LSD  The Problem-Solving Psychedelic

P.G. Stafford and B.H. Golightly

Chapter I. The LSD Crisis

The disease is striking in beachside beatnik pads and in the dormitories of expensive prep schools-it has grown into an alarming problem at U.C.L.A. and on the U.C. campus at Berkeley. And everywhere the diagnosis is the same: psychotic illness resulting from unauthorized, nonmedical use of the drug LSD-25...

By best estimates, 10,000 students in the University of California system have tried LSD (though not all have suffered detectable ill effects). No one can even guess how many more self-styled "acid heads" there are among oddball cult groups....

What LSD actually has done... is to produce "florid psychoses with terrifying visual and auditory hallucinations, marked depression, often with serious suicide attempts, and anxiety bordering on panic.... The symptoms may recur in their original intensity long after the last dose of the drug...."

Even junior acid heads boast of taking walloping overdoses. "I've taken as much as 500 micrograms," says one youthful user. "At least that's what I paid for."

Happily, addiction is not a problem. Although repeat users need bigger doses to get an effect, they can "kick it cold" and suffer no withdrawal symptoms. It has no physiologic effect.... (Italics added.)

The spate of publicity regarding LSD was by no means limited to the popular media or to technical journals. Over 2500 books and articles were already in existence when the controversy was at its height. The majority of these were serious inquiries into the effects of the drugs, though few were impartial, however "scientific." This material constitutes a vast literature on the subject, to be sure. It should be the source of enlightenment.

The reasons why it is not are somewhat bewildering. In the first place, although the body of literature is large, it is at the same time narrow in scope, and upon initial examination this flaw is not apparent Initially one is overwhelmed by the prolific writing and its vitality, and inundated by the diversity of the reports. But these reports themselves tend to be of only two types (which primarily accounts for their narrowness): first-person narratives of LSD experiences, and clinical findings. Neither offers completely satisfactory explanations for the drug's action.

LSD easily lends itself to misinterpretation. Even if the extremely difficult problem of communicationfrustrating to every experimenterwere overcome, clear and plausible explanations of the drug's action still would not result. The phenomenon is too complex and too foreign to our culture to be handled in simplistic fashion. Curiously, however, running like a small strain of precious ore through this deposit of prose are specific and impressive proofs for LSD's revolutionary powers. Unfortunately, most of this information seems to have been put down almost incidentally, sometimes almost apologetically, or even as an afterthought.

In the present work the primary interest is in mining the existing material and trying to locate a mother lode. Thus, rather than just another comprehensive examination of LSD, this book is unique in its limited aims. To date, no other book or article has concentrated its explorations in this area.

No LSD investigator, whether from the establishment or the underground, will deny that this chemical can, has and does solve some problems. But what are these problems? They are to be found in all areas of human activity: business, pleasure, sickness, health, birth, death, ad infinitum. Somewhere you will find in the vast body of LSD literature specific reference to the drug's ability to aid in the alleviation of those countless problems by which man is beset.

But before undertaking a rigorous presentation of the evidence for LSD's problem-solving capabilities, some basic principles of the drug's action must be understood.

Footnotes