DANGERS
AND MYTHS
RESEARCH ON HALLUCINOGENS
One myth we want to dispel is that there is no
credible scientific research conducted
on hallucinogens. Research on hallucinogens (including LSD) can be legally conducted in the United States and
Europe. Admittedly, the research
history of hallucinogens is colorful and not always credible, ranging from military experiments on unsuspecting subjects
to the blithe self-experimentation of
Dr. Timothy Leary in the sixties. However, in recent years, research by credible biomedical researchers has expanded, focusing on a variety of topics ranging from what
hallucinogen experiences can tell us
about psychosis to the specific mechanisms by which these drugs act to cause persevering effects on
religious insight.
IDENTIFICATION
Users can never really be sure which hallucinogen
they are taking. Blotter-paper-like
preparations are most likely to be actual LSD because other hallucinogens are not potent enough for an
effective dose to be delivered in
this way. However, a pill/capsule/powder could be anything, or any combination of things. Laboratory analyses
of blood from people admitted to
emergency rooms for LSD toxicity indicate that in some urban settings, only about 50 percent of the drug
samples that were thought to be LSD
by their possessors actually were LSD. Finally, any drug that has been synthesized in an underground
laboratory can contain various
by-products that arise from poor chemical synthesis.
Hallucinogenic
mushrooms represent another identification problem. It takes an educated and practiced eye to identify any
mushrooms in the field, and this
is always a dangerous proposition. Many mushroom species, including the aforementioned Amanita muscaria, contain psychoactive compounds that are extremely
dangerous or lethal. Other species (Amanita
phalloides, for example)
contain toxins that produce fatal damage to the
liver and kidneys. While simple "home" tests are much touted ("if the stem turns blue, it is
psilocybin"), none of these are foolproof A number of mail-order operations exist that claim
to send out
