Many people know in the fifties and sixties, the government experimented with LSD to test its properties as an agent of war, but few people know that the psychiatric community also took interest. Studies in the fifties showed that using LSD to treat alcoholism resulted in a 50% success rate -shocking compared to the 10% success rate from Alcoholics Anonymous. Scientists in Baltimore have recently taken up this research again to see how effective the drug is in treating alcohol, sedative, opium and heroin addiction.

In the Spring Grove State Hospital in Maryland, researchers provided terminal cancer patients with LSD to see if it could help reduce their anxieties about death. One third of the patients said they felt dramatically less tense, less depressed, less afraid of death and in less pain. Another third reported these conditions reduced moderately and the last group said their condition did not improve at all, but also did not worsen.

LSD was also used for psychotherapy during the sixties. A study of doctors in the UK who treated their patients with the drug showed the majority of them believed the substance was effective and safe in treating patients.

The drug has also proven to be an effective pain reliever for chronic pain. Even at rates below psychedelic dosages, LSD was found to be at least as effective as opiates and much longer lasting.

More recently, Harvard Medical School interviewed cluster headache patients who used LSD to treat their condition and seven out of eight said it relieved the headaches and helped put them in remission. Furthering this research, a study at McLean Hospital found that 53 cluster headache sufferers who took either LSD or magic mushrooms reported beneficial effects and that the quantity of the drug can be far below the psychedelic dosage in order to be effective.