 hallucination is defined as an apparent perception, as by sight or hearing, for which there is no real or external cause. From this word is derived the name given to a special group of drugs, the hallucinogens. You don't, I don't usually see something that's an actual real thing that I could describe as, you know, sometimes one time I saw a lot of faces, just all these faces appeared in front of me. And they were children's faces and oriental faces and old faces and just all kinds of different faces in front of me. And one time I looked in the mirror and I saw just my face just went through all these changes of different emotions and ages and you know I could feel all of the things that I saw. Among these drugs the hallucinogens are included mescaline, a chemical taken from the peyote cactus, psilocybin extracted from a variety of Mexican mushroom, DMT synthesized from the compound tryptamine and of course LSD-25 a derivative of lysergic acid and currently the best known of the hallucinogens. For the very beginnings of unrecorded time men have reached for substances in the world around them that would alter, extend and materially change their perception of reality. The reasons, loneliness and fear, boredom and a desire for the new and the unknown, exploration and experimentation. The reasons as varied and as many as the grains of sand on a beach. In 1965 because I was curious about it I had several friends who had taken it and they told me that they had you know very good experiences with it and I was just curious. Well I was curious what I read what I've heard and if it could help I was looking for I was just looking for something. Sort of because I had heard it makes you not only closer with yourself but with everybody this sort of love-peace type thing and I really wanted to find out if this was true. It was a kick it was a thrill you know when I first started taking it was to explore myself. Well I found I could only go so far before I just ran dead up against myself and I couldn't go any farther and then after that I just started taking it for kicks and just to do something. Some have used these drugs to journey into the uncharted tunnels of the mind in search of medical and scientific truth. Others look behind the curtain just for kicks. Whatever the reason the fact of the matter is the use of these drugs is on the rise and it would seem valuable and interesting to inquire into cause and effect. Since LSD is the hallucinogen drug currently most popular and in greatest demand we will center our attention here and later draw broad conclusions concerning all of the mind-bending drugs. As a starter here are some hard facts worth considering. LSD is incredibly powerful eating or injecting even a smaller quantity of LSD as one two hundred and eighty thousandth of an ounce can cause such symptoms as hallucination distortion panic impulses toward violence suicidal acts and psychosis. Today we know quite a bit about what it does but very little about how it does it. Scientific studies have shown that the physical effects of LSD include an increase in blood pressure heart rate and blood sugar. These physiological changes are often accompanied by nausea chills flushes irregular breathing trembling and sweating. Recent research on animals has shown that LSD may cause cell damage and lead to serious abnormalities and malformations in the offspring. In one study four or five pregnant animals were given a single injection of LSD. The results showed early abortion still born and under developed offspring. In the culture of human blood cells it was found that LSD damaged the chromosomes in the white cells. In addition to these physical symptoms there is clear evidence of serious psychological and emotional disturbances resulting from even a single use of LSD. The group use of the hallucinogens at parties is becoming a familiar part of the scene. An atmosphere is created and mass use of the drug becomes the central factor in the lives of many young men and women. The problem is that while the drug is not physically addicting there is considerable evidence that it can cause psychological dependence. So let's count the cost and take a good look at the results. I remember once it was I wasn't using LSD it was peyote which is reasonably similar and I was in bed and I was in bed with a young lady and I turned and I looked at her face and her face distorted into sort of a flesh dripping monster face. Features became drawn and like jowls hung and she grew fangs and I quickly turned my head away and I told me that this couldn't be so and for about an hour I wouldn't look at her face again. It was really frightening. I could see all around me no matter which way I was facing. It was just real frightening. I went to this survival land and I was afraid everyone was going to go there and things were never going to be the same and that everyone was going to become real vicious and hateful and just climb on top of each other to get what they wanted and I never thought the world was going to be any different than that. Everything vibrates. I can I look at chairs and they I can see the waves and it's pulsating vibrating and this I can everything turns into vibrations. It's like everything is falling apart. I have an eye and an electronic microscope and I can see all the atoms in everything. Everything pulsates. I took the acid around two in the morning and started reading this book and there are sections in it that give instructions to a person who is dead and they tell him to do certain things and hang on to certain things and let go of other certain things letting just allowing the experience to happen to you naturally and in the course of that I got very confused as to whether I was alive or whether I was dead and it was really very very far out to just not know whether I was alive or dead and so if I'm dead what is what is happening what's been happening with my life if I've been dead all this time you know what is the truth behind all of this. All the results are not yet in. The evidence is inconclusive. The only thing we know for sure is that we just don't know enough in carefully controlled experiments. Interesting results have been reported on the therapeutic use of LSD with a mentally ill, the drug addict, the terminal cancer patient and in the VA hospital in Topeka, Kansas a special research program for alcoholics. Well this this program was started in January of this year where we begin treating five patients for 26 days. We bring them in on one Monday and they spend one week of getting acquainted and having all the tests and examinations done to keep them busy for the whole week, day and night practically. The second Monday we give them a small dose of LSD in the five man ward together. This is to help the group pull together and in their group experience during his 26 days to also get some good from this. Then the third Monday we give them a larger dose individually and have each one of them cared for by one of these teams who have associated with them and they give them their complete support and this is where we aim for the so-called psychedelic experience. It seems to work pretty well of course it takes time to work through. Also in this program we bring these men back every four months or three days and this follow-up is quite important. Some of the things that are outstanding is I know I kept fighting the religious music. I didn't know why then but Dr. Coran kept urging me to find out why I was fighting this and I remember I was just really scared to death. The thing that affected me as far as the first patient is concerned was the openness which he talked with me. The quality also seemed to be more realistic than he has shown before. Qualities in my head, the good qualities of course virtue, love, trust. Then I seen the other ones hate, anger, distrust. I seen them all in my head and it was like I was strangling myself like I had to get rid of all the bad qualities and I was strangling myself fighting against them. And especially the looking at the two sides in his head in this process these things were thought about rather deeply and the thing that makes the difference here is the emotion that goes along with them. And I just reached up and it was like somebody grabbed me and brought me up. And I interpret this as for the first time in my life I wanted love and I think this is the thing that was probably my biggest problem is that I thought everybody was fortunate on me and I wasn't going to let them. But it's not a question. I think from hearing this man report his experience that there definitely is a change as of now for prognosis is concerned time. There are currently over 50 research projects in progress under the auspices of the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute of Mental Health. All part of our continuing search to discover more about the hallucinogens. The questions remain. The mind bending drugs seem to offer so much but what do they really deliver? As to what it has to offer that's a difficult question because what we've seen here have been some things that I don't think most kids thought they were getting when they took the drug. We've seen some kids that have had prolonged psychosis. Some have had to go to state hospitals. Some have been treated for two or three months and have been able to leave UCLA. Some of them have had severe depressions. Some have been very confused and some of the groovy hallucinations and the colors that they wanted they couldn't stop. They got tired of it after 12 or 18 hours but they couldn't stop the colors. How do they work and what are the long range effects of this drug on human personality? Well we don't know a great deal about long range effects. People always are asking about chronic brain damage. What we do know first of all is that the electroencephalogram or brain wave test. On this we see in electrodes that are on the scalp and also depth electrodes planted inside the brain. We see changes from LSD in man and animals after a normal dose and these changes last from one to two weeks after administration. In addition we also see the reoccurrences. You take LSD once, the effect wears off in 12 to 16 hours then up to a year later either with stress or without stress without ever taking the drug again you have the same reoccurrences the people call them flashes or flashbacks. Reoccurrences of all the LSD symptoms in their original intensity. Certainly this implies that something chronic is going on in the brain. Do these drugs really make possible a richer more productive happier life? When we follow them along what we're impressed with is their whole style of life may change that instead of being involved in productive activity they claim that they feel better and yet this feeling better is alongside of a business of where they've withdrawn from life they're disregarding their personal appearance they don't really care about how they function and the rest of the world and they're involved in the kind of a pseudo-philosophic concern with life and themselves with a real absence of contact with other human beings. So it's this interesting business of a kind of withdrawal and the statement of this kind of life makes them feel much better and more insightful. Should the federal government exercise any control over these drugs and if so why? It's a simple matter from our point of view that you can't let something get out in a general distribution until it has shown some therapeutic potential and it is shown it under certain conditions and you can predict fairly well what's going to happen when you give this drug to a large number of people. This hasn't been shown yet so we have to be very careful and trying to carry out the necessary research that's going to establish whether or not it has a significant therapeutic potential for people. If it does... Questions that must be answered and because we do not know enough the United States government controls the manufacture and use of this drug in the interest of all the people. Like all the new drugs the government feels that a reasonable degree of controlled scientific investigation must provide the answers. LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, DMT and the other hallucinogens. The mind-bending drugs. Do they extend the range of the human mind or do they simply offer an easy escape from the demands of this world and time? Make love and play the guitar and eat, go down to the beach and go swimming and occasionally write some things when I feel like writing and think about how I'm going to get a little more money to not starve to death. It gets you out of that whole intellectual academic framework that you've been taught to be in all the years that you've gone to school. Not only emotional hangers but social hang-ups don't do this and don't do that and you shouldn't associate with these people and the things that Maurice you might say that I brought up with. I just get flashes of people seeing me and it's kind of a schizophrenic thing. In a way I want people to see me and sometimes I don't. I'd get up and I'd feel like someone had a rawhide band around my forehead and it was just such a pressure that by afternoon I'd be crying so every morning I'd wake up with this pressure and every afternoon I'd cry. To make possible creative achievement and a more valid and intense perception or do they merely substitute an unreal fantasy world for the sometimes harsh facts of reality. Oh yes I think that I experience things much more intensely now than I mean I've hallucinated without having any drugs since I've taken LSD. I had very vivid light experiences. Sometimes I went into lights that are brighter than the sun and I see patterns in everything dirt trees there's patterns everywhere. And right then I hallucinated a fish that just came and swallowed the worm and I said oh boy this is it this stuff is really as good as they say it is. Drugs are going to flip a lot of people out and probably kill a lot of people but if they haven't the sense to find out all there is that's been written about anything they're going to use and if they haven't the discretion to decide whether or not in the final analysis they're capable of handling it then that's their problem. They will flip out and that's how it is. Broaden and increase the life experience or do they rather contract the user's world until it centers totally and wholly around the drug. Yeah I was looking for a lot of things because I was really strung out at that time on not finding anything in life that was too interesting. A great great fear of being alone just I could be with a group of people but I couldn't communicate to them. Well what what can scare you is that all structure can break down everything can become one and that's sort of scary. Another thing that can happen is when you're really far out things just can disappear. Because as you suggested I'm one allergic to it and two I don't like to even entertain the notion that that sort of flip out may occur again. I'm not afraid of anything anymore which is you know has good points and it's bad points on especially you know not afraid to die. I became suicidal for a while and every now and then go back to there. The true potential of the hallucinogenic drugs remains unmeasured and largely unknown. The danger of lasting physical and psychological damage to the user remains an important factor in the rising use of these drugs. I think a lot of kids say that at first and then after they're through talking to Dr. Fisher and I they change their mind because we certainly think rebellion is a very healthy thing and we like rebellion and we think great changes in society come out of rebellion and we think that we adults have kind of screwed things up. We haven't done a very good job in the adult world with the with the bomb hanging over us in Vietnam with our crazy ideas about censorship our crazy sexual attitudes our abortion laws we haven't done a very good job. However I do think that fooling with LSD is like Russian roulette. I don't think it's like swallowing goldfish I don't think it's spinning a hula hoop or crowding a lot of people into a telephone booth. I think unfortunately this can be a permanent long-lasting damaging situation so I'm all for rebellion. I think a great deal of good can come out of it. I hope people who are considering using LSD however will think of some of these things we don't know them all we do know a few though and one of them ones that we really know is that they may be damaging themselves permanently. The facts of the matter suggest caution and a careful counting of the cost.