a spring day in 2010, “Sandra,” then a 63-year- On old ice-skating instructor Trip to the Doctor with short graying hair and an impish smile, received her diagnosis: ovarian cancer, stage 1C. The rock-hard tumor Once taboo, psychedelics are making growing inside her abdomen was surgically removed almost immediately. She spent an enlightening medical comeback the next several months soldiering through by Jennifer Bleyer exhausting rounds of chemotherapy. Oddly, it was only once she was in remission that Photographs by Matthew Septimus the worst began. Sandra found herself crippled with anxiety. An online support group for ovarian cancer patients exacerbated her worry as other women warned that it was not a question of if but when her cancer would return. She ate compulsively, which compounded her fear—the stomach pains she got once from scarfing down an entire bag of Halloween candy felt like a sure sign that the cancer was back. In the days leading up to her regular oncology appointments, she nearly hyperventilated with terror. On one such visit to the NYU Cancer Institute last spring, Sandra mentioned her anxiety to a nurse practitioner who told her about an unusual research project happening at the university. It was a study to assess the potential of psilocybin—a psychoactive compound found naturally in a wide variety of mushrooms—to alleviate psychological distress in cancer patients. Once in her college days, Sandra had tried mescaline, a psychedelic found in peyote and other cacti, and experienced a bad trip. She had felt trapped in a waking nightmare that didn’t end for nearly 24 hours, until someone gave her some Thorazine to force her to sleep. The idea of taking a similar drug made her nervous, but her anxiety was so crushing she had little to lose. That was how she came to be lying on a couch a few months later in a warm, silent room at the Bluestone Center for Clinical Research, a drug trial facility within NYU’s College of Dentistry. Wearing eyeshades and headphones, Sandra sensed herself being launched into a dark, infinite void. It was terrifying. She felt as if she was trapped in the hold of a ship, tossing Patients in the NYU violently in a storm. A panicked thought Psilocybin Cancer crossed her mind: Am I breathing? She Anxiety Study begin their forced herself to moan as she exhaled just hallucinatory experience to make sure that she wasn’t suffocating. wearing eyeshades and headphones as Soon, Sandra saw her own body. There doctors encourage was a black mass beneath her rib cage. She them to bear witness steeled herself and confronted the mass, to an inner world. 30 / SPRING 2013 / NYU NYU / SPRING 2013 / 31 recognizing it immediately as a vivid medicine at NYU, and the director of the accounts, however, their entry into modern became synonymous with everything that In an act nodding to manifestation of her own fear. Her fury Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse psychiatry didn’t begin until April 19, culturally earth-shattering era came to indigenous cultures that use psychedelics, boiled over. She yelled, “Get out! I won’t be at Bellevue Hospital, found it curious that 1943, when a Swiss biochemist named represent. patients in the NYU eaten alive!” In an instant, the black mass in his many years of treating addicts, he Albert Hofmann at Sandoz Laboratories Yet alongside promises of awakening study are presented was gone. had never seen one who was addicted to ingested a tiny amount of a chemical he came apocryphal stories of young people their psilocybin pill in “Then I started thinking about my psychedelics. had synthesized called d-lysergic acid jumping off buildings and burning their a ceramic chalice. family,” she remembers. “I was just In 2006, Ross was working under diethylamide, or LSD, which the company retinas by staring at the sun. In 1969, the overwhelmed with love. Totally bathed in the supervision of Jeffrey Guss, a clinical was developing as a potential circulatory Manson family’s grisly murders and the love. It wasn’t just my love for my children assistant professor of psychiatry who had and respiratory stimulant. Hofmann’s stabbing death of a fan at a Rolling Stones and my husband and my dearest friends— a long-standing interest in spirituality and experience was indescribably powerful concert were both linked to LSD. Whatever it was their love for me. It was all part of consciousness. One day, Guss (GSAS ’05) and surreal—he was certain he had therapeutic potential psychedelics held the same thing. I felt timelessness, that mentioned something called ayahuasca, become psychotic. He went on to report faded beside their perceived danger. I was part of an eternal existence. It was a psychoactive brew derived from an it to the scientific community, which Drug panic culminated in the passage the most magical, wonderful experience Amazonian plant that was rumored to developed a keen interest. of the Controlled Substances Act of I’ve ever had in my life.” cure addiction. Ross had never heard of it, By the 1950s, Sandoz was 1970, which established the federal five- manufacturing LSD for use in experiments tiered schedule of drug classifications; across Europe and North America. psychedelics, including LSD and “I felt timelessness, that I was More than a thousand clinical reports psilocybin, were categorized as Schedule part of an eternal existence,” about psychedelic research appeared I, meaning that they had a high potential in scholarly journals from the 1950s for abuse and no accepted medical says former patient Sandra. through the early ’70s, and as Ross use. The door on psychedelic research discovered, tens of thousands of subjects effectively slammed shut. realm of research as a serious scientist with ethnic-printed pillows, shelves Even months after the psilocybin’s but their conversation piqued his interest ingested LSD and other hallucinogens and not be tarred as a freak. He sought stocked with oversize books of Tibetan immediate afterglow had worn off, Sandra and he started researching beliefs about to examine its effects on alcoholism, surprised as Ross was to out Charles Grob, the head of child art, framed landscape photographs, warm felt more patient, calm, and centered the healing power of hallucinogens. He depression, schizophrenia, autism, and unearth this chapter in and adolescent psychiatry at Harbor- pools of lamplight, Buddha figurines, and, than ever before. And somehow, her fear was shocked by what he discovered. death anxiety. In 1958, the American American psychiatry, he UCLA Medical Center, who had started on dosing days, fresh fruit and flowers. of a cancer recurrence had disappeared “I felt like an archaeologist,” Ross Psychiatric Association held a conference Aswas intrigued to learn that research had conducting psychedelic research in the Notwithstanding the lovely room, completely. says. “American psychiatry looked very highlighting LSD psychotherapy, which quietly begun again. It started as a trickle mid ’90s. “He seemed like such a nice, psilocybin does present risks. Although seriously into the therapeutic applicability was thought to offer unprecedented in the early 1990s, when a psychiatrist normal guy who lived in the suburbs,” it is not known to induce addiction, only thing that Stephen of hallucinogen treatment models for access to the unconscious. Time and Life at the University of New Mexico got Ross says. “Not some fringe character.” overdose, or withdrawal symptoms, some Ross learned about a quarter century. There were tens of magazines covered the drug regularly and federal approval to examine the effects of With Grob’s encouragement, Ross, research has suggested it can bring about The psychedelic drugs thousands of research participants in the enthusiastically. Even the CIA developed dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a powerful Guss, and another colleague, Anthony prolonged psychosis in people with a during his training as a psychiatrist United States, and my field of addiction an interest in the drug, testing its psychedelic that occurs throughout Bossis (GSAS ’91), a clinical assistant personal or family history of major mental was that they were highly dangerous. and alcohol was the most studied capabilities for mind control on unwitting the botanical world, on hundreds of professor of psychiatry and a palliative illness, so such patients are carefully A particularly bad taboo enveloped indication. And here it was, completely subjects as part of a covert operation volunteers. Soon, other scientists were care expert, joined together to propose screened out of the study. In the session LSD because it was known to trigger buried and suppressed.” called Project MKUltra. granted licenses for human subject a double-blind, placebo-controlled study itself, there may be some physical side psychosis. Yet Ross, a trim 42-year-old Indigenous cultures had used As psychedelic research proliferated, studies of Schedule I drugs, including Captionof psilocybin here n this treatment size and style.for anxiety Caption in here n effects, such as nausea, dizziness, and associate professor of psychiatry, child psychedelics for millennia as sources another avenue developed that would psilocybin and MDMA, the club drug thislate-stage size and style.cancer patients. In early tremors, but the more pronounced and adolescent psychiatry, and oral of divination and ritual healing. By all change the course of history. In 1960, two better known as Ecstasy. 2007, they received an investigational hazards are psychological. Periods of psychologists based at Harvard, Timothy Interesting results began to emerge. drug license from the Food and Drug transient anxiety can occur as patients PHOTO © MARTIN BOND/ALAMY © MARTIN PHOTO Leary and Richard Alpert (now known At the Johns Hopkins University School of Administration and the Drug Enforcement navigate the challenging psychological as Ram Dass), initiated the Harvard Medicine, for instance, a controlled study Administration, as well as approvals from material related to cancer.