Back to the Future — The Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Drugs

In The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley described his trial of mescaline as “the most extraordinary and significant experience available to human beings this side of the Beatific Vision.” His exegesis was preceded by the synthesis of the hallucinogen lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) by Sandoz chemist Albert Hoffman in 1938 and was followed by Hoffman’s extraction of psilocybin from Psilocybe mexicana in 1959.1 The convergence of scientific research and natural substances historically used by Indigenous peoples in healing and religious rituals sparked interest in what the British psychiatrist Sir Humphrey Osmond termed psychedelic (Greek for “mind manifesting”) drugs. Excitement over . . .