The Rise, Fall, and Rise of LSD

2:30pm-4:00pm | 330 Student Union

• Erika Dyck, Hitting highs at rock bottom
  • In the 1950s, psychedelic research attracted attention for its dramatic breakthroughs in addiction treatment. Treating patients with a single dose of psychedelic was seen as an attractive, cost-effective approach for previously intractable problems. In the 21st century’s psychedelic renaissance, addictions are again a target for psychedelic research, now expanding beyond alcohol to include smoking and opioid addiction. Some speculate that psychedelics may reduce the need for other psychiatric medicines. If psychedelics are such a panacea for addiction, why were they banned, and what lessons do they hold for the way we think about addiction?
• Matthew Oram, Psychedelic research, then and now
  • If you have heard of psychedelic research at all, you are likely to think that it ended quickly, in the mid-1960s, after popular use led to legal prohibition. In this talk historian Matthew Oram challenges this conventional story, arguing that LSD research continued far longer than has been generally known—and that criminal punishments for the drug began before it was prohibited.
• Lucas Richert, Bad dharma: From psychedelic highs to cultural hijacking of yoga
  • During the 1960s many Americans saw yoga and psychedelic drugs as equally valid routes to spiritual fulfilment and mental health. Counterculture messages emphasized personal responsibility for health—corporeal and spiritual—and led many Americans to strive for perfection or, at least, peace of mind. As the psychologist Abraham Maslow put it, Americans were adrift in a postmodern world: “We’re stuck now in our own culture…stuck in a silly world
    which makes all sorts of unnecessary problems.” In this talk, historian Lucas Richert explores the interactions between cultural and medical approaches to LSD, asks how those interactions shaped the cultural impact of psychedelics and psychiatry during a turbulent era, and
    considers the implications for today.