Alcoholism, psychedelic therapy

Treatment of Alcoholism with Psychedelic Therapy. Abram Hoffer 357... 

Alcoholics Anonymous, the great self-help group-therapy movement, is the only established treatment for alcoholics. Until much more is known about the personal (biochemical and psychological), familial, and social factors that contribute to alcoholism, so it will remain. Most new therapies are merely adjunctive to AA and will continue to be so until it is shown that they have therapeutic value when used alone. In my view, psychedelic therapy is best used as a preparation for AA. 

Psychedelic therapy is the only therapy that has prepared alcoholics to become responsible members of AA, when previously they had been unable to do so. 

The book The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism, edited by H. A. Abramson (1967), contains the best collection of scientific papers on psychedelic therapy. 

Following this, our researches were aimed at improving the quality and quantity of psychedelic reactions. Within the past ten years, major studies, under the direction of Dr. Ross MacLean, Hollywood Hospital, New Westminster, British Columbia, and under the direction of Dr. S. Unger at Spring Grove State Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland, have added materially to our knowledge of the effect of psychedelic therapy on alcoholism. 

I will not review the results of psychedelic therapy in detail. This has been done in the books edited by H. A. Abramson and in The Hallucinogens by A. Hoffer and H. Osmond (1967). The one striking conclusion is that every scientist using psychedelic therapy with alcoholics found the same proportion of recoveries. Whether the experiments were considered controlled or not, about 50 per cent were able to remain sober or to drink much less. This seems to be a universal statistic for LSD therapy. 

Kurland, A. A., Unger, S., Shaffer, J., Savage, C, Wolf, S., Leihy, R., and McCabe, O. L. Psychedelic Therapy (Utilizing LSD) in the Treatment of the Alcoholic Patient A Preliminary Report. Presented at the American Psychiatric Association meetings, Atlantic City, N.J., May 1966. 

When psychedelic therapy is given to alcoholics using methods described in the literature about one-third will remain sober after the therapy is completed, and one-third will be benefitted. If schizophrenics and malvarians [those showing a particularly purplish component of urine] are excluded from LSD therapy the results should be better by about 30 per cent. Thereare no published papers using psychedelic therapy which show it does not help about 50 per cent of the treated group. ... 

Hbffer, A. 1970. Treatment of alcoholics with psychedelic therapy In Aaronson, B. and H. Osmond (Eds.) Psychedelics The Uses and Implications of Hallucinogenic Drt4. Doublcday/Anchor, Garden City, Nj. pp 357-366. 

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