Mescaline, LSD, Psilocybin and Personality Change
January 10, 2010 4 Comments
Mescaline, LSD, Psilocybin and Personality Change
Sanford M. Unger, Ph.D.*
from: Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes
Vol. 26, No. 2, May, 1963. © The William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation
. . . our normal waking consciousness . . . is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different…. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these . . . disregarded. How to regard them is the question—for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness.—William James. (1)
In recent years, how to regard the “forms of consciousness entirely different” induced by mescaline, LSD-25, and psilocybin has posed a seemingly perplexing issue. For articulate self-experimenters from Mitchell to Huxley, mescaline has provided many-splendored visual experiences, or a life-enlarging sojourn in “the Antipodes of the mind” (2). For Stockings, it may be recalled, mescaline produced controlled schizophrenia (3)—a thesis which earned the Bronze Medal of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association and apparently inaugurated, in conjunction with the advent of LSD-25, a period of concerted chemical activity in the exploration and experimental induction of “model psychoses” (4). In counterpoint, this same so-called “psychotomimetic” LSD has increasingly found use as a purposeful intervention or “adjuvant” in psychotherapy (5). The recently arrived “magic mushroom,” psilocybin, has been similarly equivocal—”psychotogenic” for some, “mysticomimetic” for others (6). The present paper will review the literature on drug experience—paying particular attention to the effects of extradrug variables, for the realization of the extent of their potential influence has only recently crystallized, and promises to reduce some of the abundant disorder in this area.
The phenomenon of drug-associated rapid personality or behavior change will be discussed in some detail. For example, a number of different alcoholic treatment facilities, especially in Canada, have reported, for many of their patients, complete abstinence after a single LSD session (7). More generally, neurotic ailments over the full range have been described as practically evaporating (8). Given this picture, and the present state and practice of the therapeutic art, it is not surprising to find at least one psychiatrist envisioning “. . . mass therapy: institutions in which every patient with a neurosis could get LSD treatment and work out his problems largely by himself” (9). James would have been much attracted by the “spectacular and almost unbelievable results” (10) reported on the modern drug scene; and, in fact, their resemblance to the “instantaneous transformations” attendant on “mystical” religious conversions —which he discussed so eloquently—may well be more than superficial and seems worthy of attention.
The Equivalent Action of Mescaline, LSD-25, and Psilocybin
Since the evidence and testimony accumulated over the years on the separate drugs will be treated interchangeably, this raises a preliminary point of some importance. Although the conclusion was delayed by both dissimilarities in their chemical structure and differing modes of introduction to the scientific community, it is now rather commonly adjudged that the subjective effects of mescaline, LSD-25, and psilocybin are similar, equivalent, or indistinguishable. Both Isbell and Abramson have administered LSD and psilocybin in the same study; Wolbach and his co-workers have administered all three. All have found that their subjects were unable to distinguish between the drugs (11).
The reported equivalence in subjective reactions seems quite consistent—or at least not inconsistent—with present pharmacodynamic knowledge. Studies of radioactively tagged mescaline and LSD indicate that the compounds largely disappear from the brain in relatively short order—in fact, at about the same time that the first “mental phenomena” make their appearance (12). Hence, it has been tentatively suggested that the characteristic effects, which persist for a relatively long period, are to be attributed not to the action of the drug itself but to some as yet unidentified aspect of the chain of events triggered by drug administration. Isbell, observing the “remarkably similar” reactions to LSD and psilocybin, hypothesized “some common biochemical or physiological mechanism” to be responsible for the effects—that is, that the various compounds share a final common path (13). The most direct support for this inference of biological identity in ultimate mechanism of action has come from cross-tolerance studies wherein subjects rendered tolerant to one drug—that is, nonreactive after repeated administrations —have then been challenged by a different drug. Present indications are that cross-tolerance among the drugs does in fact develop (14).
This is not intended to suggest that a drug experience is invariable among subjects—quite the contrary has been the case. In fact, experiences even for the same subject differ from one session to the next (15). But when relevant extradrug variables are controlled, the within-drug variance is apparently coextensive with between-drug variance, and is attributable to ubiquitous personality differences; in other words, while a range of reactions is reported to all of the drugs, there is no reaction distinctively associated with any particular drug. Extradrug variables, which have been uncontrolled and largely unrecognized until recently, are apparently responsible for much of the variance erroneously attributed to specific drug action.
