Psychedelics

Everything about psychedelics from usage to America's liberal attitude towards drugs.

By Eugene Taylor, published on July 01, 1996 - last reviewed on October 01, 2009

First they were in. Then they were out. Now they're back. Only this time it'sdifferent.

Peace Timothy Leary.

Three decades after the hippe psychologist advised a generation to turn on and tune in to LSD and other psychedelics, people are now doing it in droves. The difference is these days no one's dropping out. They don't have to. The world has turned. The goal of psychedelic use, psychospiritual awakening--looking inward, risking chaos, and straggling to overcome our lower nature in order to grasp at higher realities--has the firm endorsement of that bellwether of cultural institutions, the bestseller list.

Increasingly, expansion of awareness seems a necessary condition for everyday life, not a mode of disconnection. That's why a significant number of Americans are now living with the alternative realities originally explored through psychedelic use. Environmental awareness has developed into a whole new movement called ecopsychology, defined as a spiritual-consciousness of the earth. A holistic approach to wellness has moved center stage, along with interest in healthy foods, and physical fitness. Meanwhile, hypnosis, meditation, yoga, and biofeedback--all ways to alter one's consciousness--are now moving onto the national health care agenda as new forms of inexpensive, preventive self-administered medicine.

Psychospiritual awakening has become the watchword of a new psychology. None other than Aldous Huxley echoed such sentiments when, quoting the English poet William Blake, he said, "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." That was in 1954, in The Doors of Perception, a work that provided the first hint of the psychedelic revolution yet to come.

Psychedelics--the word itself--was coined in 1956 by the British psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond and refers to the "mind-altering" properties of naturally occurring hallucinogenic plant substances such as marijuana (a common weed), psilocybin (a cow patty mushroom), peyote (a cactus flower), and LSD (a common bread mold). All can currently be found in parts of the U.S. with a little earnest looking in the wilderness.

Within a few years of Huxley's book, millions of people began experimenting with these substances. Garage laboratories manufacturing LSD sprouted everywhere and people began growing marijuana in their backyards.

"Psychedelic" soon became synonymous with journeys into seemingly uncharted regions of inner experience, the expansion of consciousness, transcendence, and self-knowledge on a grand scale. It stood for altogether new forms of social experimentation in everything from dress and music to sex and civil rights.

Then, almost as suddenly as they had appeared, psychedelics disappeared. Legal measures drove them underground, where their use thrived. But the true products of the revolution, such as new definitions of the family, redefined gender rules, and the revived women's movement, flourished.

Now, psychedelics are back again. But this time, there's a difference:

o While government policies remain conservative, there's a more liberal attitude about drugs among many people. Indeed, now there seems to be two radically different cultures: those who've tried drugs and those who haven't. And the number of people experimenting with drugs continues to grow.

o Recreational use, especially among people under 30, is more cutting edge as new designer drugs synthesized in the laboratory have proliferated.

A recent Columbia University study showed that marijuana consumption has doubled among teenagers. Likewise, the University of Michigan, which has been tracking trends in drug usage, finds it has increased, particularly among high school and college kids.

Perhaps the most overt example of the psychedelic revival can be found at "raves." High-tech, high-decibel, computer-generated music, psychedelic drugs, and marathon dancing swirl continuously for as much as three to four days. On a typical weekend in the San Francisco Bay area, there may be 20,000 to 30,000 teenagers dancing around theclock, 80 percent of them under the influence of drugs.

Another sign of the times is a surge in use of MDMA, a laboratory-synthesized variant of a hallucinogen that naturally occurs in the body. It's the new drug of choice among those who formerly ingested LSD, and went on to pursue chemical-free spiritual awareness. Also known as Ecstasy, it's a cross between a psychedelic and an amphetamine; in the majority of users it creates a sense of loving presence and an improved reorientation toward intimate relationships. And it deepens meditative calmness.

A 1987 survey of Stanford University students showed that 39 percent had taken MDMA at least once. By the end of the 1980s, an estimated 10,000 doses per month were in circulation in the U.S.; by 1993, six million doses a year were manufactured in home-based laboratories.

Even though the Drug Enforcement Agency classified MDMA as a substance with no medical use and high abuse potential in 1986, scientific research is still permitted by the government. But it's been limited almost exclusively to animal studies, according to the California Society of Addiction Medicine.