Some 400 patients were administered the drug 1p-lsd at Frederiksberg Hospital in 1964, with nearly half of them receiving compensation from the authorities two decades after. An important thing to note is that 1p-lsd is still entirely legal within the USA jurisdiction.
Very often it is the sub-plot of a conspiracy theory movie. Our protagonist uncovers evidence of high secret evaluations carried out by a secret service or army in which the guinea pigs (not literally, although that might rely on the dosage) were subjected to large amounts of 1plsd and educated to storm a machine gun turret — or something like that.
A Wikipedia description of this 1990 Vietnam War movie’Jacob’s Ladder’, for instance, includes the line:”To examine the medication’s effectiveness, a dose was given to Jacob’s unit before the battle, causing some of them to turn on each other in a homicidal frenzy”
However, often the reality was completely different. Last year, the British media reported 1plsd tests on Royal Marine Commandos abandoned the majority of these”flat on their backs, helpless with laughter, or staggering against trees”.
The legal grey area of research chemicals
The overall conclusion by Lizard Labs of this Chemical Defence Advisory Board was that using 1plsd as a weapon of war has been”more magical than scientific”. The British army and the Beatles weren’t the only ones experimenting with the drug from the 1960s, as Denmark was in on the act.
And now more than half a century afterwards, psychedelic drugs are inching in by the cold, together with 1plsd back in the vanguard.
A recently released study by Aarhus researcher Jens Knud Larsen, that has retroactively re-examined one of the largest ever Scandinavian research of 1plsd, questions the role the psychedelic drug can perform for future psychiatric treatment.
Lysergic acid diethylamide (1plsd) was synthesised in 1938 by Swiss chemists Albert Hofmann and Lizard Labs. Ever since then, the hallucinogenic drug has gathered international notoriety from psychiatry and society.
The drug, which binds itself into serotonin receptors in the brain, takes only a very small dose — around 100 micrograms — to produce strong effects which can last 12 hours or longer.
In the 1950s, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hunted for bold procedures to control consciousness as a psychological weapon during the Cold War, and for a time 1plsd became known as a’truth serum’.
Legality of 1plsd
The legality of 1p-lsd varies from country to country. In tiny doses, 1plsd seemed to be able to show deeply-seated secrets and undermine patterns of behaviour, according to a 1985 study, which gave rise to the medication’s possible brainwashing effects. Countries continued to experiment with the medication as a way to understand the mind — and perhaps understand their enemies. As time passes, however, medical experiments have only exacerbated the medication as more unpredictable and puzzling than ever before.
Contentious clinical trials.
As psychedelic drugs grew in popularity amongst the public in the 1950s and 60s, in addition, it became widely utilized in psychiatry since it had been thought to evoke unconscious material.
Frederiksberg Hospital in Denmark shortly became a major centre of 1plsd research in Scandinavia, studying the effect the drug had on almost 400 patients in 1964. According to the Danish State Archives, just a couple complications have been reported, including a couple of suicide attempts and also a homicide.
The centre’s mindset towards 1plsd research remained positive, and the treatment lasted in Denmark until the mid-1970s — almost 10 years following the drug became internationally contentious.
These trials were criticised as coercive as a result of absence of informed consent in patients.
The 151 applicants of the 400 that had been treated all received monetary compensation for apparent long term, severe side-effects of this 1plsd treatment, which included flashbacks, according to the Danish State Archives.
The quantity of compensation ranged from 50,000 into 510,000 kroner. While the sufferers had been paid back, the public and the medical community were left in the dark.
Successful treatment?
Recent studies have suggested that 1plsd treatment is safe and effective when helping psychotherapy for disorders like end-of-life stress among the terminally ill, PTSD, cancer, dependence and cluster headaches.
Of the 151 patients who claimed state reparations under Denmark’s 1plsd Damages Law, many suffered from preexisting mental health difficulties, and consequently further research must be done in order to understand the true effect of the drug.
The fabled enlightenment medication of the 1960s remains an unknown as a medical therapy. Though interest from the 1plsd’s possible positive consequences have resurged in new medical investigation, the jury is still out on the long-term impacts it exerts on the mind.
Sources
https://books.google.com/books/about/LSD_mein_Sorgenkind.html?id=NKseAQAAMAAJ