Because of inadequate reporting and problems in interpreting symptoms and
causes, it is hard to tell how common adverse reactions are. At Bellevue Hospital
in New York from early 1965 to 1967, 200 patients appeared with complaints related
to LSD-mostly panic reactions and flashbacks (Frosch, 1969). By 1969 Bellevue
was seeing only one LSD reaction every 2 weeks, and most of these were thought
to be borderline schizophrenics in whom the drug had precipitated a psychosis
(Stern & Robbins, 1969). A 1971 Canadian government survey of the hospital
records of 22,885 psychiatric patients found 67 cases (0.3 percent) where LSD
was mentioned as a factor in the primary diagnosis; most of these patients had
used many drugs, and the precise influence of LSD was often unclear (Final Report,
1973, p. 378).
A questionnaire survey by J. Thomas Ungerleider and his colleagues suggests
a much larger number of adverse reactions. The period covered was July 1, 1966
to January 1, 1968, and the questionnaire was sent to 2,700 physicians, psychiatrists,
psychologists, and other health professionals in Los Angeles County. Of the
1,584 who replied, 27 percent (including 47 percent of the psychiatrists) had
seen adverse reactions to LSD; the total number of adverse reactions was 8,958
(Ungerleider et al., 1968). Unfortunately, the definition of adverse reaction
was left to the respondents, and the effect, the authors suggest, was probably
to define anything that made a drug user seek professional help as an adverse
reaction. The prevailing social attitudes have to be taken into account; for
example, it is suspicious that in the same survey 1,887 adverse reactions to
marihuana were reported. Many of the "adverse reactions" may have
been nothing more than difficult moments during drug trips that were mentioned
in psychiatric interviews because they seemed relevant to the problem under
discussion; some may have been simply drug-induced insights that made people
believe they needed help.
Serious adverse reactions to psychedelic drugs are rare today, partly because
they are being used more carefully and at smaller doses than in the first flush
of psychedelic enthusiasm, and partly because LSD is no longer being unofficially
promoted as a solution for emotional crises in the lives of seriously disturbed
people. The most likely candidate for adverse reactions are schizoid and pre-psychotic
personalities with a barely stable ego balance and a great deal of anxiety,
who cannot cope with the perceptual changes, body-image distortions, and symbolic
unconscious material produced by the drug. Murray Naditch has found through
questionnaires that adverse reactions to LSD and marihuana (defined essentially
as bad trips-strong unpleasant feelings, panic, fear of insanity or death, thoughts
of suicide) are associated with high scores on psychological test scales representing
schizophrenic tendencies, social maladjustment, and regression (Naditch, 1975).
L.J. Hekimian and Samuel Gershon examined 47 patients admitted to Bellevue Hospital
between January and July 1967 after using a psychedelic drug in the preceding
48 hours. In 31 cases psychotic conditions already present were intensified.
Ultimately 32 were diagnosed as schizophrenic, 4 as schizoid, 6 as sociopaths,
and 5 as depressive or neurotic. The authors were struck by the frequency of
pre-existing schizophrenia (Hekimian & Gershon, 1968).
It is certainly impossible to assume that anyone who suffers from psychosis,
depression, or chronic anxiety after using a psychedelic drug would always have
had the same problems in any case, but it is also wrong to suppose that these
problems are likely to descend suddenly at any moment on a reasonably stable
person who takes a psychedelic drug in a reasonably protected setting. The best
analogy for adverse psychedelic drug reactions is psychosis precipitated by
cannabis. The egos of a few people are so fragile that they can be precipitated
into psychosis by any severe stress or alteration in consciousness, including
surgery, an automobile accident, or alcohol intoxication; it is they who will
suffer the rare psychotic reactions to cannabis. LSD and drugs like it are much
more powerful mind-modifiers, and more people are vulnerable to their disruptive
effects, including a few with no strong previous signs of emotional disturbance.
Psychedelic drugs are capable of magnifying and bringing into consciousness
almost any internal conflict, so there is no typical prolonged adverse reaction
to LSD in the sense in which there is, say, a typical amphetamine psychosis
(always paranoid). Instead, as many different affective, neurotic, and psychotic
symptoms may appear as there are individual forms of vulnerability. This makes
it hard to distinguish between LSD reactions and unrelated pathology, especially
when some time passes between the drug trip and the onset of the disturbance.
The best treatment for a bad trip is reassurance and "talking down"
in a quiet, friendly setting; that is the way thousands have been handled with
or without intervention by psychiatrists. Sometimes this reassurance may take
the form of urging the drug user to go with it, give up resistance and allow
loss of control, dissolution of the ego, and a cathartic resolution. Interpreting,
judging, discussing, and being "objective" are disastrous; asking
questions almost always exacerbates the problem by making impossible demands
on the drug taker. Anything that might cause suspicion and paranoia, like superfluous
movements or conversations, should be avoided. Use of a tranquilizer or sedative
should be only a last resort, after talking down fails; diazepam (Valium) is
better than anti-psychotic drugs like chlorpromazine (Thorazine), which act
too abruptly and intensely. The appropriate treatment for prolonged reactions
to psychedelic drugs is the same as the treatment for similar symptoms not produced
by drugs: psychotherapy and drugs where necessary.
The most important fact about chronic or long-term psychedelic drug use is that
there is very little of it. Psychedelic drugs produce no psychological compulsion
or craving and certainly no physical addiction. A drug that takes people into
a different stretch of unfamiliar mental territory for 8 hours every time they
use it is not for every day or even every weekend. Drug users soon come to understand
that psychedelic trips are not to be embarked on lightly, and they tend to stop
using LSD or cut down their consumption greatly after a short time.
Nevertheless, for a few people in the late sixties and early seventies, LSD
use became what H.S. Becker has called a "master trait." This kind
of chronic user was known as an acidhead or acid freak, and a not very flattering
composite portrait can be drawn from journalism, psychiatric papers, and other
sources. He speaks softly and his manner is meek; he is passive and unwilling
to take initiative. He talks a great deal about love but fears genuine intimacy
and often feels emotionally lifeless. He is easily shattered by aggression or
argument, finds the "hassles" of daily life an ordeal, and prefers
to live in a world of drug-induced fantasy. He finds it difficult to follow
an argument or concentrate on a thought; he is given to superstitious beliefs
and magical practices. He does not work regularly or go to school; he rejects
the accepted social forms and proselytized for LSD as a means of liberation
from the standard "ego games" that constitute most people's lives,
he blames society for his troubles and tends to see himself as a martyr. On
the other hand, he is often at least superficially open, friendly, warm, relaxed,
and uncompetitive; he is childlike as well as childish, and people often like
him and feel protective toward him. But he may express aggression indirectly
through his unconventional dress and manner, by absent-minded inconsiderateness,
or by resentment of challenges to his unjustified conviction of superior awareness
and moral insight.
Even if no one fits this stereotype perfectly and most psychedelic drug users
do not fit it at all, it does seem to have some basis in reality. K.H. Blacker
and his colleagues, using a control group for comparison, studied 21 volunteer
subjects who had used LSD 15 to 300 times (average 65 times), and found some
of the features of the stereotypical acidhead: openness and relaxation, likeableness,
passivity and introversion, occult and magical beliefs, hippie dress and hair
styles. Four said they had memory blanks and sometimes found it difficult to
organize thoughts and form sentences.
On the electroencephalogram (EEG), which records brain waves, they did not have
an unusually high rate of abnormalities; but they did show significantly more
energy in all frequency bands than normal control subjects and psychiatric patients,
and this suggested lower than usual levels of anxiety. On tests of intellectual
capacity and auditory evoked response (both usually sensitive to the disorganization
produced by schizophrenia) the LSD users were normal. But they were extraordinarily
sensitive to visual stimuli of low intensity, which confirmed their opinion
that they could observe gestures, postures, and shades of color better than
most people. They also seemed to modulate and organize sensory stimuli in an
unusual way, since there was no relationship between their evoked visual responses
and their subjective tactile ones. The authors describe these subjects as eccentric
or childlike but not schizophrenic or otherwise pathologically impaired. They
emphasize that it was hard to separate the effects of the drug from those of
personality and social climate.
Psychedelic drug users have also been tested for organic brain damage. William
McGlothlin and his colleagues (McGlothlin et al., 1969) compared 16 subjects
who had taken LSD 20 times or more (the range was 20 to 1,100, the median was
75 times) with 16 controls; they examined the subjects clinically and also administered
the Halstead-Reitan test battery. There were no clinical organic symptoms, and
no scores on the neuropsychological tests that suggested brain damage; but on
a test measuring capacity for nonverbal abstraction the LSD users scored lower.
As in the case of Tucker's Rorschach results, the amount of LSD was not related
to the score. Nevertheless, the authors conclude that continual heavy use may
cause minor organic brain pathology: six of the LSD subjects, including the
three heaviest users, were regarded as "moderately suspicious" in
this respect. In another study, Morgan Wright and Terrence P. Hogan (1972) found
no difference between subjects who had used LSD an average of 29 times and controls
(matched for age, sex, education, and IO) on a variety of neuropsychological
tests, including the ones used by McGlothlin. At most, these studies confirm
the existence of an eccentric acidhead personality; they do not clearly imply
mental illness or brain damage.
In considering long-term psychedelic drug use, even more than in assessing acute
reactions, it is hard to extricate the pharmacological contribution from the
complex web of associations tying it to personality and social setting. The
limitations of retrospective studies are notorious, but that is all we have.
How many long-term psychedelic drug users ever were really acidheads, and how
permanent is the condition? How often is psychopathology associated with psychedelic
drug use, and when it is, is the drug cause, symptom, or attempted cure? In
this case there is also a potential for cultural bias that creates further complications.
When are eccentric beliefs and behavior pathological, and when are they simply
a hippie way of life? Now that some of the social views and personal styles
of the drug culture of the 1960s have become more popular, we know that they
never implied a drug-induced personality change.
Obviously many heavy drug users are seriously disturbed people, but the drug
use is usually a symptom more than a cause of the trouble. If emotional problems
were always a cause and not an effect of chronic psychedelic drug use, the status
of acidhead would be nothing but a refuge or role-disguise for certain schizoid
or inadequate personalities. But sometimes drug abuse itself, whatever the original
reasons for it, becomes the central problem, notoriously so when the drug is
addictive, like alcohol or heroin. The same thing may happen with LSD, but that
has been rare since the 1960s and was not common even then. The best model for
understanding the changes in behavior that occur after psychedelic drug use
is not a drug-induced personality change or modification of the brain but the
changes in one's views of self and world after a voyage to a strange country.
A note on genetic damage and birth defects has to be added, because misconceptions
about this subject still exist. Chromosome damage from LSD was first reported
by Maimon Cohen and his colleagues in Science in 1967 (Cohen & Marmilli,
1967). They found a higher than normal proportion of chromosome breaks in a
paranoid schizophrenic patient who had been treated with LSD 15 times, as well
as with chlorpromazine and other drugs; they also found that LSD caused chromosome
breaks in leukocytes (white blood cells) artificially cultured in the laboratory.
In the rather overheated atmosphere of 1967, this paper gained an immediate
celebrity and became the basis for a sensationalistic propaganda campaign featuring
pictures of deformed children. Some LSD users switched to what they thought
was mescaline or psilocybin and in fact was almost always mislabelled LSD or
phencyclidine (PCP).
Many other studies of this subject have appeared and continue to appear; it
would be impossible and pointless to review them all. The literature review
published in Science by Norman I. Dishotsky and his colleagues in 1971 established
the reassuring conclusions that are now generally accepted. Examining nearly
a hundred papers, they found that LSD was a weak mutagen, effective only at
very high doses. It was not carcinogenic and did not cause chromosome damage
in human beings at normal doses. One study showed that it caused no more chromosome
breaks in Laboratory-cultured cells than aspirin. Illicit drug users often had
more damaged chromosomes than control subjects; this was attributable not to
LSD but to malnutrition, infectious disease, and general ill health as well
as possible impurities in street drugs. The few available prospective studies,
mostly of psychiatric patients before and after LSD use, showed no chromosome
damage. There was no evidence of a high rate of birth defects in children of
LSD users (Dishotsky et al., 1971). This paper is well known and adequately
covers the research up to 1971; later studies have allayed persisting doubts.
There is also no clear evidence that LSD or any other psychedelic drug causes
birth defects in the child when it is taken by a pregnant woman. Nevertheless,
pregnant women should avoid all drugs, especially in the first three months.
To sum up, then, bad trips and mild flashbacks are common and even expected,
but usually considered a nuisance-and occasionally even an opportunity-rather
than a danger. More serious but relatively rare problems are recurrent frightening
flashbacks, prolonged reactions (usually a few days but sometimes weeks or longer),
suicides, and accidents. Thought and perception changes occur in some chronic
users, but it is hard to say when these are immediate drug effects and when
they are the result of reflection on the experience; in any case, they are rarely
pathological and almost never irreversible. There is no good evidence of organic
brain damage or genetic alterations. The dangers are greatest for unstable personalities
and in unsupervised settings. The most important limitation on the abuse of
these drugs is the absence of a reliable euphoria, which means that people rarely
go on using them, as they often go on using stimulants and sedatives, in spite
of repeated disasters. Bad trips usually become deterrents before they become
dangerous.
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