Psychedelic Phenomena LSD Psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs explained

History records few human quests as unremitting or as widespread as the search for a harmless, effective sex stimulant. Recent claims - such as those made by Timothy Leary - that LSD is the greatest aphrodisiac known to man, have excited much interest in the sexual potential of psychedelic drugs. Sober discussion of psychedelic substances was difficult enough before sex entered the picture; now it is close to impossible. But bearing in mind that there is a great deal more to psychedelics than sex, it might clear the air to examine the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide - and several other psychedelic drugs - on human sexual behavior. Along with the comparatively new synthetic psychedelics, including LSD and psilocybin, there are similar mind-altering substances present in many forms of plant life. Some of these have been used for hundreds and even thousands of years. Examples are the peyote cactus, the Cannibis hemp plant, the opium poppy and several varieties of mushrooms and mo

It's been over 50 years, but  Wayne Ritchie says he can still remember how it felt to be dosed with acid. He was drinking bourbon and soda with other federal officers at a holiday party in 1957 at the  U.S. Post Office  Building on Seventh and Mission streets. They were cracking jokes and swapping stories when, suddenly, the room began to spin. The red and green lights on the Christmas tree in the corner spiraled wildly. Ritchie's body temperature rose. His gaze fixed on the dizzying colors around him. The deputy U.S. marshal excused himself and went upstairs to his office, where he sat down and drank a glass of water. He needed to compose himself. But instead he came unglued. Ritchie feared the other marshals didn't want him around anymore. Then he obsessed about the probation officers across the hall and how they didn't like him, either. Everyone was out to get him . Ritchie felt he had to escape. He fled to his apartment and sought comfort from his live-in

Despite the draconian view that most contemporary societies have on mind-altering drugs, whether natural or synthetic, there has always been a religious undercurrent around the world that takes them seriously as a conduit to deep spiritual insight and encounters with the holy. This is the religious - and highly ambiguous - legacy left by two LSD pioneers who died within the past two weeks. Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann - who discovered LSD in 1938 - died on April 29, at the age of 102; US psycho-pharmacologist Murray Jarvik - one of the first to study the drug's chemical properties and their mind-altering effects - passed away last Thursday. Both experimented with the drug and vouched for its religious significance. Having lost or severed any connections with natural psychoactive plants, it is not surprising that it took a synthetic drug for the modern industrialised world to retrieve a psychoactive connection with the holy. In her popular book A History of God, the histori

(96) Psychedelic Review : By the revelations of psychotropic medicine, leading to a more fundamental view of human experience than Freudian psychology has hitherto supplied. The anxiety and rootlessness of modern life will be seen to be the result of inner barrenness, created by the frustration of our subconscious needs in a predominantly rational society. Empty utilitarianism, deprived of poetic faith, forces the sensitive being to reject reality, since reality is devoid of the emotional appeal that it formerly enjoyed. Man is a creature whose necessity is to dream; when the individual, or the race as a whole, is frustrated of its inner vision, it must suffer as when deprived of material health. Human beings are nostalgic for the fulfillment of their primordial Life. Their anxiety is not the result of fear, since modern life is more secure than ever before, but of the loss of inner destiny, of the devitalization of the illusions revealed in the yearnings of myth and poetry.