LSD can cure alcoholics

Posted by Tristram Burden Oct 15, 2006

Recent developments have been made in a strain of research that seemed to shut down almost half a century ago. LSD (Lysergic Acid Diathylamide) has appeared in the news again after continuing research into its curative effects upon alcoholics. A chemical discovered accidentally by Albert Hoffman in 1938, LSD has baffled researchers and underwent a variety of labels before given the numinous and exotic title 'psychedelic'. It's effects upon consciousness proved popular with the 1960's counter-culture, and maintained popularity during the rave culture of the late 80's and early 90's, though usually as little more than a byword for a recreational substance, and rarely available in its purest form.

While LSD is recorded as responsible for an astounding amount of positive psychological effects, cataloged in a number of suppressed or ignored studies, asides from within the personal experiences of either experienced or novice users, it remains a chemical looked upon with great suspicion. While worth bearing in mind the possible traumatic experiences had by some users, such experiences are very often down to carelessness and a lack of accurate education about the full impact of a hit of LSD, not necessarily the fault of the user, but rather an oversight in the culturalisation and socialisation of western youth. LSD itself is not a 'bad drug', but its devastating psychological impact is something that requires due preparation and responsible care, if not guidance by experienced users and trusted responsible acquaintances. Failing that, a strong sense of self at the very least.

The study that has appeared in the news recently, a continuation of British psychologist Humphrey Osmond, belongs to that body of research giving further credence to the immense usefulness of LSD-25. While giving access to states of consciousness usually out of reach on a day-to-day basis, the particular nature of those levels of consciousness is the key to LSD's potential uses. Classed at one stage as a 'psychomimetic', something that mimics psychoses, we must remember that 'psychoses' is a term fit in the eyes of some psychologists to describe the trance of a shaman or the world-view of a ritual magician. Ergo, LSD has the potential to act as a gateway to states of consciousness that might similarly be relative to the religious experience, or the peak-experience as termed by Maslow. These are experiences of immense clarity, which have a lasting impression upon the experiencer, and enable new perspectives, ideas and understandings to enter into the experiential data-bank of the user. The current term used to describe LSD and it's brother's and sisters, is 'psychedelic', a term which translates as 'mind-manifesting', indicative of the effect of the drug to bring the mind into state of absolute nakedness, 'manifest' because one may walk about in it, open up closed doors and build new ones. As much as this is a reason to experience the drug, it is also the same reason to be cautious with it. Some doors remain closed in our minds for a reason, and it is probably the forceful opening of tight-shut secrets which can lead an LSD trip into a confrontation with primal terror and unwanted aspects of ourselves.

As an experience with LSD is tantamount to opening the mind to its widest possible circumference, it is also true that any experience had on LSD will be deep set within the psyche thereafter, like planting a seed deep into the ground. One should perhaps be careful then that what you're planting in there you'd like to grow, otherwise you may have a few poison thorns draped about you for the rest of your days. It is within these mind-manifesting contexts that LSD seems to be arriving back into fold of science, as previously one of its bastard children, perhaps now, as it should always have been, it returns as its golden child, ready and waiting to be taken back into progressive cultural discourse as an enhancer of cultural and social functionality, rather than another bunch of letters unfairly relative to social dis-function.