The secret history of psychedelic psychiatry : NeurophilosophyON August 15th, 1951, an outbreak of hallucinations, panic attacks and psychotic episodes swept through the town of Saint-Pont-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 Saint-Pont-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 of psychiatrists
working in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, who pioneered the use
of LSD as a treatment for alcoholism, and claimed that it produced
unprecedented rates of recovery. Their findings were soon brushed under
the carpet, however, and research into the potential therapeutic effects
of psychedelics was abruptly halted in the late 1960s, leaving a
promising avenue of research unexplored for some 40 years.
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