Psychedelics and psychosis: LSD and changing ideas of mental illness, 1943--1966

Scientific and psychiatric research conducted with psychedelic substances during 1943--1966 when LSD was legal helped redefine paradigms of mental illness. The Cold War psyche was upended in its confrontation with the psychedelic sensorium, which to the uninitiated seemed to be a form of madness. LSD played a role in the redefinition of madness by becoming a tool in psychedelic therapy in the 1950s, which many individuals undertook with the goal of achieving personal growth. Many psychedelic pioneers were influenced by the template Aldous Huxley created for the psychedelic experience in his book The Doors of Perception. LSD sessions prompted insight, changes in behavior, and lifestyle changes for individuals seeking answers to questions about their lives, the nature of reality and man's place in the cosmos. Psychedelic experiences assured individuals of the value of intuitive, subjective insight, and encouraged a shift away from the supposed objectivity of rational thought as a way to interpret the world. These insights and the realization that a chemical event could shift perception so dramatically prompted a shift toward a biochemical theory of mental illness. Based on their experience of chemically altered consciousness, many psychedelic pioneers believed that the psychedelic experience provided experiential evidence that man's sensory capacities were as yet underdeveloped. This theory was eclipsed by popular conceptions equating the psychedelic sensorium with psychosis, even though the conclusion that LSD could induce insanity contradicted the argument that the drug was useless for psychiatric research because it did not mimick psychosis. In the meantime, chemist Dilworth Wayne Woolley proposed a new theory of the biochemical origin of mental illness based on his research with LSD. Woolley's theory led to fruitful psychiatric research. However, psychedelic research could not be understood by those who had not experienced the psychedelic realm, threatened current paradigms of psychosis, could not be assimilated to medical models, and was restricted by the 1962 Amendments to the Food and Drug Act. In hearings held in 1966, Congress deemed LSD too dangerous for further research. Although criminalized in 1966, LSD helped change paradigms of mental illness and proposed new interpretations of reality and the human sensorium.