Peak experiences

Richards, W. A., Rhead, J. C., DiLeo, F. B., Yensen, R., and Kurland, A. A. (1977) The peak experience variable in DPT-assisted psychotherapy with cancer patients. J. Psychedelic Drugs, 9 1-8. 

Intensity The second 20 milligram report sounds as if there was some flirting with the magical plus-four transcendental peak experience. I happened to be the subject, and I was impressed. 

Maslow, A. H. Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences. Columbus ... 

More importantly, my studies of people s experiences in various d-ASCs have convinced me that people can and do have vital, living experiences that are ways out. People have what Maslow 36 called peak experiences of openness, freedom, and belonging in which they feel they transcend, at least temporarily, the samsaric condition of ordinary consciousness. It can be argued that these experiences are just other illusions, that there is no freedom. But the belief that a way out does not exist may be just as illusory. 

Several writers have turned to German or Sanskrit to find more appropriate words, but these have largely been ignored. More notable terms are peak experiences, a term popularized by the psychologist Abraham Maslow altered states, popularized by the psychologist Charles Tart alternative states, coined by Norman Zinberg and cosmic experience, popularized in William James The Varieties of Religious Experience. 

In the peak experience that MMDA may elicit, it is possible to speak of both individuality and dissolution, but these are blended into a quite new totality. Dissolution is here expressed in the openness to experience, a willingness to hold no preference individuality, on the other hand, is implied in the absence of depersonalization phenomena, and in the fact that the subject is concerned with the everyday world of persons, objects, and relationships. 

The MMDA peak experience is typically one in which the moment that is being lived becomes intensely gratifying in all its circumstantial reality, yet the dominant feeling is not one of euphoria but of calm and serenity. It could be described as a youthful indifference, or, as one subject has put it, "an impersonal sort of compassion for love is embedded, as it were, in calm. ... 

DPT has not been very widely used to date, but those who have tried it seem to agree that it does produce psychedelic or "peak experiences. Much of its application in psychotherapy has taken place in Europe, under the supervision of such specialists as Dr. Hanscarl Leuner, who has just published a book in German on psycholytic therapy. Initial reports in the U.S. have come from the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, which used this drug in conjunction with therapy at Spring Grove Hospital near Baltimore. 

In the January-March 1977 Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, five doctors on the Spring Grove team discussed their findings about "The Peak Experience Variable in DPT-Assisted Psychotherapy with Cancer Patients. They expressed the opinion that among the many altered states of psychedelic consciousness, peak experiences "are probably among the most difficult to... 

Nonetheless, this team concluded from its experiments with DPT "that peak experiences may constitute an intrinsic element of effective psychotherapy for some persons and that "rapid therapeutic progress in the course of short-term psychotherapy with cancer patients... is indicated by this study. In a comment also pertinent for anyone considering use of DPT, they observed that "when a peak experience does occur, its continuing relevance for daily living may be strongly dependent on the degree to which the associated insights are assimilated or transferred into the everyday self-concept and world view of the patient. ... 

Ridiards, WA. 1975. Counseling, Peak Experiences and the Human Encounter with Death. An Empirical Study of the Efficacy cfDPT-Assisted Counseling in Enhancing the Quality of Life of Persons with Terminal Cancer and their Closest Family Members. Thesis, Catholic University of America, Washington, d.c. 

Richards, WA. etal. 1977. The peak experience variable in DPT-assisted psychotherapy with cancer Journal of Psy-... 

I have been told of a number of clinical trials that have explored MMDA-3a at considerably higher levels, but I have no explicit quotations to give, and the details are quite sketchy. Three trials at 80 milligrams, and one at 100 milligrams, all made comparisons, in both quantity and quality of the experience, to 100 micrograms of LSD. However, two events occurred that may or may not be related to these trials one subject had a spontaneous peak experience five days after the experiment, and another made a symbolic suicide attempt. 

The 5 milligram experiment, briefly quoted from above, is the stuff of Chapter 14 of this book, important in that it gives an interesting example of some thought processes associated with psychedelic intoxication, ego-inflation, and what might be thought of as bits of mania. As is always the case with peak experiences that happen to be catalyzed by drugs, this extraordinary event could not be duplicated. 

At 7 milligrams there was an uneventful +1, and some 10 milligrams was needed to generate a full +3 experience. The first clue of the erratic nature of the Aleph family came from an independent assay by a colleague of mine, one who was very familiar with such states of consciousness, but for whom this was not a time for peak experiences. 

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