Psychedelic Roots: A Brief History of Hallucinogenic Therapy

This article is the first part in an extended series on the history of psychedelics. Historian Nicolas Lewkowicz explores the early foundations for psychedelic research that were established in the mid-20th century and some of psychedelia’s founding figures.

The first uses of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes began in the early 1950s. Across Europe and the United States, people were severely traumatized in response to the horrors of World War Two. There was also a widespread environment of fear due to the Cold War tensions between the USA and the USSR, leading to high levels of fear and anxiety.

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These social and political fears sparked a widespread search for coping mechanisms in a volatile social space. With the cultural revolution of the 1960s, people also began to question traditional societal norms. The questions and experimentation of the age prompted a drive for self-awareness that motivated the search for an expansion of consciousness.

During the 1950s, psychedelic therapy began its foundational and pioneering work thanks to researchers like Albert Hofmann, John Smythies, Ronald Sandison and Humphry Osmond. Although they worked within different fields, these ground-breaking pioneers were united through their interest in finding new treatments for addiction and mental illness.

The main rationale for early psychedelic research was that using psychedelic substances, like LSD and mescaline, could correct the chemical imbalances that contribute to addiction and mental illness. We now have increasing empirical evidence that this may be true. For instance, a 2020 study found that psilocybin "can provide effective relief for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and treatment-resistant depression, respectively.” Additionally, there is a growing body of evidence about the potential of psychedelics for treating substance abuse.

In this era, several key figures paved the way for the research that was to come. One of the most significant early contributors was Albert Hofmann, who first synthesized LSD in the late 1930s. Hofmann accidentally discovered LSD in the lab, but came to regard the psychedelic experience in otherworldly terms. Although Hofmann was committed to empirical science, he came to believe that it was not just the body and the mind that were being rewired due to the use of psychedelics; Hofmann claimed that there was also a healing of the soul taking place due to that experience [3]. In his autobiography, LSD—My Problem Child, Hofmann states an early psychedelic creed:

“We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation.” [4]

Hofmann was not the only person to become intrigued by the healing potential of psychedelics. Some in the medical profession began to take psychedelics seriously in the 1950s. In his clinical work at St. George's Hospital, London, John Smythies observed the possibility that schizophrenia might be a metabolic abnormality that generated a substance in the brain that was chemically similar to mescaline. This discovery opened the path for a neuropharmaceutical treatment of addiction. Smythies’s work paved the way for the idea that psychedelics are crucial for identifying, understanding, and treating a wide range of mental disorders.

Ronald Sandison was another important figure in the use of psychedelics for psychotherapeutic purposes. In the early 1950s, after meeting with Albert Hofmann, Sandison offered LSD to people who were not responding to treatment of depression and neurosis [5]. Sandison also opened the first LSD unit at a British hospital, which created immense enthusiasm in the medical profession in various parts of the world.

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Humphry Osmond played a pivotal role in establishing a research culture in the field of psychedelics. Osmond first coined the term “psychedelics” in order to refer to substances that could induce creative and/or soothing manifestations for the mind. “Psychedelic” is a term of Greek origin, combining the words psyche (mind) and delein (to manifest). 

As part of his work at the Weyburn Mental Hospital in Saskatchewan, Canada, Osmond experimented with psychedelics with mental illness patients. Osmond claimed that schizophrenia arose from distortions in the perception of the reality experienced by people afflicted with this illness. Accordingly, he theorized that psychedelics had the potential to be used as a mind-expanding vehicle for redressing the chemical imbalances that gave rise to that perceptual distortion. 

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Interestingly, as in the case of Albert Hofmann, Humphry Osmond regarded psychedelics as a tool to reach a mystical experience, as well as to treat mental disorders. He recognized that the substances had the potential of inducing a complete change in how individuals saw themselves. Osmond corresponded with Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World and an important literary figure of the era. Huxley referred to the experience of psychedelics as a means to open the doors of perception and broaden the minds of people who had acquired a rigid way of thinking due to the frightening, repressive environment of the early Cold War period. In The Doors of Perception, Huxley speaks of the transformative potential of mystical experiences facilitated through psychedelics:

“To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness - to be aware of it and yet remain in a condition to survive as an animal. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be..” [6]

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Much of the work done on psychedelics in the 1950s was experimental and pioneering. Sadly, towards the end of the decade it became apparent that the medical establishment would not be willing to support widespread research on the use of psychedelic for psychotherapeutic purposes. Although the crackdown on psychedelics would not begin until the early 1970s, by the end of the 1950s the mainstream medical community had already begun to frown upon the use of psychedelics due to the way in which it clashed with the for-profit pharmaceutical industry.

The pioneering work undertaken in the 1950s provided a crucial stepping stone for the creation of a line of research into psychedelics, as well as the stirrings of psychedelic culture. The work of Hofmann, Smythies, Sandison and Osmond and others broke ground for later research and helped establish psychedelics as an instrument that could serve to address the alienation of the Western mind.

Next week’s article will continue exploring psychedelic history as we take a closer look at Albert Hofmann, his accidental discovery of LSD, and the effects of psychedelics on his life, work, and ongoing legacy.