And 100 happy returns to Albert Hoffman!
The Guardian
British psychiatrists are beginning to debate the highly sensitive issue of using LSD for therapeutic purposes to unlock secrets buried in the unconscious which may underlie the anxious or obsessional behaviour of some of their patients.
The UK pioneered this use of LSD in the 1950s. But psychiatrists found their research proposals rejected and their work dismissed once “acid” hit the streets in the mid-60s and uncontrolled use of the hallucinogenic drug became a social phenomenon.
Today, on the 100th birthday of Albert Hofmann, the scientist who discovered the mind-expanding properties of lysergic acid diethylamide in Switzerland, one consultant psychiatrist is openly risking controversy to urge that the debate on the therapeutic potential of LSD be reopened. Ben Sessa has been invited to give a presentation on psychedelic drugs to the Royal College of Psychiatrists in March – the first time the subject will have been discussed by the institution in 30 years.
“I really want to present a dispassionate medical, scientific evidence-based argument,” says Dr Sessa. “I do not condone recreational drug use. None of this is tinged by any personal experience.
“Scientists, psychiatrists and psychologists were forced to give up their studies for socio-political reasons. That’s what really drives me.”
LSD was brought to the UK in 1952 by psychiatrist Ronnie Sandison who had visited the labs of the drug company Sandoz, where Dr Hofmann worked. He came home with 100 ampoules in his bag and began to use them at Powick hospital, near Malvern in Worcestershire, on selected patients with conditions such as obsessional hand-washing or anxiety who did not respond to psychoanalysis…
More over at The Guardian