothesis in line with convincing examples of hallucinogenically induced age regression in other regards though in conflict with the fact that by the time of birth myelinization of the peripheral nerves "psychodymanic experience," and "heavenly state of the religious kind" fail to convey the specificity of archetypal, psychodynamic, or religious states brought about by the action of LSD like psychedelics. This resides, not in the core phenomenon (archetypal-mythical, self insight, or mystical experience proper) but in the context of physical, perceptual, affective, and cognitive phenomena in which it appears embedded. In what follows I will describe the effects of hallucinogens (sensu strictu) in greater detail in regard to behavior, the emotions, perception, thinking, and the spiritual realm proper. By far the most common effect on behavior after a full dosage of LSD or similar hallucinogen is a surrender to what Barber (1970) has labeled "dreamy-detached" feelings, and which might appropriately be called a spontaneous contemplative attitude and state. Words such as "dreamy" or "reverie," I think, fail to do justice to the psychedelic state, which, while involving a rich visual component (either with eyes closed or with eyes open) is not complete. Alternatively, we may conceive that these distinct states are not in essence memories but "mental landscapes" analogous to those surrounding birth-which, precisely by virtue of this analogy, are associated with memories and fantasized reconstructions of the past. Hallucinogen elicited death/rebirth experiences are, I think, experiences pertaining to the temporary "death" of what spiritual traditions have called "ego" (our ordinary identity and what it entails) and the "birth" of deeper layers of one's nature. Yet it is not to be wondered that these experiences that correspond to the perception of a psycho-spiritual death/rebirth process and which echo those of physical birth at a higher octave, so to speak, may become symbolized in these earlier experiences and memories-in the way all experiences under the influence of the hallucinogens tend to become symbolized. A symbol both expresses and has the potential to conceal-and it is my impression that this is particularly the case in regard to the painful experiences of the body, which may include, aside from those suggestive of birth trauma, all sorts of psychosomatic symptoms and seemingly individual aches and muscle tensions. It is a common finding of those involved in psychotherapy with hallucinogens that these ailments constitute a projection upon the body of affective experiences that still have not been confronted, and that they disappear along with the undoing of repression. Striking examples of this may be found in the first-person account Myself and I, by Constance Newland (1963). She discovered, for instance, that her painfully full bladder was an equivalent of sexual arousal, that her excessive sensitivity to pain in the teeth was connected to fantasies of biting, and that her chronic tensional aches in the arms, amplified under LSD into a sensation that she described as the buzzing of an electric saw, disappeared after a therapeutically guided session in which she was able to remember a traumatic event that occurred when she