The secret history of psychedelic psychiatry – Neurophilosophy

This article will be freely available, with registration, until September 23.  See the Table of Contents for more information on this Blog Focus, and read the other blog posts: Serotonin, Psychedelics and Depression (by Neuroskeptic) Ketamine for Depression: Yay or Neigh? (by The Neurocritic) Visions of a psychedelic future (by Vaughan Bell) Update: I summarize all four posts in this article for The Guardian, and there’s more coverage of the Blog Focus at 3 Quarks Daily, The Atlantic (Alexis Madrigal and Andrew Sullivan), Boing Boing and The Great Beyond.  ___________________________ ON August 15th, 1951, an outbreak of hallucinations, panic attacks and psychotic episodes swept through the town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France, hospitalizing dozens of its inhabitants and leaving five people dead. Doctors concluded that the incident occurred because bread in one of the town’s bakeries had been contaminated with ergot, a toxic fungus that grows on rye. But according to investigative journalist Hank Albarelli, the CIA had actually dosed the bread with d-lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD), an extremely potent hallucinogenic drug derived from ergot, as part of a mind control research project. Although we may never learn the truth behind the events at Pont-Saint-Esprit, it is now well known that the United States Army experimented with LSD on willing and unwilling military personnel and civilians. Less well known is the work of a group...
Source: PharmaGossip - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs