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Current Commentary
(Sept 2008)
by David E. Smith, M.D.
on Lysergic Acid Diethylamide:
An Historical Perspective (Summer 1967)
My fascination with the patent
psychedelic drug began in 1962 when I was in my second year
of medical school at UCSF. Psychopharmacology was an
expanding field. The Department of Pharmacology was
particularly strong in this area. As a result I enrolled as
a graduate student in the Masters program and began the
study of drugs and their effect on the mind, comparing
selective CNS stimulants like LSD to general CNS stimulants
like methamphetamine in both animal and human models.
In 1962 we received education in the pharmacology of LSD
from Professor Fred Meyers. In addition, he made available
LSD for medical students to experience on a volunteer basis.
Although I didn’t participate I attended several of the
sessions. Other lectures included presentations by Professor
Dr. Charles Hine, (who stimulated my interest in clinical
toxicology) on the use of LSD in the 1950s by the military
as an antipersonnel agent, a subject later reviewed by Dr.
Jim Ketchum (who had conducted some of the military
experiments) in his book
Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten.
Because of this involvement I became known in San Francisco
as the department LSD expert and had several interesting
consultations with political leaders. The hippies following
the Human Be-in and Ken Kesey’s “Electric Acid Kool-Aid
test” wanted to “dose” political leaders with
LSD to further their philosophy of “Make Love, not War.”
They also issued a proclamation that they were going to put
LSD in the city water supply and concerned city officials,
including then city supervisor Diane Feinstein, sought my
consultation.
I demonstrated that the water supply could be tested for LSD
using the “Siamese Fighting Fish test” (minute doses of LSD
in their water environment will disorient them and cause
them to swim upside down). Besides, the chlorine in the
water supply inactivates the LSD. The officials left
reassured that the threat was essentially theatrical and
nothing would come of it.
The years between 1965 and 1967 were a very strange time
both in San Francisco and the USA. The civil rights movement
was expanding, and the war in Vietnam was escalating. The
free speech movement in Berkeley was at its peak and the
psychedelic counterculture in the Haight
Ashbury was exploding, bringing a tsunami of youth from
across the country to San Francisco for “drugs, sex and rock
and roll” with a philosophy of “better living through
chemistry.”
In June 1967 the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic was born, based
on a philosophy that “health care is a right not a
privilege” and “love needs care.”
I lived in the Haight Ashbury District of San Francisco as
it borders UCSF. I witnessed the rise of the psychedelic
drug subculture, which culminated in the Summer of Love in
1967. In fact, the first light show I observed was in the
Haight Ashbury as a simulated LSD experience by
artist Dick Hamm. These simulations were later incorporated
in the San Francisco “acid rock” sound. Although the drugs
we were studying at UCSF were from legitimate
pharmacological chemical companies, the LSD in the Haight
came from Stanley Owsley. It was incorporated into
the music of neighborhood bands such as the Grateful Dead
and Jefferson Airplane who were featured at the Fillmore
Auditorium and Avalon Ballroom. Bill Graham, who founded the
Fillmore and basically invented the modern rock concert
there, was concerned that his patrons were having adverse
LSD reactions and asked for help from our newly formed HAFCI
which I founded in 1967 during the Summer of Love. It was
then that my academic and street drug experiences would
begin to merge and I wrote this article “Lysergic Acid
Diethylamide: An Historical Perspective” and presented it at
a conference on “Psychedelic Drugs and the Law” at UCSF.
By that time I had crossed the line into the “doors of
perception” (as described by Aldous Huxley) and had taken
LSD, experiencing a profound life-changing vision that
culminated in the opening of the HAFCI with its calm center
for “bad trips.” My personal experience with LSD validated
the contents of the article, but was not the basis for it.
Rather, I spent a great deal of time attending lectures and
reading the works of leading scientists like Dr. Sidney
Cohen, author of The Being Within.
My work was inspired by my mentor at the UCSF Department of
Pharmacology Dr. Fred Myers and led to numerous studies at
the HAFCI published in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs,
which began as the house organ for the HAFCI following the
conference at UCSF.
We had formed a student group at UCSF called the
Psychopharmacology Study Group, which was designed to
develop objective information about LSD, as we found that
the output of the popular press was filled with scare
tactics and misinformation such as “LSD causes genetic
defects”—a finding later disproved, but still part of the
public information environment. With the demise of the
Psychedelic Review published by Tim Leary, Richard Alpert
and Ralph Metzner, the need for a multidisciplinary forum
such as the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs became apparent.
Over the years, the descriptions of LSD in this article have
been validated. The phenomenon of synesthesia (“translation
of one sensory modality to another”) was often seen at
Grateful Dead concerts when a panicked “bad tripper” came
into the calm center of Rock Medicine crying “I can see the
notes coming off of Jerry Garcia’s guitar!” Understanding
the distorting effects of LSD, the talk down guides were
able to calm the patients down, reassure them that it was a
drug effect, and get their minds off the adverse effect and
onto a positive vision, thus saving an expensive emergency
room visit and in fact returning the individual to the
concert.
Glenn Raswyck, past director of the HAFCI Rock Medicine
program has documented thousands of such interventions,
saving the medical system millions of dollars in costly and
ineffective ER visits while producing better outcomes for
the patient and society.
In the 1980s I also had the privilege of meeting Albert
Hofmann (who discovered LSD and whose initial LSD experience
is described in this article). We followed the path of his
famous Psychedelic Bike Ride in Basel Switzerland up to his
home where his wife served tea to my wife
and me.
He was a fascinating individual and true scholar, sharing
his collection of ancient archeological artifacts with us as
part of his anthropological studies. During the course of
our visit we were thrilled to see copies of the original
Journal of Psychedelic Drugs and subsequent Journal of
Psychoactive Drugs in his library with our names on the
copies. He complimented our publication and of course we
were in awe of him. It was truly a memorable experience.
The stroll down memory lane started by the reprinting of
articles from volume 1, issue 1 of the Journal of
Psychedelic Drugs on our website continues today as society
renews its fascination with the Summer of Love. On the
fortieth anniversary of the Summer of Love, there was an
exhibit featuring the 1967 Haight Ashbury culture and the
era at the Whitney Museum in New York City. It was one of
the most attended exhibits in the history of the Whitney and
prompted a call from my daughter, who was visiting New York.
The Journal of Psychedelic Drugs and this article were on
display at the exhibit and my daughter was excited that her
father was now featured in a museum.
The legacy of the Journal with its guiding nonjudgmental
Free Clinic philosophy, “Health Care is a Right not a
Privilege” continues on and I have been proud to be a part
of it.
As Barack Obama stated in his book The Audacity of Hope,
“Past history is not dead and buried, it is not even dead.”
LSD as the most potent CNS drug known to man still needs to
be studied objectively to maximize its benefits and minimize
its dangers.
In looking back over my 45-year fascination with LSD and
rereading this article, the contents of which were built on
the shoulders of now-deceased scientific greats such as Sid
Cohen and Fred Meyers, I am reminded of another Grateful
Dead line: “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
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