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2.3 Hallucinogens after World War II
After World War II there was an explosion of interest in hallucinogenic drugs in psychiatry, owing mainly to the discovery of LSD. Interest in the drugs tended to focus on either the potential for psychotherapeutic applications of the drugs (see psychedelic psychotherapy), or on the use of hallucinogens to produce a "controlled psychosis", in order to understand psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. Between the mid 1950s and the mid 1960s over 1000 scholarly articles were published on hallucinogen research. Hallucinogens were also researched in several countries for their potential as agents of chemical warfare. Most famously, several tragic incidents associated with the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind control research project have been the topic of media attention and lawsuits.
At the beginning of the 1950s, the existence of hallucinogenic drugs was virtually unknown among the general public of the West. However this soon changed as several influential figures were introduced to the hallucinogenic experience. Aldous Huxley's 1953 essay The Doors of Perception, describing his experiences with mescaline, and R. Gordon Wasson's 1957 Life magazine article (Seeking the Magic Mushroom) brought the topic into the public limelight. In the early 1960s countercultural icons such as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey advocated the drugs for their psychedelic effects, and a large subculture of psychedelic drug users was spawned. Many people argue that psychedelic drugs played a major role in catalyzing the vast social changes initiated in the 1960s.
As a result of the growing popularity of LSD, and, some contend, establishment disdain for the hippies with whom it was heavily associated, LSD was banned in the United States in 1967.
2.4 Social status of hallucinogens
After the fading from public sight of many elements of the 1960s counterculture, hallucinogen use took a less visible but nevertheless persistent role in Western society 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s and 2000s something of a revival of interest in the drugs has occurred. There are probably several important contributing factors to the resurgence. One is the rise of dance-based rave and trance culture, in which participants frequently employ drugs such as the empathogen MDMA, and to a lesser extent, other hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD, magic mushrooms and ketamine, as an aid to inducing ecstatic or trance states of consciousness. A second major contributing factor to the revival of interest in hallucinogenic drugs has been the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web. This has made information pertaining to drugs much more accessible to the general public, provided a platform for advocacy that was not previously available, and has enabled otherwise isolated interested parties to communicate and exchange information and experiences. Some well-known contemporary authors of topics relating to hallucinogens include Terence McKenna, Alexander Shulgin, Jonathan Ott and Rick Strassman .
