Comment by wyldfire | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wyldfire | Hacker News Reader

I followed one of the citations to this article "Constructing drug effects: A history of set and setting" [1]. A very interesting read, excerpts below:

> LSD research of the 1950s was dominated by the idea that the drug could be used to induce and study mental illness ... Presupposing that patients become mentally ill under the effects of LSD, they were creating expectancies ... the subjects who participated in research were hospitalized psychiatric patients who had little choice about partaking in experiments. Preparation for sessions was poor, often consisting of the casual suggestion that the patient will experience a few hours of madness following the ingestion of the drug, not a soothing notion, to say the least.

> And yet, as the 1950s progressed a growing number of publications were describing the LSD experience in radically different terms. ... participants in psychotherapeutically oriented LSD research asked to repeat the experience time and again (Abramson, 1960). The striking differences in the description of the effects of LSD can readily be explained by the striking differences in the set and setting which existed between the two schools of research. ...

> Yet by the 1970s, following the abandonment of psychedelic drug research and the classification of psychedelics as Schedule I drugs, the concept of set and setting would all but disappear from the literature. ...

> Numerous experiments conducted under strictly controlled conditions (double-blind, with placebos) on a wide range of subjects and in different cultures have demonstrated that both mood and actions are affected far more by what people think they have drunk than by what they have actually drunk ... people who expect drinking to result in violence become aggressive; those who expect it to make them feel sexy become amorous; those who view it as disinhibiting are demonstrative. ...

> Over the last decades, principles of set and setting have been employed both as drug policy measures as well as by local and community initiatives in order to reduce the drug harms. Prominent examples include the case of Dutch coffee shops, as well as chill out rooms and free availability of water in clubs where MDMA is commonly used.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2050324516683325

I agree, that story is fascinating. In fact the shift in the 1950s in how scientists thought about psychedelics is actually what my second book (in progress) is about. The Abramson cited in that study is one of the main people I've been researching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Alexander_Abramson

So as a follow on, I know this is a long shot but if anyone reading this has family or professional connections to some of the people involved in that first generation of psychedelic research in the 1950s and early 1960s (yes, they are old now, but at least a few are still around) please get in touch with me. I've been conducting oral history interviews for the past year or two and finding out all kinds of interesting things.

I'd recommend getting in touch with the Psychedelic Salon[1] and the Aware Project[2].

They have deep contacts with the psychedelic community, and have themselves interviewed many of the early pioneers.

[1] - https://psychedelicsalon.com/

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0oErWkP157InE47YAuhzPg/vid...

It really makes you think of the mental damage that addicts are enduring who live in a constant state of poor set and setting. I can't imagine how you don't slip into psychosis being constantly heavily inebriated on whatever substance, but also chronically paranoid about your personal security living without any safety on the street.

It also gives some context to Ted Kaczynski - when I learned that he was possibly dosed on massive amounts of LSD and screamed at while in college. It's not a huge leap from there to why he broke down and became the unabomber.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#Harvard_College

I can't really imagine that - and it went on for a long time, I would be surprised if a person experience that didn't have some kind of mental break.

"In his second year at Harvard, Kaczynski participated in a study described by author Alston Chase as a "purposely brutalizing psychological experiment" led by Harvard psychologist Henry Murray. Subjects were told they would debate personal philosophy with a fellow student and were asked to write essays detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations. The essays were turned over to an anonymous individual who would confront and belittle the subject in what Murray himself called "vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive" attacks, using the content of the essays as ammunition.[26] Electrodes monitored the subject's physiological reactions. These encounters were filmed, and subjects' expressions of anger and rage were later played back to them repeatedly.[26] The experiment lasted three years, with someone verbally abusing and humiliating Kaczynski each week.[27][28] Kaczynski spent 200 hours as part of the study.[29]

Kaczynski's lawyers later attributed his hostility towards mind control techniques to his participation in Murray's study.[26] Some sources have suggested that Murray's experiments were part of Project MKUltra, the Central Intelligence Agency's research into mind control.[30][31] Chase and others have also suggested that this experience may have motivated Kaczynski's criminal activities"

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