Erika Dyck is visiting lecturer at Memorial University

Dropping acid
Visiting prof speaks about clinical use of LSD in 1950s Saskatchewan

By Tim O’Brien

Most of us associate Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD)—a.k.a. acid—with recreational use, namely “dropping acid.” In Canada, LSD is deemed a controlled substance under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, but the drug had a clinical use in Canada many decades ago.

Erika Dyck, professor of the history of medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, recently presented a lecture in St. John’s about the use of LSD in Saskatchewan clinics and hospitals as a window into the minds of patients who had mental illnesses.

The lecture, entitled Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD Experimentation and the Post-Second World War Pharmacological Revolution, was given on Nov. 18 at the Health and Sciences Centre as part of the Dr. Nigel Rusted Lectureship in Medical Humanities.

Dyck has been researching clinical LSD use for about 10 years, starting when she was a PhD student. She spent some time in Toronto searching through archives, trying to find records of LSD experiments in Canada.

“I found that there were reams of records about LSD experiments that had taken place in Saskatchewan,” said Dyck. “I found hundreds, if not thousands, of records about LSD experiments that had taken place in Canada.”

“What I was interested in was what, if any, therapeutic properties or potentials this drug may have had, and why psychiatrists and some physicians became interested in using LSD as clinical therapy or as a therapeutic tool.”

LSD was synthesized in the lab by Swiss biochemist Albert Hoffman in 1938.

“He thought [that] maybe this drug would have some therapeutic value; maybe this drug would have some insights into the human mind, and [that], in fact, we should study it,” said Dyck.

Hoffman subsequently encouraged the drug to be freely available to any qualified clinical researcher who had access to the drug.

“LSD takes a different path, partly because, I think, it wasn’t patented and there wasn’t a specific use that was assigned to it early on,” said Dyck. “By the early 1950s, Saskatchewan put itself on the map for LSD experiments.”

She noted the early beginnings of LSD use in clinics, namely by Sidney Katz—journalist for MacLean’s magazine—, who took LSD in a Saskatchewan clinic in 1953 and was observed by psychiatrists and psychologists. He subsequently gave a lengthy account of his experiences with LSD.

“This idea that Katz talks about is something that captured the attention of the psychiatrists and psychologists that were working with him at that time.”

“Most of the medical staff working with this drug also took it themselves. In fact, they felt, at that time, that the ethics of the situation demanded it; that if you were going to give a patient a substance, you should know the effects first hand. Therefore, it was unethical to give someone else something unless you had taken it yourself.”

“Through those experiences—in combination with ones like Katz’s—they felt that LSD gave them insights into what they thought their schizophrenic patients were trying to communicate to them. Maybe, therefore, this drug might be a window into madness or schizophrenia, in particular.”

“It wasn’t that the patients themselves should take the drug, but that people working with the patient should do so in order to better understand them.”

According to Dyck, the main institutions involved with this practice were the Saskatchewan Mental Hospital at Weyburn and the University Hospital in Saskatoon. Other clinics that were involved were the psychiatric wing in Regina—known as the Munroe Wing—, the Department of Psychology at the University of Regina, and the Saskatchewan Schizophrenia Research Group.

Dyck also talked about the history of LSD use for members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Step two of AA’s twelve step program is to believe that there is a power greater than us that can restore us to sanity, and Dyck talked of AA members having particular problems in overcoming this step.

LSD researchers thought that there was a spiritual component in the experience of using the drug. “Maybe LSD could get people to start thinking about spirituality in whichever way they imagined. AA [then] starting referring people to LSD clinics.”

She referred to the work of Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer, two psychiatrists who sought for medicinal use of hallucinogenic drugs in Saskatchewan, such as LSD for alcoholism. She gave many written accounts of patients who took LSD—providing their experiences—and went on to discuss the importance that the drug had in the 1960s with the counter-culture, when media attention increased.

*For more information, visit artsandscience.usask.ca/history/medicine/medicinebio.html *