Drugs: The Pros & Cons of LSD

“The mind—that seven inches of in ner space between the root of the nose and the occiput— our prized possession; its study on every level is most important,” says Los Angeles Psychiatrist Sidney Cohen. The newest and most controversial way of carrying on that most important study is with the aid of drugs that produce hallucinations or illusions. But the responsible hopes raised by serious and cautious research have been matched by wildly visionary claims. Irresponsible misuse of the drugs has led to both scares and scandals.

For all that has been published about the pros and cons of LSD and other hallucinogens, there has been no impartial appraisal by a competent scientist writing in lay language. Now, in The Beyond Within: the LSD Story (Atheneum, $5), Dr. Cohen has done the job with commendable skill. Man’s drive to find out what his mind is like, says Cohen, besides “including a search for release from the painful realities of’ disease, disaster and death . . . also at tempts to find an answer to the question of how one human should relate to an other, and how man should understand his own impermanence. [It] ranges from a hedonistic sensuality to a search for the highest philosophic abstractions, from a tool for deriving scientific data to a sacrament taken to achieve loss of self and union with the ALL.”

“A Bit of Death.”LSD (D-lysergic acid diethylamide) has so far proved no cure for any disease. The overriding interest of both scientists and pseudo scientists in LSD (and, to a lesser extent, in the other hallucinogens) is in its effects on the mind. And these are so fantastic that most experimenters insist words are not the right medium for describing them, but they have devised no better tool for communication.

The all-pervading, almost universal effect is incredibly intensified perception. This may be pleasurable or not, depending on the individual’s emotional state. Most people seem to float, and often to be outside themselves, so that they are really two selves. A common feeling is that there is “a little bit of death” in the LSD experience, but usually it is not frightening because the subject is dissociated from himself and can observe the situation dispassionately.

The Smell of Music. One of the unique qualities of LSD, says Dr.

Cohen, is its capacity to bring back temporarily the vividness of newness.

Subjects who get a lift from the drug describe all colors as bright and gay—a traffic light may become an object of surpassing beauty. If the subject be comes depressed, the colors darken or bleach out. Highly colored geometric tapestries flow past the closed eyes.

Time stands still. Hearing becomes in tensified; listening to music is a tremendous esthetic experience. Changes in taste and smell are relatively uncommon. But synesthesias—crossovers from one sense to another—are common, so that subjects “hear” colors or “smell” music. Ideas become visible. Thought and emotion are inseparable. Memory is oddly affected: the ability to repeat a set of numbers backward, or do simple tests, is grossly impaired, but long-ago events may be recalled accurately in minutest detail.

Effects on creativity are unclear. LSD subjects create what seem to be masterpieces or make momentous discoveries that are later seen as commonplace or nonsensical. But those who are by nature creative may get a fillip to their creativity through the sense of release from narrow, binding reality. As for whether hallucinogens might be used to establish mind control over the masses, Dr. Cohen dismisses this as a bogy. But he is deeply concerned over the possible use of such drugs in chemical warfare.

A Bottle of Bliss. “Is the LSD state a model of madness, a touch of schizophrenia, or is it a short cut to Zen satori, nirvana for the millions?” asks Dr. Cohen. His answer:, it is certainly not schizophrenia, and it differs from a true psychosis much as a wooden model bridge differs from the Golden Gate. Conflicting reports of diametrically opposite results with LSD are difficult to explain. Some subjects found the experience as horrible as any psychosis and would have no more of it; others, with the same dose, could not get too much. “Was it possible that out of the same bottle madness and supernal bliss could be poured?”

It was. Dr. 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.”

“Majestic Quietude.” After an experiment Cohen himself conducted, a doctor wrote: “I had read that a number of people have a painful catatonic withdrawal. I fancied that I would be a catatonic . . . The first change was one of pleasant relaxation. This increased to an indescribable mood of great calm and peace. The problems and strivings, the worries and frustrations of everyday life vanished; in their place was a majestic, sunlit, heavenly inner quietude … I seemed to have finally arrived at the contemplation of the eternal truth.” The doctor suffered numbness and shivering so severe that he needed three blankets. But he accepted these discomforts as a small price for admission to nirvana. And he suffered no catatonia.

At the opposite extreme was a woman psychologist, ordinarily bright and friendly, who had given no thought to a possible catatonic reaction. She had one so severe that Dr. Cohen says “it would have been difficult for a psychiatrist to pick her out of a room full of female catatonic schizophrenics.”

“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. Typically, she became two people, but each was herself. One self asked: “What should be my relation to Ultimate Reality, to God?” And the second self answered: “Endure not to know.”

To 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.

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.

It is 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.”