Word: lsd
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Antics & Reaction. In the last few years, Dr. Cohen and other reputable researchers have been disturbed by what he calls the "beatnik microculture" and its abuses of LSD and other hallucinogens. The danger, he says, is that public reaction against oddball antics may set back serious research for many years...
...Cohen's explanation is that if a subject takes LSD under laboratory conditions with impersonal attending technicians, if he expects to go temporarily mad and if he gets no reassurance, a psychotic state is likely to occur. But in a more relaxed situation, with hopeful expectations of his own, the subject will probably have a ball. Dr. Cohen notes that this is true of other drugs: "From the same jug of whiskey come tears for one and laughter for another...
...Endure Not to Know." If LSD is taken on three successive days, the subject builds up a tolerance for it and gets no effect from the normal safe dose, which is only 100 micrograms (1/300,000th of an ounce). After a few days, this wears off, and the same person can take LSD again. The drug is not addicting, though it may be habituating. A second experience is not likely to be a repeat of the first. A woman who had been preoccupied with external matters on her first dose decided, on the second, to look into her own soul...
...Psychiatrist Cohen, some of the most interesting questions about LSD involve its value as an aid to psychotherapy, especially in the treatment of alcoholics. The main advantage, Dr. Cohen believes, is that the patient becomes better able to accept what are normally painful insights into his own shortcomings. He can observe himself with detachment, and this speeds treatment. There are some patients, though, especially those on the borderline of a psychosis, for whom LSD is definitely dangerous...
...tempting, he suggests, to say that one gets from the LSD encounter what one deserves, but he quotes Aquinas for a more accurate summation: "Quidquid recipietur secundum modum recipientis recipietur"-our nature determines what we receive. But mankind will not always know its present mental limits. "The mind's surmised and still unknown potential," says Dr. Cohen, "is our future. The experience called hallucinogenic will play a role in leading us into the future...